If you want to get in shape before 2025, here’s the one skill you should focus on.
“There’s no question that to survive, and especially to survive in a complex society, it is necessary to work for external goals and to postpone immediate gratifications” - M.Csikszentmihalyi
5 years ago, I started my fitness journey.
At the time, I was living in a 95-square-foot room, where the dishes were literally watching me from the sink while I procrastinated on my bed.
I couldn’t figure out why it felt impossible for me to get in shape, build my physique, or more importantly, create a healthier lifestyle that would make me proud of my daily actions.
My life was filled with cheap dopamine: social media, video games, parties, sugar, and procrastination.
I was motivated like crazy for three days and then I’d stop, I set way too many fitness goals, I was heavily comparing myself on social media…
During the first year of training, I just ended up feeling more overwhelmed and unmotivated than ever.
I thought that people with six-packs and visible muscles were just built different, and I ended up resigning myself from working out and eating clean.
The big mistake I made was thinking that I needed to redesign my lifestyle from scratch, only then would I be able to stick to my healthy habits and reach my dream physique.
But it doesn’t work like that, and my need for instant gratification ruined all my attempts to get back on track.
That’s when I realized this is what you should address first, nothing’s happening if you don’t take care of that problem
more than that there is a fix to it that has been known for millennia that it’s called self-discipline, and I’m going to step by step tell you how to build that skill.
Overdosing on Instant gratification
The enemy is clear: instant gratification. It’s the need for immediate satisfaction despite your long-term goals.
This tendency causes three main problems:
1- it prevents you from reaching your goals
2- It reinforces the want and need for future immediate gratification
3- It induces a loop of negative emotions
1- it prevents you from reaching your goals
Instant gratification takes different forms for different people and knows your weaknesses.
It's the sweet tooth when you're on a diet,
the snoozing when you need to exercise before work,
the impulsive clothing purchase when you’re watching your finances.
I thought that since this cheap dopamine release wasn’t immediately destructive, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
You know, like there’s nothing inherently wrong with snoozing for 15 minutes in the morning when you woke up groggy. It cannot be ‘that bad.’
I was wrong, it is. Those little habits were exactly what prevented me from sticking to my diet and exercise routine.
All those tiny negative actions—the scrolling, not doing the dishes, not prepping my meals, not folding my clothes, the constant distractions, and the need for stimulation—were negatively compounding against me.
All these habits are distractions, pulling you from life and causing a fundamental problem.
Those tiny distractions are you trying to escape your life for a few seconds or minutes, using these instant gratification episodes to feel better as you avoid responsibilities.
I felt in a cage, Ryan holiday says it perfectly “Freedom requires discipline, discipline gives us freedom “ - Discipline is Destiny
I was scrolling to avoid doing the dishes. I was snoozing to avoid getting up and going to the gym. I was watching Netflix to avoid schoolwork.
And as long as you’re not engaging in directly destructive escapes like ... I don’t know ... SMOKING CRACK, you can easily convince yourself that you’re doing just fine. It won’t jeopardize your efforts.
Except it does. Those little habits are the precise reason why you’re not in shape and why you’re not leading a healthy lifestyle yet.
They are insidious and prime your subconscious for more.
If you’re overweight and struggling with nutrition, you’re probably not eating McDonald's every day, but you may be snacking here and there, which ultimately prevents you from losing fat.
Nutrition is in the details. Some foods are way more caloric than others, and if you’re not careful, a handful of nuts can be the reason why you’re not losing weight.
Snoozing in the morning cuts 15 minutes, then it takes 15 more to get out of bed, and because you went to bed an hour late, it takes you 30 minutes and two coffees to get your brain working.
Add it up, and you lost an hour, which would have been enough time for a 30-minute run or workout.
The devil is in the details, and by choosing those little escapes, you are directly preventing yourself from reaching your fitness goals.
2- It reinforces the want & need for future gratification
Every time you say ‘yes’ to the need for immediate pleasure, you reward your brain for the activity.
