You Don’t Hate Routine. Your Nervous System Is Overwhelmed (Not a Discipline Problem)

If you’ve ever told yourself “I’m just bad at routine” or “I need more discipline,” this episode will change how you see yourself.In this episode of the Muscles & Mindset Revolution Podcast, Anne Jones breaks down why most high-achieving women don’t struggle with consistency because they’re lazy, unmotivated, or disorganized.

They struggle because their nervous system is overloaded.

When your brain is overstimulated and dysregulated, it doesn’t reach for consistency. It reaches for control, avoidance, dopamine, or “start over Monday” energy. And no planner, meal plan, or morning routine can fix that.

In this episode, Anne explains:

• Why discipline fails when your nervous system is overwhelmed
• How overstimulation and dopamine sabotage your routines
• The difference between control-based routines and supportive flow frameworks
• A real client story that shows why routine was never the problem
• A simple bedtime flow framework to calm your brain and improve follow-through

If you’re a busy, high-achieving woman who can crush work and life but keeps falling off with fitness, food, or self-care, this episode will help you stop restarting and start repairing.

You are not failing.

You are overloaded.

And this is fixable.

Feeling capable, but still falling off when life gets loud?

This podcast is for the woman who knows what to do, but keeps disconnecting from herself under pressure.

Around here, we talk about staying with yourself when motivation fades, building real capacity instead of pushing harder, and creating a life that feels steady, regulated, and yours, even in chaotic seasons.

No hustle. No performative discipline. No starting over every Monday.

Start here:

• Free Guide: The High-Achiever's Guide to Losing Fat Without Obsessing Over Food or Workouts: [https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/free-guide-your-body-your-way]

• Deeper support + essays: Join my Substack: [https://annejonesfit.substack.com/]

Work with me:

• Website: [https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/]

Connect With Me:

• Instagram: [@annejonesfit]

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

Love This Episode? Share & Review!

If you found this episode helpful, take a screenshot and share it on your Instagram stories, tagging [@annejonesfit] so I can say thanks! Don’t forget to leave a review on your favourite podcast platform—it helps more women discover the show and start their tr...

