How to use psychology to hack your mind and fall in love with exercise

If the idea of exercise seems more attractive to you than the reality, you will identify with Jessica Howard. She had always nurtured the vague intention of running a marathon, but had struggled to get off the sofa. “I didn’t run, I didn’t move,” she recalls. “I was a couch potato.”

This all changed when, as a student at Bangor University in the UK, she took part in a special module on offer there that aims to tackle a key challenge many of us face when it comes to exercise: motivation. It turns out that there are tricks we can use to help us break bad habits and reach our goals.

Summoning the will to exercise is a huge challenge for most people (see “Why we don’t like to exercise”, below). This is particularly problematic in higher-income countries, which have twice the levels of inactivity compared with lower-income ones, and where many people aren’t sufficiently active to stay healthy in the long term.

Certain barriers, such as ill health or a lack of suitable space and resources, can seriously restrict our capacity to exercise. For many, however, the battle is internal: we struggle to carve out the time. We may fully recognise the long-term benefits for our physical and mental health, but get drawn to things that bring more immediate rewards without the need to break a sweat – like slouching in front of the TV. At the heart of this…