If you have been training regularly since this blog started, that means you’ve been training for the better part of six months. Take a second to congratulate yourself on the success of consistent training! This is also a good time to take a moment to think about the more difficult phases of your wellness journey. Chances are, you spent some time six months ago dreading the sound of your alarm waking you a bit earlier than usual, the crowds at the gym, or even just the idea of cutting out some sugary foods. Riding the wave of initial motivation to find healthier habits can help you easily overcome the challenges associated with starting out.

Further down the line, once the initial bits of motivation have faded, you’ve probably run into some roadblocks. Staying motivated has long been a challenge for coaches and athletes. We can view motivation as a rollercoaster — having ups and downs, with weeks you’d rather do anything than go work out and weeks you can’t seem to get enough. This leaves the question, how do we stay consistent, even in the hard weeks?

The answer: we should not rely on only motivation, but we should also seek discipline in our wellness pursuits. Motivation can be our why, but despite the strongest, most compelling motivations behind a health or fitness goal, the hard weeks can trump motivation in an instant. By being disciplined, defined as “trained to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior,” we have already made the decision to continue to pursue our goals in the face of opposition.

If your goal is losing weight, eating healthier, or getting stronger, remember that you will get better the same way you got sick, bit by bit. Expect it to take a while and be patient with yourself.

This is easier said than done, of course. The goals we chase in the gym and in the kitchen are not meant to be easy. If they were easy, we would all be fit and there would be no reason for this blog in the first place. They require sustained, consistent effort to achieve, and that sustained, consistent effort is fueled by both the motivation, or the why, and the discipline, or the deliberate decision, to act toward that goal.