Transcript

0:00

Today we're talking about something I see constantly in high achieving women. You tell yourself, I just can't stick to a routine. I'm bad at consistency. I need more discipline. I need a new planner. I need a better morning routine. I need to get my life together. I hear those things all the time, and I'm going to say something that might irritate you a little, but you do need to hear it. You don't actually hate routine. You hate being controlled. You hate rigid structure that ignores your season of life. Ignores your nervous system ignores the fact that you're already carrying 900 invisible tabs in your brain and then makes you feel like a failure when you can't keep up. So if you've been in a loop of Start Monday, fall off Thursday, shame spiral Sunday. This episode is absolutely for you because today I want to teach you part of the flow framework. Not a schedule that boxes you in more, a framework that supports you, a structure that actually feels good. And I'm going to anchor this in a real one-on-one client story because it makes it insanely clear. Welcome to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution, the podcast for ambitious women who want to build strength, feel confident AF and lose fat for good, without counting calories or bs quick fixes. I'm your host, Anne Jones, certified life coach and mentor, 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 and how regulated you are while you're trying to do it. Let's start here. The real problem is not your routine. Probably at this point. It might be if you have no routine, but most of my clients come to me with having tried all of their routines. Most high achieving women think they have a time management problem. Moms and high achieving working women both say that to me, but what they actually have is a nervous system problem, because when your nervous system is dysregulated, your brain does not reach for consistency. It reaches for drama, chaos, dopamine overcorrection, control, avoidance, shut down. Burn it all down energy I've been there. Or the classic. I'll restart tomorrow. I'll restart And this is why you can be an absolute force, a weapon in your career. A great mom, an amazing partner. A stellar friend, but when it comes to taking care of your body or yourself, you feel like a toddler with a credit card, your brain is not failing. It's coping. And if you don't address the state first, you'll keep trying to slap a shoddy strategy on top of a dysregulated system, and it will never stick. It's like trying to build a luxury kitchen on a foundation made of jello. It's gonna collapse, and then you're gonna blame yourself. For not building it correctly. So before we even talk about routines of which we do quite a bit, I have tons of videos on my YouTube about routines. If you wanna talk about those. We also have to talk about your nervous system and dopamine. So here's why discipline doesn't work when you're overwhelmed or when your stress bucket is full. Here's what's happening. For a lot of you anyways, you're overstimulated all day tasks, switching notifications, and red dots on your phone, children, work meetings, traffic texts, phone calls, stress decision fatigue, driving body image thoughts, Food thoughts. I should be doing more thoughts. And then you go to bed and your brain does this. Okay, now we can think like you're not thinking that logically. But it's the first time that you've stopped and suddenly you're ruminating. You're reviewing the day, you're panicking about what you didn't do. You're planning tomorrow, I do this too. Guilty as charged. Or you're thinking about your body. You're thinking about work. You're thinking about how you're behind. You're stressing about money. So what do you do? Instead of regulating you reach for a dopamine button, phone scrolling, snacking tv, online shopping, wine, anything that helps you not feel what you're feeling. It's because your nervous system has been in fight or flight all day, and your brain is trying to regulate itself the only way it knows how, or in a way that has worked for it in the past or in a very familiar self-protective behaviour. So when you tell yourself, I just need more discipline, what you really mean is I need a way to feel safe enough to follow through, that is a very different problem and it requires a very different solution. And that is why meal plans and workout plans and time management hacks are not working for you. I wanna share a client's story that makes this so obvious. This client is younger, but I'm telling you. She could be any of you. She's very mature and the patterns are identical. She's super high achieving, super busy, super intelligent, super driven, and her brain runs hot. And she used to tell herself, actually, when we started together, she would, she told me I'm terrible at routine. Like it was one of the first things she said. She was consistently staying up until two, three, sometimes four o'clock in the morning. It wasn't because she was like working or doing productive work. She was procrastinating on her phone and thinking about doing work so she wasn't resting.'cause scrolling is never resting she wasn't producing anything. She was just stuck that very specific hell zone that a lot of us get stuck or live in. Now, here's what's changed for her. She started doing something very important. Instead of overriding her tiredness with stimulation, she started learning how to feel her body again. Actually, probably for the first time ever, she's super active, but like I used to be, like you probably are, lives very in her head, very little in her body. She sent me a voice note. Where she said something like, for the last few days, I've slept every night and gotten around nine hours of sleep. And I realize, I think I actually need nine to 10 hours of sleep to feel mentally well and have full comprehension of what's going on in my day. And that sounds like a lot to me, but for the mental recovery I'm in, it makes sense. I want you, this is a young woman, okay? So I want you to hear the maturity in that phrase. This is not a girl who can't get consistent. This is someone whose nervous system is finally getting honest about her needs, and I want you to notice how this applies to you. I want you to know as well that I can relate to this. I am also hands up if you're a high need sleeper. I'm a high need sleeper. And in university I was so regimented. Ask anyone who knew me, I would work out, even if it was at 9:30 PM and I would be in bed, but I only slept from, I think it was like 1145 till seven. Or something like that. 1115. It was like very specific, like I could get seven hours and 45 minutes of sleep as a very active student. That was not enough. That's not enough for me now. I was