Two years ago, I successfully completed a ½ marathon, yet today I’m struggling to work out 4 consecutive days in a row without making excuses and trying to figure out a way to justify dropping the workout. 

What happened to me? And similar questions swirl, coupled with self-doubt, and a layer of shame into a poisonous cocktail of negativity. 

So, take a dive down this rabbit hole of excuse-making with me. I’ll share the self-examination & pattern awareness process, what I’ve learned about excuses, and how I’m working to break the yo-yo fitness commitment cycle I’ve been stuck in for years.

Maybe you’re not really into fitness, or maybe you don’t consider yourself a runner, okay, well, samesies. If you have ever felt bad about not working out, if you’ve ever said you were going to start Monday and then didn’t, or if you’ve ever felt guilty about how much you did or didn’t work out, you’re my people. 

By sharing my personal struggle with fitness, I hope to normalize the drama around the ol’ mom-bod, alleviate some of the pressure we moms put on ourselves, and help you recognize any similar detrimental patterns. 

My Fitness/Excuse Self-Sabotage Loop

So it begins… I say I want to be more fit, more toned, trim down or whatever, so I look at all this Pinterest stuff, nail down what I’m going to do (this time) and gear up to “start Monday.” 

I force myself out of bed bright and early on Monday and head out for a run. By day 3, I’m really proud of my progress, but by day 4 I’m tired, sore, and can easily find 10+ excuses as to why I should “skip a day.” 

That day turns into 2, those 2 turn into a week, and before I know it, I’ve fallen off the wagon completely. 

Sound familiar? 

My pattern goes even further. Once I realize I’ve fallen off, I put this insane pressure on myself to restart. But my brain is full of every task I “should” be doing instead, how busy I am, and every excuse as to why I can’t continue to pursue this workout commitment. 

Thoughts like this show up: 

 If you’re going to wake up that early, shouldn’t you be moving your business forward, doing client work, or doing something productive instead of just running around outside? 

This is too hard. Isn’t there an easier way to get fit? You need to do more research. 

I’m just SO tired. It’s impossible to get to bed early enough. 

Let me just get some new _______ (running shoes, fitness tracker, app, sports bra, you name it) and I’ll restart this workout thing. 

I’m conflicted from the inside out! Negative feelings about my yo-yo wanna-be fitness commitments take over. I feel shame for my current level of fitness but can’t seem to break through this invisible barrier of excuses. I begin to memory stack in a negative way, remembering all the things I’ve said I was going to do and didn’t, all the times I backed out or failed. I’m letting myself down, again, for like the 1000th time. 

I know the health benefits of a daily workout, so why can’t I stick with one? Why is it so freaking easy for me to make excuses and let myself off the hook if I’m just going to turn around and feel bad for quitting?

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Patterns Aren’t Contained

These types of self-sabotaging patterns are fluid and can slide into any area of life. Maybe a consistent workout routine isn’t a problem, but is there another area in your life where you start and stop and experience negative internal thoughts, and then force yourself to get back to it, only to make excuses over and over again? 

The pattern I’ve recognized in my life with working out is most like the yo-yo diet cycle. Yo-yoing means jumping from plan to plan, giving up or burning out quickly each time, thinking with each move, “this will be the one” or “this time will be different” or “I’ll really stick with this one.” 

We all know how unhealthy yo-yo dieting is and the negative connotation that comes with that label, which is exactly why I’m experiencing a slap-in-the-face over the realization of its existence in my life.

Is there something, somewhere in your own life that you seemingly commit to over and over again while simultaneously having a million excuses around?

The First and Most Important Step: Recognition

The first step toward any level of change is recognizing the behavior and any patterns around it. There’s a pattern not only with my physical behavior of starting and stopping the fitness routine repeatedly, but there’s also a pattern in my energy levels, my self-talk, my body image, and the urgency or priority I put on my personal level of fitness. 

Recognizing the pattern is a fantastic first step, not a solution. So, while I pat myself on the back, I also realize there’s much more work to do. 

A Deeper Look At Successful Commitments:

Over the years, I’ve done deep thought-work on what created this pattern in my life. The only times I actually completed a commitment to a workout routine was:

In high school as part of the drill team or 

A 16-week half-marathon training

Drill Team – I was in high school, had little-to-no responsibility, enjoyed it, and worked out as part of my daily routine. Being on the squad also meant attention, recognition, and popularity, all of which were a priority – it was high school, you know.

The ½ marathon – I selected a 16-week training with a set number of miles to run each day/week, building slowly, leading up to the race. The thought of completing a 13-mile run was intimidating to me, and I feared being a “quitter,” or embarrassed, or worse, experiencing an injury and feeling like a wimp. I signed up for the race because I simply wanted to prove to myself that I COULD do something that seemed impossible for me. 

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Finding the Self-Sabotage Source

During those torturous 16 weeks of training and the subsequent couple of years, I’ve explored childhood memories, behaviors that had been modeled for me, habits I inadvertently picked up, and behaviors I’ve adopted that were really defense mechanisms from some event way in my past. 

