Ep #175: Dopamine, Habits, and Real Motivation

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #175. If you’ve ever started something with all kinds of motivation, only to fizzle out a few weeks later, this episode will help you change that.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. 

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? Today, we’re talking about a common phenomenon that happens when you change your habits. We’re talking about why you have a strong start, but sometimes you don’t finish. So, you probably know the drill here. Maybe you buy a new plan or spend a bunch of money on a new program. And with that, there’s excitement. There’s newness. And maybe you add to it a spreadsheet, the groceries, the playlist, and a brand new fancy notebook to go with your plan. And if you’re like me, you also buy colored pens to go with it.

And with all of this new stuff in hand, you feel unstoppable. You’re checking the boxes, hitting targets, and doing everything right. You’ve got momentum and it feels amazing until it doesn’t. And just a few weeks later, the shine wears off. You get tired, you’re dragging. You’re already talking yourself out of your workout. Your salads, they are just not exciting anymore. You haven’t opened your fun notebook or pulled out your colored pens in days. And maybe you’re left wondering what happened to all that energy that you had at the start.

And it’s often here when your motivation fades, as it inevitably does, that you might tell yourself this familiar story. I just need to be more disciplined. I have no willpower. I can’t stick with anything. What is wrong with me? But here’s the thing. Nothing is wrong with you. This is not a moral failing on your part, okay? This is a totally normal phenomenon, and what’s happening here is biology. It’s chemical. It’s your brain. And that’s what we need to unpack so you can manage this and stop the on-again, off-again cycle of your habits.

So today, we’re talking about your brain, dopamine, and motivation so that you walk away understanding both the biology and the psychology of motivation to make it work for you. So we’re talking about dopamine because it’s a hot science word that is everywhere right now, but we’re going to do it in a realistic, applicable way. So to be clear, this episode is not all about the science of dopamine, and I don’t want to get into the weeds of dopamine like a textbook because this is not a physiology class. So instead, we’re going to talk about what this means for you, how your brain chemistry shows up in real life in the times you find yourself reaching for a snack or scrolling your phone or talking yourself out of your workout.

We’re taking the science and translating it into habits that you can actually use, meaning the practical everyday stuff that helps you stay consistent when motivation fades out on you. And then we’ll talk about how to retrain your brain to feel good about the boring, ordinary stuff that actually changes your life. All right? So let’s go.

So first, let’s slow this down for a second because there are a few things to understand about your brain and dopamine before we get into how to leverage this to manage your habits. So we often think of dopamine as associated with pleasure or the feel-good rush when something good happens. But dopamine is actually about anticipation. So what this means is that dopamine is not the chemical of having, it’s the chemical of wanting. So to put it very plainly, dopamine lights up when you’re chasing something, not when you’ve already caught it. And this is why things like scrolling, shopping, or snacking, they feel exciting at first, but they don’t satisfy you for long.

You get that rush of something’s about to happen. Your brain is lighting up with possibility. But once you have the cookie or watch the reel or hit pay now, your buzz fades. And when that happens, your brain immediately starts looking for the next thing, the next post, the next purchase, or the next bite. So think about it this way. Do you know the feeling you get when you tell yourself just one more puppy video or just one more tortilla chip? And before you know it, 20 minutes or the whole bag is gone. That right there, that is dopamine at work. So it’s not about the reward itself. It’s about the pursuit of the reward. Your brain is chasing the thrill of almost there, but not the satisfaction of being done.

And that is why all those little hits of stimulation never feel like enough because they were never designed to be enough. They’re not designed to satisfy you. They’re designed to keep you chasing. And the same thing happens on a bigger scale, not just with your phone or a bag of chips, but with your goals too. So the same brain chemistry that keeps you scrolling also keeps you jumping from one new fitness plan to the next. It’s what keeps you constantly looking for the next diet fad. And this is where motivation starts to mess with you. Dopamine drives anticipation, but not pleasure.

It’s what makes starting a new plan or buying a new tracker or reorganizing your pantry feel so energizing at first because your brain is lighting up with the possibility of what’s coming. So you’re not just excited about the plan, you’re excited about the idea of who you’ll become once you follow through with the plan. And that anticipation feels awesome. There’s hope, there’s potential, and there’s possibility, and your brain loves that.

So, if you’re wired for achievement, meaning you thrive on goals, progress, or results, dopamine can be both your fuel and your trap. So to pair this down even further, dopamine is your brain chemical that makes you love a challenge. It gives you a surge of energy when you decide, all right, this time, I’m doing it for real. It’s the hit of anticipation and the thrill of this time it’s going to work. And that feels amazing, right? There, that is the upside of dopamine. That is the fuel. That’s what gets you moving.