like using my brain. I was working out every day, sometimes twice a day, and I kept thinking, and even in more recent past, I would be like, I can't possibly need more than eight hours of sleep. I'm just a high, instead of actually listening to my body and realizing I'm a high need sleeper, I was trying to. Fit myself into some other mold, and that's what this client was doing as well. And what I was like when I was that age and what was happening for her as well, is she had no mind body connection to tune in and feel what actually her body needed. She was operating from external like, well, this person sleeps this much and this person sleeps. She was in doing so much that she was not in feeling at all. And again, I want you to notice how this applies to you. How many of you are trying to run your life on six hours of sleep? Three coffees and just anxiety, or not enough food, right? We're not really talking about food today, but how many of you are trying to run your life on this like demure lady like. Chicken breasts and salad every day, and then beating yourself up for being hungry later, or not eating breakfast and then beating yourself for, for being hungry later. And then you're shocked that you can't consistently train, eat protein, and. Feel calm and peaceful all the time. Let's be serious. Your standards are probably not aligned with your biology. If you're like any of my clients or past me or even sometimes present me, let's be fair. So part of our work together, my client and I became ending trying to force a routine that ignores what her body needs. So instead, we built a flow framework that supports her. So this is moving her towards being in a flow framework versus a controlling framework. A control framework sounds like I have to wake up at 5:00 AM I have to do the full routine, or it doesn't count. I have to execute perfectly. I have to do it the same way every day. If I miss a day, I've failed a flow framework sounds and feels like. What does my body need to feel supported right now? What does your the body need? Not what does the planner say, not what does the internet say? What does body need? What are my anchors Like? What do I need today? How can I make this easier? PE we have so much resistance to it, feeling easier. My clients know this is the secret sauce. This is why my substack is called Diary of a Lazy Fitness Coach, which really just means ease. how can you make it feel easier? Because then it will like, it's literally that easy. What is the smallest version of this that still counts? I'm all about minimum effective dose, and how can I repair instead of restarting? Flow is supportive. Control is punitive. A very different energy and high achieving Women tend to default to control because they believe that control equals safety. They believe that control feels safe. Until it doesn't, until your nervous system rebels until circumstances outside of you that you were trying to control, you can no longer control, and then you go into unsafe even though you can't control those things, and then you call it falling off, you didn't fall off. Something happened that you couldn't control your system, hit capacity or both. So we built frameworks that respect your capacity. So here are the two things that actually changed my client's bedtime, and this is where I wanna get really practical, cause this is where most of you are stuck to. We built her bedtime routine by reverse engineering. I do this frequently with clients. She wanted to wake up earlier, but she was consistently waking up later. So instead of forcing a fantasy wake up time, we pick a realistic goal for the season and we reverse engineer it from bedtime, and then we create a landing strip or a runway. A runway taking off, I guess for bedtime. It's a landing strip in the morning. It's a runway because bedtime is is not, and should not just be go to sleep. Body doesn't work like that. Bedtime is an entire transition for yes, adult. You just like an infant if you've ever had a baby or babysat, and the transition fails when you go from high dopamine to nothing. Your body can't do that. That's a dopamine drop off. Especially for this particular client who does have a DHD. And she's young, right? Like, she's like social and on her phone a lot. She was going from like high dopamine to like, but trying to go to like bam and it wasn't working. So we did a couple things. And again, minimum effective dose. I gave her two things'cause I wanna keep it this simple. How can we make this so freaking easy? So number one is we set a phone to bed alarm. She's on her phone anyways, at 10:00 PM an alarm goes off. That alarm is not a suggestion, it is a queue. And this is different for different clients'cause I do have my clients who will just ignore the alarms. But for this client, it does work. So at 10:00 PM alarm goes off. When a phone goes off, the phone goes. Downstairs or upstairs or wherever her bedroom is, not, I can't remember. Not across the room, not beside the pillow. Not just cutely flipping it over other part of the house, upstairs, downstairs, kitchen, because if the phone is in your room, you're playing with fire, there's just no point. It's like having the most tempting food in the house when you have not trained yourself to feel neutral about it. If you feel neutral about it, cool. You probably don't feel neutral about your phone. You're probably itching to touch it. And if you wake up and you want it, you have to physically go so far to get it. I put my phone to bed in my bathroom. I have for years, sometimes even in the kitchen actually. But if you do really need your phone and you have to get up to get it, then you're up, you're moving and you're not trapped in the rollover, scrolling spiral. I have to stand in the bathroom to add something to the grocery list. Stand in the kitchen to text my mom back if I think of something when I'm in bed. And that's what I want you to do too. That's what I want her to do, too. That was number one, was the phone to bed alarm. Literally putting the phone to bed. Arianna Huffington has these cute, her Huffington posts, I think makes these cute, phone beds. You like put it on your mantle. It's literally like a little bamboo bed. You like tuck your phone into bed. Nice little ritual. I love it. Number two is a handwritten brain dump. Do this with tons of clients. It's so huge for busy brains and high achievers because the reason you scroll is often not just a desire for stimulation. It's avoidance. It's your brain trying to solve tomorrow and next year at midnight. Right? Trying to fix, trying to solve. So instead of letting thoughts bounce around in your head, just dump'em onto paper. There's so much power to this. It's like talking it out. If it's a to-do