The emotional part of your brain that sends those signals is very primitive, and it doesn’t distinguish between what’s good or bad for you in the long term, it will choose the short term over the long term every time.
This part of your brain just wants to feel relief and experience pleasure in the moment. It is most influenced by the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Dopamine itself is essential, and without it, you’d pretty much be a vegetable laying on the couch waiting for your own death.
Dopamine is a mobilizer; it pushes you to act and triggers motivation. The problem with your dopaminergic system is that it wasn’t designed for so much modern accessibility.
It was designed to keep you alive and to push you towards looking for food, safety, and mating opportunities. Nowadays, the same survival system is used to scroll on Instagram endlessly.
Now something I learned from Dr Huberman : the most important thing to understand is that when there isn’t pleasure, there’s usually pain associated.
Every time you feel a dopamine peak and engage in the behavior, you’ll move towards the bottom of the slope and it will inevitably trigger some sort of unease, discomfort.
You probably know the feeling. The best example is food cravings. You really want to eat that particular food, like pasta, and after work, you go to the store and buy ready to eat pasta
In your mind, this will be the most pleasant activity, and you can’t wait to go home and eat it.
But when you actually do, it doesn’t feel quite as good. After the second plate, it’s not pleasurable at all, and you just feel bloated, frustrated, and guilty.
There is regret because what was supposed to bring you pleasure and comfort brought shame and emptiness. That’s the dark emotional loop behind instant gratification.
3- It leaves you feeling guilty and shameful
Now it’s worse because you gave your brain the green light for the pasta when you had the craving, and it just left you feeling unsatisfied and vacant.
You’re experiencing the pain associated with a high peak in dopamine, which is why you feel that overwhelming negative feeling.
More than that, after the dopamine episode, your thinking brain will take back control, and that’s when you start to blame yourself and cultivate negative thoughts about what just happened.
This is the dramatic example to help you understand the full picture. It doesn’t always get that bad.
But it does happen on a micro scale a lot of times during the day and therefore, adds up to a lot of small episodes filled with negative emotions.
And, you must be wary that every time you engage in one of those instant gratification episodes, you are actively participating and allowing this reaction to be rewarded and to grow.
That is how tiny negative habits can truly deteriorate your quality of life and, over time, if cultivated, destroy your chances of reaching your fitness goals.
If you do feel shame and guilt regarding some of your habits, listen to what these emotions are trying to tell you, don’t judge yourself or beat yourself up for it.
But it’s important that you listen because at the end of the day, these are just powerful signals that are trying to send you a message.
Learning to say ‘no’ to your own brain
The good news is that you are in control of your actions. These impulses for immediate pleasure can be rebalanced.
If procrastination, video games, tasty foods, or other distractions feel like they have too much power over your decisions, what you want to do is to build self-discipline. And we’ll deconstruct it step by step in a second.
If the ultimate outcome is to get in shape, and you aren’t there yet, it probably means there are many little counterproductive behaviours preventing you from reaching your goal.
These can be either be :
Things you shouldn’t do (smoke crack, snack, scroll)
Things you should do but don’t (go to the gym, meal prep, count calories)
Self-discipline is basically using willpower to do the exact opposite of what these impulses want you to do. It’s saying ‘no’ when you know that these habits can endanger your long-term goals.
While also enabling you to say ‘yes’ to behaviours that will lead you to long-term goals.
That is why it is so effective. It’s the most important skill you can acquire to reach your fitness goals sustainably.
(That’s why the whole curriculum for my cohort is based on acquiring that skill. If you gain sufficient self-discipline and the necessary knowledge about exercise and nutrition, you’ll be in total control of your physique, weight management, and healthy habits. Check the link here to learn more)
How to build self-discipline
Self-discipline leverages the thinking part of your brain that’s capable of making reasonable and conscious choices. It gives you control over your actions if you know how to use it.
To harness this power, you’ll need to mobilize your willpower. I talk about willpower often (I wrote a whole article on this topic, which you can find here).
