--- title: Why You Don't Want to Exercise description: Your brain is wired to prefer rest and sedentary behavior, research shows. canonical: https://time.com/6590020/why-its-so-hard-to-motivate-yourself-to-exercise/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-01-30T18:48:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:35.104Z article:section: Health og:title: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise og:description: Here's how to outsmart it. og:url: https://time.com/6590020/why-its-so-hard-to-motivate-yourself-to-exercise/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1df8c0474b06ac26/698a4451096a94964c6ae8ed/person-lying-on-couch.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2120 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: A woman lying in a blue suit on a pink sofa. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise twitter:description: Here's how to outsmart it. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1df8c0474b06ac26/698a4451096a94964c6ae8ed/person-lying-on-couch.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Hitting the Snooze Button May Not Be as Bad as You Think [Watch (HLS stream): Hitting the Snooze Button May Not Be as Bad as You Think](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/z2liolYC.m3u8) (3:00)  _Published 2023-11-02. Many sleep experts take a dim view of using the snooze button in the morning. But the science on snoozing isn't conclusive._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Jan 30, 2024 6:48 PM UTC  Creative portrait of a woman lying in a blue suit on a pink sofa. Fashion concept. Creative portrait of a woman lying in a blue suit on a pink sofa. Fashion concept. Getty Images  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Jan 30, 2024 6:48 PM UTC If the benefits of physical activity were distilled into a pill, everyone would be on it. Studies show that moving improves nearly every aspect of health: boosting sleep, strength, and [mental well-being](https://time.com/6255359/exercise-during-therapy-effective/) while slashing the risk of [chronic conditions](https://time.com/5285426/exercise-heart-health-aging/) and [premature death](https://time.com/5547500/exercise-live-longer/). What’s more, studies show that exercise has a positive impact even when [done in very short chunks](https://time.com/6242876/short-workouts-health-benefits/) and with no equipment or fancy gym membership required. Still, most people don’t exercise nearly enough. [According to data published in 2023](https://time.com/6250870/americans-exercise-habits-fitness/), less than a third of U.S. adults get the government-recommended amount of physical activity in their free time: at least 20 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic movement (think brisk walking) per day, plus a couple muscle-strengthening sessions (such as resistance training) each week. Why is it so tough to get people to do something so good for and accessible to them? Physical limitations and health problems are certainly a factor for many people, since more than half of U.S. adults have some kind of chronic condition. Modern life deserves much of the blame, too, with [long, sedentary work days](https://time.com/4363219/exercise-how-often-by-profession/) and infrastructure that often makes it [easier to hop in the car than walk](https://time.com/5606583/americans-not-enough-exercise/) or bike somewhere. And studies have long shown that [people who don't make much money are less likely to exercise than wealthier people](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db443.htm), in part because they may live in areas with relatively [few spaces where it’s safe and pleasant to be active](https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2022/21%5F0417.htm). But research suggests there’s another obstacle that affects all of us: our brains don’t want us to exercise. ### More From TIME ## Wired to be sedentary For most of human existence, people had to be physically active to carry out the basic functions of life, such as finding or growing food. Humans evolved to tolerate a high level of activity—but also to gravitate toward rest when possible, to conserve energy for when movement was either necessary or pleasurable, explains Daniel Lieberman, a human evolutionary biologist and author of [_Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding_](https://scholar.harvard.edu/exercised/home). In other words, hunter gatherers weren't out jogging to burn extra calories. From an evolutionary perspective, "that would be a stupid thing to do," Lieberman says. "You're wasting energy on something that's not going to give you any benefit whatsoever." As a society, we no longer move much in the course of daily life, but the evolutionary instinct to conserve energy remains, Lieberman says. “That disinclination, that reluctance, that voice that says, ‘I don’t want to \[exercise\],’ is completely normal and natural,” he says. Physical-activity researcher Matthieu Boisgontier, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, demonstrated that phenomenon in [a 2018 study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393218303981?via%3Dihub). While hooked up to brain-activity monitors, people were given control of a digital avatar. They were told to move the avatar away from images of sedentary behavior that popped up on their computer screens and toward images of physical activity. Boisgontier and his colleagues found that avoiding sedentary behavior took more brain power, which suggests “we have an automatic tendency” to choose relaxing over moving, he says. That conclusion shows up repeatedly in research. [Studies show](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211335515000753#s0020), for