It’s what gets you to sign up for a race or hit add to cart on your new program or meal prep on Sunday. Dopamine is the reason you feel focused, determined, or even unstoppable, at least for a little while anyway. It’s what makes the start of something new so exciting and hopeful. Dopamine is powerful because it gets you moving. It gives you momentum and helps you take that first uncomfortable step. And without dopamine, it would be a lot harder to start anything. So it’s not the enemy. It’s a powerful tool, and we know how to use it. It’s the reason you can get yourself off the couch, put your gym shoes on, and go do the thing.

But here’s where the trap comes in. Dopamine doesn’t care about doing. Remember, it cares about chasing. And it’s also what causes you to lose steam when the novelty wears off and you’re no longer fueled by anticipation. And when your dopamine high fades, all you’re left with is the daily repetition of doing the work, like the tracking, the lifting, the meal prep, the planning. And your brain does not get the same rush like it did at the start.

And that’s when habits that initially felt exciting, they don’t anymore. And over time, those habits can start to feel heavy, and that’s when your brain starts looking for its next hit. So you might even hear whispers in your brain that say, “Hey, this is too hard. This is too much. Let’s do something else instead.” And that’s when most people quit, not because they can’t do it, but because their brain stops rewarding them for the work.

And then that’s when self-doubt starts. That’s when you start thinking, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? Why can’t I stay motivated? When the truth is, nothing is wrong with you. It’s your wiring. We, as humans, are wired for more. Your brain loves forward motion, the anticipation, and the chase. And when things start to feel routine, your brain stops rewarding you for it. That is why overachievers are so good at starting but get really frustrated with maintaining. It’s dopamine.

Dopamine makes you love the beginning, the new idea, the fresh start, the day one energy, but it does not love the middle. And it’s the middle where it’s repetitive and unglamorous and frankly, kind of boring. That is where the real change actually happens. So when the novelty and the excitement fades and you feel like your drive is gone, it’s not because you’ve lost discipline or fallen off track, it’s because your brain has stopped getting the easy hit it was getting from something new.

And this is where you have the opportunity to change your pattern. Because once you understand this, you can start to work with dopamine and study it so you don’t have to keep chasing the next high just to stay consistent. So this is the part that no one teaches you. We’re told to get motivated, try harder, push through. But so often, we skip over how to work with your brain instead of against it. And that’s what we’re going to dive into here.

So, the first step here is to study your dopamine. And no, this is not in a rebalancing your hormones kind of way with a supplement. No. I’m talking about retraining your brain to find reward in steady, real-life habits and experiences instead of short, fast hits. And so here’s what I mean by this.

Our modern life is essentially one big dopamine overload. Every ping, scroll, like, email, or snack is just a little hit of, ooh, maybe something good is about to happen. And it is constant. You get a little hit of dopamine when your phone buzzes. Another when you check a text. Another when you see a notification pop up. Even something as small as refreshing your inbox or reaching for a handful of chips gives your brain a tiny surge of anticipation, that feeling of something’s coming.

But the problem is, when your brain gets bombarded like that all day long, it starts to adapt. So your baseline or the level of stimulation you need just to feel normal gradually creeps higher and higher. And as a result, the everyday things, like sitting down for dinner, going for a walk, eating a salad, finishing a task, those things stop registering as rewarding. They feel dull in comparison to your phone, social media, or a burger and fries. And it’s not because they are dull, but because your brain is more used to the constant hits of excitement. And as a result, everyday things become boring and harder to maintain.

So, rebalancing your dopamine is really about helping your brain remember that small, simple things are rewarding. They just can’t compete with the non-stop noise you’ve been feeding it. So, rebalancing means lowering the volume. It’s about giving your brain space to recover so it can register simple, basic things as satisfying again. So think of it like turning down background noise that has been blaring all day. At first, that silence feels really weird and even uncomfortable. But once your ears adjust, you start to notice things you couldn’t hear before.

And your brain works the same way. When you quiet the constant noise, the notifications, the multitasking, the quick fixes, the ultra processed food, when you do that, you make room for smaller, steadier rewards to actually land. And that is what rebalancing looks like. No fancy supplements or systems needed here.

Food is one of the easiest places to see this in real life. So as an example, if you’re used to snacking while you scroll or eating on the run, your brain links food with stimulation, not satisfaction. And you’re getting two hits at once, the taste of the food and the excitement of distraction. So when you change this and start slowing down, so when you sit, put your phone away, and actually taste your food, it might feel a little boring at first. And your brain might be saying, “Hang on, this can’t be it. Aren’t we supposed to be doing something else too? Where’s the phone? Where’s the email?” And that’s normal.