This thought work wasn’t to find an event or someone to blame but to discover why I feel or act a certain way even though my knowledge tells me to do otherwise. 

We all know what we’re SUPPOSED to do. We know what we SHOULD do with our money. We all know what we SHOULD do to get proper nutrition and be fit. So, why don’t we do it? 

Why do we sabotage ourselves with excuses?

Looking back, I recognize several people who were very close to me that provided one excuse after another, for everything. I closely witnessed the diet craze of the ’80s and ‘90s – I remember Metabolife pills and Richard Simmons’ VCR workout tapes, and one diet after another, each one being “the one.”

I learned when I was young that excuses frustrated and annoyed the people around you, and not to make them outwardly. But no one taught me not to make them internally. Positive self-talk wasn’t a popular subject 30 years ago, and anything that was unacceptable to say out loud became a private conversation I had to myself, with myself, in my own head. 

This self-awareness of thought patterns and behaviors that perpetuate the cycle is the only way I can begin to stop making excuses. 

There’s always an excuse if you’re looking for one. Boy, am I good at looking for one. 

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Discovering The Triggers

Once the cycle and the source for excuses is discovered, it’s time to recognize triggers. Triggers are the situations in which one tends to make the most excuses.

My triggers for making excuses: 

Outside The Comfort Zone 

I might say “it’s too hard,” “it’s impossible,” or a slew of other quips of irrational thought and false beliefs because I’m facing a new challenge, either mentally or physically, and that growth is tough. 

When it comes to exercise, It’s not that my feet physically can’t step one in front of the other, it’s usually that my mind is spiraling and telling my body that it’s not capable. 

Same thing when it comes to building a website, having an intense conversation with a loved one, or launching a product. It’s not that we are actually incapable. Our minds convince us that we can’t. 

Doing Nothing Is Easier

When I’m out for a run and my brain is telling me it’s too hard, or worse, when I’m beginning a workout routine and my brain tells me it’s not going to work before I’ve even started, I must make myself realize – Of course, it’s easier to sit on the couch! Of course, it’s easier to sleep in! 

Do we want easy, really? When our brain tells us something is too hard, it’s covering up something deeper, like fear of failure, fear of attention, fear of being judged, or even fear of success – and yes, that’s a thing. The most primitive part of our brain tells us to play small, stay safe, and don’t do anything that will make you stand out because that will render you vulnerable. 

This is where each of us has to evaluate the actual thought and decide – 

What am I afraid of? 

Am I really afraid of being successful in this area of life? 

If I’m successful at ________, what are the real, possible outcomes?

I’m willing to bet when you dissect these thoughts, you prove your primitive brain wrong and discover you actually love overcoming challenges.

Time

This has been one of the toughest ones for me – it encompasses enough time in the day, enough sleep at night, my work commitments, the kids’ schedules, how much sleep I think I need, what time I get to bed and how many times a dog or cat or kid woke me up… the list goes on!

This trigger constantly changes shape for me. If I feel that I can’t find the time to workout, I time-block and use a planner. But then the trigger morphs into being a sleep issue. I couldn’t get to bed early enough or if I laid down on time, I couldn’t fall asleep fast enough. If I fell asleep but the dog woke me up twice, I’m pissed about my lack of quality sleep. Any and all of these easily stack upon each other and become an excuse as to why I “can’t” go out for a run.

Everything has to do with the beliefs I’ve allowed to cycle and what I’m choosing to believe as truth. I’ve had to create the belief that my body got all the rest it needed and that there IS enough time to run, even if it’s only for 10-20 minutes. It’s still exercise and it still counts!

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Energy

This trigger shows up quietly, sneakily in my life – it’s not an outward excuse like the others. I might think I don’t have the energy to work out, but I’m actually feeling drained from too much pressure in some other area of life. Maybe we’re knee-deep in soccer season and we’ve spent weeks attending a game or a practice every dang night and I feel like I haven’t had a break. Or maybe this is a lack of sleep thing where I’m tired (or I’ve convinced myself I am) and don’t think I can muster the energy to run today. There are actually two things I’ve discovered here – 

1. If I fuel my body properly with nutrition and hydration, I feel better and more energized regardless of how much sleep I have or haven’t had recently. More coffee isn’t the answer. 
2. It does take energy to workout, but that workout actually CREATES more energy that fuels the rest of my day.  It’s the weirdest, most backward thing and continues to surprise me.

Stacked to-do’s

I touched on this earlier, but I tend to make the most excuses when I feel like I’ve got a full plate. When deadlines are looming, meetings are stacked up, I have errands to run, or I feel behind, I find myself feeling like instead of working out for 30 minutes or an hour, I should be spending that time knocking something off of my to-do list. 

It’s a funny conundrum because I’m not happy unless I have multiple endeavors going on, meetings on the calendar, errands to run, and tasks in multiple areas of my life that make me feel important or needed. I thrive in tight-turn arounds and I live by due dates and deadlines, but there’s a fine line between that level of excitement, busy-ness, and feeling valued and then feeling overwhelmed because too many things piled on at once. 

