Why You Lose Motivation Every November (And How to Stay Consistent Without Burning Out)

If you’ve been staring at your workout shoes like they offended you, your salad tastes like punishment, and your kid’s school emails are giving you heart palpitations…this episode is for you.

Every November, without fail, women tell me the same thing:
 “My motivation is gone. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was doing so well.”

And every year I say the same thing:
Nothing is wrong with you.
It’s November.

In this episode, I break down the real physiological and nervous system reasons why everything feels harder right now. From daylight changes and serotonin dips to poor sleep, emotional load, and the November avalanche of responsibilities… your body is not failing you. It’s protecting you.

You’ll learn:

• why motivation tanks every November
 • why “trying harder” always backfires
 • what your nervous system actually needs
 • the three habits that save my clients in this season
 • how to lower the bar without lowering the standard
 • why Nervous System regulation changes everything
 • the anchor habit that stabilizes your entire month
 • what makes a program unquittable
 • how to know if you’re truly ready for change

Mentioned in this episode:
Hand-on-heart grounding breath: https://youtu.be/w8UuBaO3ZGg

Legs-up-the-wall nervous system reset: https://youtu.be/64Z0znJabUw

My YouTube channel with regulation tools: https://www.youtube.com/@annejones

If you’ve been feeling tired, behind, overwhelmed or ashamed of losing steam, this episode might just feel like relief.

Your body is not quitting on you.
 It’s communicating with you.

💙 Listen, take a breath, and tag me @annejonesfit if it resonates.

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• YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/@annejones]