Maybe you’re used to eating with extra stimulation, scrolling, watching, multitasking. And when you take that away, your brain misses the noise. Here’s the thing. That’s not boredom, that’s withdrawal. But if you stick with it, if you just let yourself sit there and eat and breathe, you’ll notice something. You start tasting your food. You notice your hunger and fullness signals, and you realize that you’re actually present for the experience. And often, almost without trying, your food tastes better, and you feel satisfied sooner, and you enjoy it more. Not because you changed what you were eating, but because you changed how you were experiencing it.

And so that is what rebalancing feels like. At first, it’s awkward and quiet, but if you give it time, that quiet starts to feel less uncomfortable and more peaceful, and simple starts to actually feel good. So if you want to try this out, pick something. Maybe you leave your phone in another room while you eat. Maybe you don’t check your text between tasks. Or maybe decide you’re going to close down your laptop at the same time every night.

And when you do this, you’ll probably notice how restless and uncomfortable you feel at first, kind of like your brain is looking for something to grab onto. Expect that. It is totally normal. But if you stick with it, that restlessness will settle, and calm will start to feel good instead of totally foreign and weird. And that is when you know you’re rebalancing.

All right. And once you start quieting that noise and you start to notice the small things again, the next step here is to vary your rewards. And so here’s why this matters. Dopamine spikes when something feels new or uncertain. But when the same reward happens in the same way every time, your brain adjusts. The hit flattens, and the excitement fades. And that’s when you start feeling bored or like what you’re doing isn’t working anymore.

And maybe you felt this before. You start a new workout program, and for the first few weeks, you’re all in, tracking, logging, seeing progress. Maybe you’re super energized and you feel totally proud. But then slowly, you realize you’re doing the same workouts, the same movements, the same plan for weeks. And what felt exciting just a few weeks ago now just feels routine. And if you’ve experienced this before, nothing is wrong with you. It’s normal. And what’s going on is that your brain has stopped getting that new and shiny dopamine hit it had when you got started.

Varying your rewards doesn’t mean you need to make everything bigger, shinier, or louder. Instead, it just means you need to teach your brain to recognize different forms of success, not just the big fancy kind. So maybe your brain lights up when you hit a PR or crush your workout. And that’s great. That’s one kind of reward. But what if you also let yourself feel proud for getting to the gym and getting a workout in when you totally didn’t feel like it? Or for getting up early to workout when you normally would snooze, even if you only left yourself 15 minutes to exercise? Or planning out your meals before the week got away from you? Those are all wins too. They just don’t come with a dopamine surge, which means they’re easy to overlook.

So I had a client whose default was measuring her success by nothing less than perfection. And if she didn’t do every single workout, or if her meals were not spot on, she’d throw in the towel. She believed that consistency meant doing everything right every time. So we changed her definition of consistency and started tracking her effort instead of her outcomes. She tracked how often she showed up, even when it wasn’t perfect. And do you know what happened? She stopped swinging between extremes of all in or all out. And over time, her motivation steadied. Because her brain was finally seeing the reward of consistency instead of the chaos of swinging from one extreme to the other. She was teaching her brain to find reward in the middle.

And that is what varying your rewards does. It gives your brain more opportunities to feel satisfied, not just when things are exciting, but even when things are ordinary. This is teaching your brain to notice the progress of the in-between, the behaviors that aren’t flashy but still quietly build your momentum. That’s how you keep going long after the newness wears off. This right here, this is falling in love with the grind, right here.

All right? Once you start noticing more kinds of wins, once you’re not chasing the next high, and you’re learning to feel good in the middle, the next piece to working with your brain is to simplify the stimulation surrounding you. Because here’s the truth. Even if you rebalance and vary your rewards, it’s hard to stay steady if your brain is constantly being flooded with inputs.

So think about your day. You wake up to your phone. Maybe you check emails before you even get out of bed. You listen to a podcast while getting ready, answer texts in the car, check Slack between patients or meetings, scroll at lunch, and watch something while you eat dinner. So from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, your brain rarely gets a moment of silence. And every open tab, every notification, every “just checking” moment fires another little burst of dopamine.

And while that doesn’t seem like a big deal in the moment, it keeps your brain humming in the background all day long. So when you finally do slow down, when you sit on the couch or take a walk without music, that feels weird, like really weird. It feels uncomfortable and empty, like something’s missing. And that’s because your brain isn’t used to quiet anymore. So simplifying stimulation does not mean that you have to go off the grid and live in a log cabin with no Wi-Fi. It just means giving your brain breaks from the constant noise.

So I do this myself. Normally, I listen to podcasts while I lift weights. I listen to audible books while I run. I listen to the draft versions of my own podcast before they’re published. I listen to music in my car. I always have something in my ear. But recently, after I gave a talk, on the drive home, I decided not to turn anything on. No music, no podcast, nothing.

