124: Kasey Jo Orvidas, Ph.D.: How Identity Shapes Exercise Habits More Than Motivation
Why Your Fitness Identity Matters More Than Your Motivation
Discover why exercise consistency isn't about motivation or discipline. Learn how fitness identity, stress, and brain science impact your workout habits from psychologist Dr. Kasey Jo Orvidas.
Ever wonder why your workout routine falls apart the second life gets stressful? Or why you can have the perfect program, all the motivation in the world, and still ghost your gym sessions? Turns out, it's not about willpower, it's about identity.
In this week's Broads episode, Tara sits down with Kasey Jo Orvidas, PhD, a psychologist and certified health coach who's spent years researching the psychology behind health behavior change. And she's dropping some serious knowledge bombs about why we struggle to stay consistent with exercise.
Spoiler alert: your brain is working against you, but not in the way you think.
Your Fitness Identity Is Everything
Here's the thing most people don't realize: how you see yourself determines whether you'll stick with exercise, not how motivated you feel.
If deep down you don't identify as someone who exercises, if you see yourself as "not a gym person" or "just not athletic”, no amount of motivation will make consistency easy. Your identity acts like an invisible ceiling on your behavior.
Kasey Jo breaks down the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and why it matters for long-term consistency. Wanting to look a certain way or hit a specific goal? That's extrinsic motivation, and it's notoriously unreliable. It works great until it doesn't, until you hit a plateau, get injured, or life throws you a curveball.
Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is about enjoying the activity itself or valuing it as part of who you are. When exercise becomes part of your identity—when you're "someone who works out", you don't need to rely on fleeting motivation to get you through the door.
Your Brain Under Stress: Why Willpower Fails
Let's talk about what happens to your brain when stress hits. Because this is where things get really interesting.
Your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and self-control, basically goes offline when you're overwhelmed. Chronic stress, emotional fatigue, too many decisions, not enough sleep? All of these drain your cognitive resources and shut down the very part of your brain you need to make healthy choices.
This explains why you can crush your workouts when life is calm, but the second things get hectic, your exercise routine is the first thing to go. It's not a character flaw. It's neuroscience.
Willpower isn't an unlimited resource you can just summon whenever you need it. It's more like a battery that gets depleted throughout the day. And when you're running on empty, emotionally, mentally, or physically, your brain defaults to the path of least resistance. Which is usually the couch, not the gym.
The Real Reason People Ghost Their Coaches
Here's a conversation starter that hit different: shame kills consistency.
People don't ghost their coaches because they're lazy or unmotivated. They ghost because they feel ashamed that they haven't been following through. They convince themselves they need to "get back on track" before they check in. They avoid accountability because they're embarrassed about falling off.
But here's what Kasey Jo emphasizes: that shame response is a signal that something in the coaching relationship needs to shift.
If you're working with a coach who makes you feel like you need to have all the answers or be perfect before you show up, that's a problem. Great coaching creates psychological safety, an environment where you can be honest about your struggles without fear of judgment.
Authority-based coaching (where the coach is the expert telling you what to do) can work for some people in some contexts. But for long-term behavior change? You need a collaborative relationship built on trust, not fear of disappointing someone.
"I'm Too Busy" Is Usually a Signal Problem
When someone says they're too busy to exercise, Kasey Jo doesn't take it at face value. Because here's the truth: we make time for what matters to us.
The "I'm too busy" excuse is usually a signal that something else is going on. Maybe exercise doesn't feel important enough compared to other priorities. Maybe the friction is too high, the gym is too far, the workouts are too complicated, or getting started feels overwhelming. Maybe there's a deeper resistance rooted in identity or fear of failure.
The solution isn't to just try harder or wake up earlier. It's to reduce the friction for the habits you want to build and increase the friction for the ones you don't.
Make it easier to work out: keep your gym clothes visible, choose a gym that's on your commute, pick workouts you actually enjoy. Make it harder to skip: build in accountability, schedule workouts like appointments, tie exercise to an existing routine.
Small changes to your environment can have a massive impact on your consistency, way more than relying on motivation or discipline alone.
Building Habits That Actually Stick
So what's the takeaway from all this brain science and psychology talk?
Consistency isn't about having perfect discipline or unshakable motivation. It's about aligning your environment, your identity, and your habits so that doing the thing becomes easier than not doing it.
Start by asking yourself: do I see myself as someone who exercises? If the answer is no or "not really," that's your starting point. You can't out-motivate an identity problem.
Then, look at your environment. What's making it hard to show up? What friction can you remove? What support do you need, whether that's a coach, a community, or just a better plan?
And finally, give yourself permission to be human. Your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do under stress. The goal isn't to power through with pure willpower. It's to build systems that work with your brain, not against it.
What beliefs about yourself are keeping you stuck in your fitness journey? Have you ever identified as "not a gym person" or felt like exercise just isn't for you? Those thoughts might be the biggest barrier between you and the consistency you're chasing.
Ready to dive deeper into fitness psychology and build habits that stick? Check out more episodes of Broads: The Bold & Badass Fitness Podcast for Women, and connect with the community on Instagram @broads.podcast and @broads.app.