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution, the podcast for ambitious women who want to build strength, feel confident and lose fat for good, without counting calories or BS quick fixes. I'm your host, Anne Jones, certified life coach, personal trainer, and mindset expert. After 15 plus years in the fitness industry, I know the real key to lasting change isn't just what you do, it's how you think. If you're ready to shift your mindset, build a lifestyle you love and feel confident af, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Okay, my friend, let's talk about November. the theme has been the same, at least in my community with my clients for the past few having been a trainer and a coach for 15 years, every year at this time of year, it goes like this, right? It's like I, I've seen it. I see it all the time. September is crazy. Back to school. And then. everybody gets sick, if they weren't like taking care of their immunity in October. And then after Halloween things kind of go sideways. And then by November, every November without fail, women tell me my motivation is gone, or it's low. I feel tired after daylight savings time, my routine is slipping. I don't know what's wrong with me. I need a reset. If you can relate to that, you're not alone, but here's the truth that no one is saying. It's not just you. It's November. I literally just told you, this happens every year. but you get so much data, especially having done this job, and I look forward to the next 15 years of coaching. I get to see these seasons repeat in my clients who are essentially in the same demographic, ambitious women who are moms and or working, mostly working women. Over the age of 35, so I just want to validate there are real physiological reasons why everything feels harder. If you're listening in mid-November and you've been staring at your workout shoes, like they've personally offended you, and your salad sounds like a punishment, and your kids' schools emails notifications are giving you hard palpitations like they do to me. This episode is for you because every single November without fail. Women tell me, I don't know what is wrong with me. I was doing so well, and every single November I say the same thing right back. Nothing is wrong with you. It's November. So today I'm walking you through why your motivation falls off a cliff this month, how your body's trying to protect you, and how to stay consistent in a way that feels doable, gentle, and grounded. Let's get into it. let's zoom out and talk about what actually happens in your body every November, especially if you are an ambitious woman with a full life, not to the surface level seasonal slump, but the physical chain reaction happening inside of you. Here's the November reality. Daylight is gone, serotonin is low dopamine, lower cortisol, higher. Sleep worse, your cravings higher, more temptation. Your patience is non-existent, and to-do lists are mutating like gremlins after midnight. Your nervous system is basically waving a tiny little white flag. Whispering. I'm overwhelmed. If you are a mom, a leader carrying emotional labor or running a home and or a business, multiply this by 10, what I just said, because November is teacher gifts, school concerts, sick kids. Q4 work deadlines, travel planning, family expectations, social expectations, busy weekends decorating, feeling guilty for skipping workouts, shame for eating differently, and feeling behind before the holidays have even started. No wonder you are godden exhausted. Your system is not malfunctioning. It is protecting you. Did you hear everything I just said? When the nervous system senses overload, it shuts down anything non-essential that burns extra mental energy. Things like. Meal planning, packing your gym clothes, starting your workout, choosing the healthier option, tidying the kitchen, sticking to a routine, doing a morning routine, regulating your emotions, saying no and setting boundaries. So doesn't mean you're weak, this means you're human. This month, everyone tries the same thing. Okay, I just need to try harder. I have to get my shit together. I need a reset, right? And this reset tends to continue from sometime September, till February, but if not September, November, December, and January. Except the trying harder doesn't work when your nervous system is fried. I always say, state before strategy. You definitely need a strategy, but you can't put a solid strategy on a shoddy state or it won't work. Your brain literally loses access to discipline, executive function, delaying gratification, and impulse control when it is dysregulated, which means no amount of being good or getting motivated will help. You can't out discipline biology. When you push yourself from a dysregulated state, your body does not respond with motivation. It responds with stress. Stress subsequently shuts down movement, appetite, regulation, digestion, consistency, emotional stability. Can anybody relate to that? Executive decision making and energy. So the problem is not that you're not committed, it's not that you've let yourself go. It is not that you'll always fall off around the holidays, although you probably do, but it's because of what I'm saying. It's not'cause you're not trying hard enough. The real problem is your nervous system doesn't have the capacity to carry what you are attempting to carry. And that can be true in many seasons, not just November. But November is a beautiful example because it's a month for intensity, it is a month for anchors. So I'm now going to share with you the three habits that will save you in November, the way that you're overtired, overwhelmed, overstimulated over responsible body needs number one. And as a high achiever, you're not going to like this, but you need to hear it. I want you to lower the bar on purpose. I know every like high achieving woman listening, just flinched. Don't turn it off. Hear me out. Lowering the bar doesn't make you lazy. First of all, it makes you more likely to be consistent in November. Your nervous system needs predictable cues. Little signals that say you're safe, you're supported, you got this. This might look like one weekly workout. It might be short. It might look like one balance meal today. Maybe not meal prep for the whole week. It might look like one walk. Setting a boundary for the first time ever. A moment of sunlight before the dang thing sets one glass of water, one early bedtime. Your body doesn't need you to crush it. It needs you to ground it. You can't like be fire when you, you probably don't even have a spark. So I want you to remove your stigma about lowering the bar to think more of lowering the barrier to entry. And as I'm not saying if you're someone who's already consistently working out four times a week, don't do one workout. But where else can you like lower the bar of expectation a little bit? Okay, so that's number one is lowering the bar. Number two, I want you to regulate first and decide second. This will change your entire life. Remember what I said about state before strategy before you force yourself to work out. Plan a healthy dinner or quote unquote be good. I just want you to do 30 to 90 seconds of regulation. I have tons of videos of tools on my YouTube, and I'll put some in the show notes, but some examples that you will actually use is literally just putting your hand on your heart, taking a breath in, and a slow exhale at the mouth. If that's all you do. I'm good with it. Humming to stimulate your vagus nerve. Stepping outside for 60 seconds. I'm not kidding. 