Ironically, when I need to be the most productive, the overwhelm often sends me into a mental space where I feel paralyzed, exhausted, and like I’m failing at everything all at the same time. 

Working out actually helps me avoid this paralysis-phase because while I’m moving, my mind is free to organize and prioritize the tasks. So, when I’m done with the workout, I’m actually able to be more productive in less time. 

The Number One Reason We Make Excuses

All the self-examination and pattern and trigger recognition is insanely valuable, but do you want to know WHY we fail at our goals? 

Want to know the number one reason we make excuses not to do something when it seemed like a priority just last night or last week? 

If you’ve ever set a goal and then almost immediately made excuses as to why you can’t do it is because there was an imbalance between urgency and priority toward the goal. 

I want you to imagine a balancing apparatus with urgency on one side and priority on the other.

You have to have both. The goal or desire has to be of high priority to you AND of high urgency to you, in equal measure. If either one begins to decrease, your likelihood of continuing the consistent behaviors needed to reach your goal is in jeopardy, and that’s where the excuses start to creep in. 

Urgency and priority are important components of a strong “WHY.” Establishing what your deepest, most passionate reason is for setting a goal and implementing change in your life is key to beginning and sticking with the lifestyle change required to reach any goal. 

From now on, with any goals you set, in any area of your life,(and don’t worry, I’m doing this too!) before you commit to “start Monday,” evaluate the level of priority and urgency that goal carries. Explore your patterns as I’ve done here, maybe even come up with a rating system for priority and urgency so you can see on a scale of 1-5 how much weight that goal actually carries. Take some time to think about what might throw you off-track in achieving this goal and how your best self would handle the hiccup and get back on track. 

There’s No Cure

You (and I) will still feel the need to make excuses. But now, we have the tools and the thought process to evaluate why. We’re going to be able to immediately ask ourselves –

Did my urgency toward this goal decrease?
Is this not a priority to me anymore?
Am I experiencing a fear of failure or fear of success?
Do I really think my time is more valuable somewhere else?

Purposeful Adjustments

Over the past couple of years, as I’ve recognized my excuse triggers, evaluated urgency and priority, and explored patterns, I’ve begun to make adjustments to my behaviors AND our family’s lifestyle so that I’m more apt to meet my goals. 

Recognizing That Something Is Better Than Nothing

Instead of an all-or-nothing approach, which is how I felt a few months ago, I’ve realized that if I just get moving for 15-20 minutes, that’s fantastic. An hour walk/jog is fantastic when I can fit it in, but if my goal is to consistently exercise, then a window of just 20 minutes is 100% acceptable and I need to be proud that I worked out for that time instead of feeling like that’s not good enough. 

Involving The Kids

Now, I think you’re with me on this one – those little buggers make my sun rise and my heart sing, and I’d do ANYTHING not to become a disappointment to them. So, getting them involved has worked wonders for me. My 8-year-old skips and hops and giggles for miles with an encouraging “come on mom!” while I wheeze and attempt to keep up. He really keeps me going.

Beyond running, I’ve learned that both of my kids (my little one included) love a good video/instructional workout. We pop on some YouTube yoga, T-25, or Just Dance and it’s like a group effort to keep everyone in the room motivated and moving – turns out working up a sweat together is really quite fun.  

Incorporating the Goal into the Existing Routine

The adjustment that’s made the most difference is incorporating my workout into the existing family routine. The kids and I now run together for 20 minutes each morning before school/work. I’ve made a game of it for them and they love competing for stickers and prizes. This also gives us the opportunity to talk about muscle care, hydration, and proper nutrition and helps me set a good example in these areas. 

Coordination With Partner

As you can imagine, adjusting our family’s morning routine requires a certain level of support and coordination from the hubs. With any goal, support from those closest to you is of utmost importance. I really had to look at all our routines as a family and as individuals, communicate with him what I was working toward, and ask for his perspective on how we could best do this.

If he’s on board and manages the kids’ breakfast while we’re out running, then I’m sure you could see how that’s mega-helpful and might have a large impact on my exercise consistency. When I work out, he notices my positive mood shift, sees my stress is lower, and that my self-esteem is higher, and wants to support the new routine so he can continue to see those benefits.

Conclusion

Leave with hope – 

That excuse-ridden self-sabotage cycles can be recognized, and then broken on purpose to intentionally create a more abundant life. 

Carrying new tools & tactics – 

In health, relationships, finances, or any other area of life, you now have the rationale to notice excuses creeping in or the “set a goal and then talk yourself out of it” cycle, and you can evaluate what triggers are showing up for you, decide on your level of urgency and priority, plus experiment with tiny lifestyle adjustments in support of your goal. 

With permission – 

It’s okay to fall off, it’s okay to restart, switch gears, take a break, re-evaluate, and pursue self-love around who we are AND who we are becoming. 

Because although we aren’t cured from making excuses, we now have an illuminated path on which to tread toward quitting, which will allow us to stick to our goals and avoid the cycle of disappointment in any area of life.