And it honestly felt a little weird. There was so much adrenaline leading up to the talk, so much noise and energy in the room, and the silence in the car afterward felt almost too quiet. My ears were buzzing. My brain really wanted to reach for something, a playlist, a quick podcast, any kind of distraction, but I didn’t. I just let it be quiet. And after a few minutes of being weird, my ears stopped buzzing. I started to calm down. My brain settled down, and I took an exhale.

So that is what simplifying stimulation can do. At first, it feels awkward. But if you stay with it, that quiet actually starts to feel good, and you start to realize how much energy all that noise is costing you. And once you feel that difference, and when ordinary moments start to feel peaceful instead of flat, that is how you know you’re finding balance again.

Okay, so while we’re talking about stimulation, we cannot skip one of the biggest sources of it, and that is food. So food is one of the most powerful ways dopamine shows up in your life because it’s wired directly into your reward system. And we don’t just eat for fuel anymore. We eat for comfort, for escape, for something to look forward to. And it is no secret that highly processed foods, especially foods that combine sugar, salt, and fat, they light up your brain’s reward center way more than fruits and veggies ever could.

When you grab a granola bar or reach for a piece of cake, you’re not just feeding hunger, you’re also feeding anticipation. And the more often you do that, the more you use food for stimulation, the more your brain learns to expect that hit. That is why it’s so easy to end up snacking when you’re not hungry or grazing your pantry at night or feeling like you just need something sweet after dinner. It’s not about hunger, it’s not about chasing food, it’s about chasing dopamine.

And when you pair eating with other sources of stimulation, like scrolling, watching TV, or working, you double it. You get the dopamine hit from the food and the dopamine from the distraction. And that is how your brain gets used to being constantly lit up. So when you take that stimulation away and you eat without a screen or without multitasking or without the noise, it will feel strange at first, almost disappointing, like something’s missing. But that’s not a problem, and it’s not a failure. It’s your brain rebalancing. It’s your reward system learning that the experience of food itself, sitting down, eating, and tasting your food, is enough.

And here’s something really important to understand. You can retrain your brain to find real satisfaction in real food. Your dopamine system is adaptable. So if you constantly eat real, unprocessed, whole foods, and you actually pay attention while you eat them, your brain learns to light up for that too. So that salad or grain bowl that once felt boring, when you start associating it with how you feel afterward, like energized, steady, or clear-headed, your brain starts to connect that with reward.

And over time, healthy food becomes satisfying, not because it’s new or flashy, but because your brain learns this key takeaway. It feels good to feel good. So you don’t have to chase the high of burgers and fries to enjoy eating. You can train your brain to find just as much pleasure in foods that are good for you, foods that give you energy instead of taking it away. And the more you practice this, the easier it gets. And eating healthy stops becoming something you should do and becomes something you want to do because it genuinely feels rewarding. And again, that is how you know your dopamine is starting to work for you instead of against you.

So, knowing what you know now about dopamine and habits and motivation, how do you know when the rebalancing, the slowing down, the varying of rewards, and the simplifying, how do you know when all of this is actually working and making a difference? Because it’s not like your brain suddenly flashes a sign that says, “Hey, way to go, your dopamine is balanced.” It’s way more subtle than that.

So instead, you start to notice small but significant shifts. You’ll know your work is working when ordinary things start to feel satisfying again. Meaning, the walk after dinner doesn’t feel like a chore. The quiet in your car doesn’t feel so uncomfortable. Or you sit down for a meal and realize you actually enjoyed it, and you didn’t need your phone or french fries or an ice cream sundae to make it better. And all of those moments are small but huge wins. They mean your reward system is resetting.

You’ll also notice that your energy feels more steady. You don’t ride the same emotional highs and lows as you did before. So maybe you feel less restless or less twitchy or less in need of constant distraction. And when you do get a hit of excitement from a workout or a good meal or time outside, it feels stronger, cleaner, and even more intentional. And that is when you know your brain is working with you. Your brain is learning that it doesn’t need chaos and super high intensity in order to feel alive. It learns that calm, focus, and consistency can all be their own kind of pleasure.

And really, that’s a shift you’re after. You’re not chasing motivation. You’re not chasing dopamine anymore. You’re living in balance with it. And you learn to keep showing up, especially when the habits are quiet, ordinary, or even a little boring, because that’s where the real change happens. And when you do that, motivation stops being something you have to go find, and it becomes a byproduct of how you live. All right? And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, we take concepts from dopamine to discipline and beyond and apply them to your life so you can stay consistent even when your motivation fades. Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching will help you stop chasing the next high and finally make your habits stick. All right? Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

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You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.