Willpower is the conscious part of self-discipline. It’s using your brain to say ‘no’ to immediate pleasure because you know it doesn’t serve your long-term goals.
The problem is that you only have so much willpower, and every aspect of your life draws from the same reserve. Your work, relationships, and fitness all rely on this single source of mental energy.
Willpower is great, but it won’t save you every time because it’s a conscious effort that demands a lot of energy.
The purpose of building self-discipline is to make it your usual way of acting. If you truly acquire self-discipline, saying ‘no’ to cravings, immediate pleasure, and impulses will become normal and will almost demand nothing of you.
This allows you to work towards your fitness goals long-term without constant setbacks, freeing your daily life from shame and guilt. Trust me this is within your reach, if you’re willing to learn how to do it.
The first part to all of that is to
1- Fix your sleep
Your willpower is reset when you sleep; it's the only time your brain and body can recover. I'm not even talking about muscle recovery, just willpower.
If you're trying to lose weight, get in shape, or stop falling for cheap dopamine, the most important thing you can start with is going to bed at designated times and waking up roughly at the same time every day (within a 15-20 minute range).
Sleep consistency ensures you have all the willpower you can get since you haven't built strong self-discipline yet.
2- Make your environment trigger-free
Your willpower gets depleted throughout the day—8 hours of work, 2 hours of commute, all of that drains your mental energy.
This is why your home must be a secure place for you, free of triggers that will test your willpower after a long day.
If you tend to eat a lot of desserts, don't keep cheesecake in the fridge.
If you watch too much TV before bed and sleep at 2 AM, don't have a TV in your room.
The outside environment is already full of temptations, distractions and ads showing attractive bodies, savoury food, and bubbly soft drinks all day.
Your home should be coherent with your long-term goals, especially because you’ll inevitably be willpower depleted at some point during the evenings.
3- Reduce the jumps in dopamine
Cravings for social media, food, and video games are intense because you've been reinforcing them for a long time.
That’s how dopamine works—if you satisfy the desire, it will require more next time.
The emotional brain is binary: if there isn’t pleasure, there’s pain that wants to be alleviated.
For weight management, this pain is hunger; for procrastination, it’s the boredom felt in the absence of stimulation.
To reduce the importance of the pain, build some tolerance to it. Expose yourself to the temporary discomfort you feel when you don’t gratify yourself.
Learning how to sit through discomfort will give you the edge over the behaviour you’re trying to diminish.
4- Use prevention techniques
A powerful technique called implementation intention is very simple to put in place. It goes like this: If X happens, then I will do Y.
Condition yourself to prevent falling into the instant gratification trap. This is crucial when you’re willpower depleted. With repetition, this method acts as an automatic mental barrier.
For example, if I’m hungry between meals, I will simply wait until the next meal to eat.
Respecting your intention helps your brain encode this as ‘usual,’ costing you far less willpower over time.
Another technique is the cooldown: get away from a warm trigger into a stimulation-free space to make the right decision.
For instance, if you’re a smoker trying to quit, every time you see people smoking and start craving a cigarette, find a quiet space to distance yourself from the trigger and make a conscious decision to favour your long-term health over the quick pleasure of nicotine.
5- Set one goal and stick to it
I always recommend going to the gym because, to me, it’s the best way to build self-discipline. That’s why I’ve written "Step One," my ebook, which you can access for free here.
Whatever works for you, the magic is in self-imposed consistency. Show yourself that you’re capable of setting a goal and sticking to it.
Consider a goal as a promise to yourself. If your goal is to get in shape to improve your health and quality of life, then it’s a promise you must hold yourself accountable for.
If you’re watching this, you probably already know exactly what goal you want to achieve. In that case, you need an objective way to monitor it.
Your goal doesn’t count if it exists only in your mind. This can be as simple as using a note on your phone to log your workouts or a spreadsheet to track your physical exercise and performance.
But if you have one thing to remember about all of this, it’s that self-discipline is the skill that will save you from instant gratification and help you reach your long-term fitness goals.
So I hope this helps, trust the process…