Motivation and habits: how to keep at it

The trainers have been standing in the hall since Monday. On Tuesday you trip over them, on Wednesday you push them aside, and on Thursday a jacket is already hanging over them. Do you know the feeling? More is decided at exactly this point than by any good resolution in January.

Motivation and habits: what really carries you

Motivation and habits are not opposites, but a relay handover. Motivation provides the push – the moment when you buy the running shoes or clear out the fridge. After that the habit has to carry you: an action so small and so firmly tied to a point in time that it barely calls for a decision any more. Anyone who waits until the desire comes back usually waits too long. Anyone who instead sets a fixed anchor point – after brushing your teeth, before the first email, getting off one stop earlier – needs considerably less willpower.

That sounds unspectacular. It is the reason why some people are still at it in March and others are not.

What the Swiss figures reveal about our everyday life

A look at the statistics helps against self-reproach. According to the Federal Statistical Office, around 76 per cent of the population were sufficiently active in 2017, and 64 per cent did sport weekly. At the same time, 26 per cent never did sport and 9 per cent were considered inactive. What is remarkable is the direction: the proportion of sufficiently active people has risen by almost 14 percentage points since 2002. So behaviour does change – just slowly and in small steps, not overnight.

With food the picture looks different. The first national nutrition survey, menuCH, by the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office concludes that the Swiss population eats in an unbalanced way. What is interesting about that: knowledge is rarely what is lacking. Almost everyone knows that vegetables do you good. What is lacking is the structure that actually gets the vegetables onto the plate – the Saturday shop, the cut carrots in a box, the recipe you know blind.

Orientation instead of perfection

The Swiss dietary recommendations for adults from the SGE and the FSVO have applied since September 2024. They are aimed at healthy adults between 18 and 65, and the amounts are explicitly meant as guidance – not as exam material.

Anyone who reads this table as a checklist with five ticks soon fails. Anyone who uses it as a rough map gets further: one portion more vegetables than yesterday, the water bottle on the desk instead of in the kitchen. Nothing more is needed in week one.

The morning decides more often than the evening

An observation from countless conversations in the shop in Kloten: anyone who has their breakfast under control also makes calmer decisions at 4 p.m. Not because breakfast is magical, but because a planned morning gives structure to the rest of the day. Anyone who starts without a plan, by contrast, decides spontaneously all day – and spontaneous decisions cost energy.

Repeatability helps exactly here. A Herbalife Formula 1 shake is prepared in a few minutes and tastes just as reliable every day, which is an advantage for a young habit. The Herbalife Formula 1 - Shake Vanilla Crème 550g can be mixed with milk or a plant-based alternative and complemented with berries or half a banana – so the first portion of fruit is on the table before eight o'clock. You will find further ideas for the morning under Herbalife breakfast.

Two minutes of preparation the evening before. That is the whole trick.

When motivation tips over after three weeks

The typical slump comes not on the third day, but after two to four weeks – when the new is no longer new and progress seems smaller than at the start. Better planning helps against that more than discipline does. Four things that have proved their worth in everyday life:

• Set the anchor, not the goal. «Five minutes of stretching after the coffee» works better than «more sport».
• Lower the hurdle until it is ridiculously small. One stop on foot counts. Really.
• Plan in a relapse – and set the rule never to skip twice in a row.
• Choose a fixed timeframe, with the Herbalife 21 Day Challenge for instance, because an end date takes the pressure off.

Small rituals also hold a routine together. The Herbalife Instant Herbal Drink with Tea Extracts, Original 102 g is prepared with hot or cold water and fits well into the afternoon, when a break is due anyway. For many it is exactly this recurring moment at the desk that reminds them to drink – and the water bottle next to it usually gets filled at the same time.

Building exercise in where it happens anyway

The most common question is: how do I get more exercise into my working day? Rarely through an additional training slot that does not exist in the calendar. Usually through shifting: phone calls standing up or while walking, lunch with a ten-minute detour, the stairs as the standard route rather than the exception. If you train in the evening anyway, you will find ideas for the time beforehand under Before the workout.

And if a whole week goes wrong? Then it was a week. No proof of anything at all.

Your next step

Choose a single habit for the next seven days – one you can manage even on a chaotic Thursday. Tie it to something you do anyway. That is how Motivation and habits become a system that works even without a good mood. Browse at your leisure through All Herbalife products or read on in the Herbalife blog – and if you would like a personal assessment, simply get in touch with us in Kloten.

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