example, that people consistently choose to take an escalator instead of the stairs. That natural instinct isn’t inherently bad—it’s just that modern life gives us so many chances to give in to our preference for rest that “we have reached an extreme that is no longer beneficial to our health,” Boisgontier says. Many people also subconsciously harbor negative feelings toward exercise that go back to childhood, says Jackie Hargreaves, a senior lecturer on sport and exercise psychology at the U.K.’s Leeds Beckett University. A gym-class embarrassment or unpleasant experience with a youth sports team can make a person avoid working out well into adulthood, Hargreaves says. Sometimes it’s also a confidence issue. [Research suggests](https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-9-78) people who view themselves as competent exercisers are more likely to stick to a regular routine, while people who think the opposite may struggle to find consistent motivation, says Stefanie Williams, a behavioral scientist who works with [a U.K. organization](https://www.appliedbehaviourchange.com/) that translates health research into practice. ## How to trick your brain into exercising Feeling good about your ability is crucial to finding the motivation to exercise, says Sam Zizzi, an exercise psychologist at West Virginia University. He recommends starting small—perhaps walking just a few minutes per day at first—and building on that progress over time. Observing a peer doing what you’d like to do, particularly if they share your age, gender, or health status, can also help you realize you can accomplish it, too, Williams says. A counterintuitive way to build confidence, Lieberman adds, is to simply recognize the ways your brain sets you up to fail. “When people struggle to exercise, they’re told they’re lazy or there’s something wrong with them,” when in reality, people who exercise purely for fitness are the ones working against their natural instincts, Lieberman says. Replacing guilt and shame with self compassion—and an understanding of how the human brain works—can go a long way. So can reframing what counts as exercise. You don’t need to spend an hour lifting weights at the gym; even taking a few minutes per day to dance in your kitchen or weed the garden is great for your mind and body, [numerous studies show](https://time.com/5438387/exercise-guidelines-benefits/). “It’s not about going out and doing vigorous, competitive sport,” Hargreaves says. “It’s about moving,” and finding ways to move that are actually enjoyable. Finally, Zizzi recommends making exercise “serve a double purpose”—perhaps by planning a bike ride with friends so your workout doubles as a social outing, or making an existing work meeting a walk-and-talk. Intertwining exercise with something you already want or need to do, Zizzi says, can make it easier to ignore the part of your brain that’s telling you it’s better to park yourself on the couch. ## Transcript I think people pretty widely assumed that using the snooze button is bad because it sort of carries his kind of Tatian that you are lazy or that you need extra time in bed or for whatever reason, you know, our society is very oriented towards things that happened early in the morning typical work schedule start at 9 that kind of thing and there's a popular perception that is that it's better to be a morning person and I think snoozing kind of goes against that idea There are a couple reasons why people snooze one is that they find it easier to wake up if they have kind of gone back into a half asleep or dozing State and are not waking up, you know. Lee from a deep sleep and the other reason is just that people are really tired and when their alarm goes off, they're not quite ready to get out of bed. One reason that people think snoozing is bad is that you are prematurely pulling yourself out of deep sleep and replacing it with lighter sleep after you go back to sleep. There's some studies and do suggest. That's not that great for you but others find that it can actually be easier to wake up and feel alert. If you are waking up from light sleep instead of deep sleep so it might help with things like morning grogginess or like feeling as though your brain needs time to turn on in the morning if you have snoozed before getting up, Another reason that people think snoozing is not good for you is that it just signifies that you're not getting enough sleep at night and I guess you were so tired that you need to hit the snooze button that kind of suggested that you something's wrong with your sleep. And that might be the case for some people but several studies that I saw suggested that people who snooze don't get less sleep over all and don't get poor quality sleep. So it's not necessarily a signal of a bigger problem. When is the most common sleep tips that I hear in talking to experts is that you should try to go to bed and wake up at pretty much the same time every day because that helps your body kind of get in a rhythm of going to sleep and waking up. Where is if you are going to bed at midnight one night and then 10 the next night and then the next night your body kind of gets confused and doesn't know when it should be sleeping so it can be harder to fall asleep that way. There's no one-size-fits-all like for some people if if your alarm goes off at 7 and you're supposed to get up at 7, but you can't get yourself out of bed until 8, like maybe that is a sign that you didn't get enough sleep the night before that your sleep is poor quality, but for people who just find it a more pleasant way to wake up and it's kind of built into their daily routine from what I could find. 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