60 seconds. You have 60 seconds dropping your shoulders. I could. I just use that cue right now. Legs up the wall. I have a video of that as well. I can share with you. 10 deep belly breaths, hand on belly, breathing into your belly, shaking your arms like a weirdo. It works, I promise. Warm shower, slow. Walk around the block. Those are all things you can do in less than five minutes. Most of'em take one minute, and what they will do is they will bring your system back to grounding and regulation gives your brain access to choice. I always say we don't make our best decisions from a dysregulated place. When you're dysregulated, your brain only has access to survival, right? That's why you end up saying yes to everything when you're dysregulated or you end up saying no to yourself when you're dysregulated. So I want you to regulate first. And then choose. That will change your life. That's number two. Number three, I want you to protect one anchor habit. So this is how my clients stay consistent even in brutal seasons. We begin with picking one thing that stabilizes you. So if you think about, you could journal about this too, if you think about the things that actually give you energy, energy givers, like what's the biggest one. It could be protein at breakfast. It could be eating lunch. It could be 10 minute lift, 10 minute evening, reset sunlight in the morning before you get on a screen, drinking water before you drink coffee, stretching before your kids get into their pajamas. Seven minute walk after dinner. I'm not kidding. Seven minute walk, 10 pushups reading instead of doom scrolling. I will say from all my clients, the most common one I hear is sleep. Protecting their sleep is usually the thing that they know that they need to, and it is for me too. Everything goes sideways if I'm not sleeping. That is like my biological imperative. So protect one thing, just let it be enough, okay? Consistency will grow from anchors, not intensity. It'll be so much easier for you to add a second thing, I promise. Okay, so now that you know what actually works in November, I wanna zoom out and ground this in something even bigger because in order for this to work, in order for any fat loss, strength, or health improvement program, to actually change your life long term, you need to do one thing. You can't quit, in a calm, grounded, aligned way where you build something so doable, so equitable, so you, so supportive of your actual life, that quitting actually stops even being an option and not quitting comes down to three very real things. Number one is the program or system that you are doing aligned with your personal values, not your perfectionist fantasy values, or what your favourite Instagram influencer says. Her values are your actual values. Do you value flexibility? Do you value feeling calm or peaceful? Do you value freedom? Or are you forcing yourself into something rigid because you think you should value whatever it is? You cannot build consistency inside a life that doesn't match your values. It won't stick. You'll quit every time because your nervous system will revolt. So that's number one, is whatever you're trying to do, aligned with your values, truly. Number two, are you actually developing the skills that get you through both easy seasons and hard ones? November. Most women only know how to stay consistent when life is smooth, sunny and predictable. I had someone tell me there today, uh, on a call that their goal was for there to be no pro D days and for nobody in her house to get sick. Those are not within our control. Those are not within our locus of control. So we can't actually set those as goals, but we can set a goal as to how we react and or respond if and when those things do happen because they will. So remember what we talked about earlier, November is a stress test. Life will always get lifey. So you need the skills that hold you steady no matter what. Regulate before deciding, lowering the bar, instead of lowering the standard, not the same thing. Choosing good enough, let good enough be good enough, move imperfectly and build capacity instead of just relying on hype. These are the real reasons that my clients stay consistent through travel. Grief, sickness, school, concerts, holidays, busy seasons overwhelm. Seriously. So that's number two. Number three, do you like what you're actually doing? Do you like it? This is the one nobody talks about. There's a lot of shoulds in health and fitness, but do you like it?'cause you're not gonna keep doing it if you don't like it, if you hate your workout plan. If tracking macros makes you feel like you're 12 years old and you're in trouble, if the program you're doing feels like punishment, your brain will tap You might be able to do it for a while, but you won't. You won't want to keep doing it probably long enough to get the result that you want. Enjoyment and contentment are not bonuses. There are requirements for consistency. So I want you to take a moment today, literally today, right now, and answer these three questions honestly. If you are in the muscles and mindset free Facebook group, I want you to share your answers there. You can totally DM me too. Let people see you, let us support you, because if these three things aren't aligned, you are at risk of quitting. If you've ever been consistent, it's probably because of one of these three things, and every time you quit. I don't wanna say you go right back to square one, but it's like rolling a boulder up a hill. You lose momentum. Nothing is lost. You've still learned what you've learned, but it's not as easy as it is when the boulders already rolling. And I just don't want that for you anymore. I don't want it to feel like an uphill battle because it doesn't have to. My clients say this time and time again, my successful clients, after just a few months, they say, I finally get it. Like it feels easy. They're getting a result, and it feels easy. It is not a slog. It's possible, I promise. Let's talk briefly about what would make this feel unquittable for you. I got that, term from my friend Erin Power, who's amazing. Okay, so I'm going to say something that might feel uncomfortable, but What I know to be true, the pain of staying stuck where you are has to become heavier than the pain of changing. That doesn't mean that you have to suffer. That doesn't mean hitting rock bottom in a movie montage sort of way, although that does often happen. But there does come a moment where you look at your own life and you say, I can't keep doing it this way because change is always gonna be hard. Okay? Otherwise, you would've done it already. Growth requires. Some friction. So you are, you are gonna have to do, some hard things, but a stronger, calmer, more confident version of you requires a different way of living, right? You know, that, saying if nothing changes, nothing changes. So first ask yourself, how ready are you really to change? Because if you're not really ready, you're gonna keep doing those things you do every November, right? You're gonna either call it a day, wait till January. Say you're gonna push harder, need more motivation. You're gonna get up at 5:00 AM for a week, and then it's gonna go down the pooper, right? So first ask yourself, am I really ready to change? Because that's actually not what it takes. it doesn't have to be perfect, intense or new year, new me, but in a nervous system, friendly, aligned, values driven way that actually lasts. So listen, nothing's wrong with you. If you're not broken, nothing is unbreakably falling apart forever. Your body is doing exactly what a body does under seasonal stress and cognitive overload. You don't need more motivation. You do need to know your why, but you need a way of living and training that respects biology and builds capacity. That is what we do inside my world. That is what this podcast is for, and. That is what it is about. I'm actually gonna be sharing more about this on the podcast the next couple weeks. If this episode made you like exhale, felt like relief. That's what my clients often say, like, oh, okay. It feels like relief. Keep listening. I have something coming for Black Friday that is going to help you feel stronger, calmer, and more consistent through this entire season without relying on motivation at all. So watch my stories on Instagram. Make sure you're on my email list. I'll put the link in the show notes here'cause good things are coming. If this episode resonated with you, it means so much if you share it with a friend, and tag me, share it on your stories, share it on Facebook. It helps the show to be seen by more women so we can help more women and just make them feel more calm because that's what I'm here for. So I love you. You're doing better than you think, and I'll see you next week.