list, whatever, like get it out. Your worries. I'm so stressed about this. Reminders anything. The goal is not to journal poetically. The goal is. Your brain believes the thoughts are safely stored somewhere so it can let them go. It can be a truly be a tomorrow problem. This was really big for me. I also switched, you guys know I love a digital calendar. I love my Google calendar. I love my task manager, but then I was finding if I thought of something, I would try to get on my phone to put it in so I don't forget for tomorrow. And then I was on my phone. that's tricky. That does require willpower to just not get sucked in. So several years ago I switched to, I also have a paper planner that I just keep with me, and it's kind of my day to day and I, it goes to bed with me, and then if I need something, I put it on for tomorrow. I'm writing it. I'm not getting on my phone. So this is especially helpful for my, I'll forget it if I don't hold it in my head, girls, of which I'm absolutely one and most of my clients are as well. write it down. Analog tomorrow. Anne can handle it and then trust tomorrow. Self to handle it tonight anne sleeps tomorrow. Anne handles it. Trust her. Trust her. Trust her. Okay. Dopamine drop offs and medium dopamine activities. I'm proud of listening to you guys. Medium dopamine activities. I love this. So let's talk about dopamine drop offs because this is the part. You'll feel in your soul. A dopamine drop off is what happens when you go from scrolling or whatever your high dopamine hit activity is, to stopping to silence, to bed. Your brain does not like that because scrolling is high stimulation, high novelty, high dopamine. This is like stepping off of Space Mountain and then trying to have a nap. So when you stop, your brain feels the crash. The crash feels like anxiety. It feels like restlessness, irritability, or I need something, right? It's like stepping off the walking escalator and your body's like still going. It's just like that. That's why you suddenly want something. You want snacks, you need one more video. You suddenly remember 45 things you didn't do today. Your brain is on that walking. Treadmill. You know, the airport thing, the flat treadmill, the escalator thing, your brain is still on that if you don't give it a medium dopamine activity in between. So what do we do? We don't go from high dopamine to zero dopamine. We go from high dopamine to medium dopamine. We slow the escalator down. Medium dopamine activities are things that feel satisfying. Feel soothing, feel productive without being overly stimulating. Okay, so these are things like doing your skincare routine, puttering, tidying your room or kitchen for five minutes. No particular goal, just puttering. Setting out your clothes for tomorrow, smoothing the bed, stretching for a minute or two, having a shower, having a cup of tea. These are not just like wellness tropes. These are true transition activities. Doing the brain dump. I talked about reading two pages of a fiction book, listening to a Calm meditation while you Putter. I will do this as I've got really into this, especially, when my husband was working nights and Sophie was younger and I would put her to bed and then there would be all the things, right? Cleaning the kitchen, making her lunch tidying. I would put on something. Not necessarily fiction, but not necessarily learning. I found a couple podcasts that I like. I have a couple of YouTube channels that I like to just listen to. Almost like affirmations, meditation, self-help. There's a few books that I bought that I would listen to. Like Pema Chodron. I love her books, especially for this kind of activity. These are transition activities. They help your brain power down. Without feeling like it's falling off a cliff. And this client who I was speaking about, she already had these activities actually. She had her skincare, she had her tithing, she had this routine. She has this soft light that crackles like a fire. So she actually wasn't bad at routine. She was telling me she was bad at routine, but she actually had this routine. She just didn't know it was a routine. She was missing one little piece. She was missing a consistent cue to start the routine before getting sucked into dopamine. And also she was missing just even calling it a bedtime routine, which can be powerful. So that's that. We name it as a routine. She has the alarm. The phone goes upstairs, downstairs, she does the brain dump. Boom. That's the cue. Now we're in the, now we're in the landing strip. You think you need more discipline when you really probably need recovery of some kind. My client said, I think I actually need nine to 10 hours of sleep to be mentally well, first of all, yes, probably. Second of all, I want you to notice the mindset shift there. This is the shift from hustle culture to self-leadership. High achievers, hear me say this, high achievers are taught to treat sleep like a luxury and more than seven hours of sleep. Oh my gosh. but your body treats it like a requirement that is a misalignment. Your brain is treating sleep like a luxury. As well as rest and food and many other things. Your body does not see it that way with the high stimulation, busy life that you have, your body probably has a higher sleep need even than like quote unquote the average person. And so it's it's considering it a luxury. It's like sleep me. And the more you start doing nervous system regulation work, the more your body starts asking for rest because you're listening to it. Just like when you start listening to your body, you start feeling hungry and you start feeling full simply because you're listening. Because when you stop numbing yourself with stimulation, you start feeling the exhaustion. You've been overriding. I always used to feel this. I don't so much anymore because I'm better at. Resting more during my normal life. But like when I would go home for Christmas or to my parents', and you're so like lethargic and tired. It's like responsibility has left the building. You don't really have to do anything. You don't have a work deadline. You exams are done and you feel so tired. You worked tired before, you were just working through it on adrenaline. So if you're listening to this and you're like, why am I more tired now that I'm trying to be healthier? Or why am I hungrier now that I'm trying to be healthier? Or why do I feel my body now? It's not'cause you're getting worse. It's because you're finally not ignoring your body. That is progress, my friend, that most people don't make. And this is why your new routine needs to include recovery as a non-negotiable. Because you do not build a bit strong body, a calm brain and consistent habits on sleep debt. You build them on regulation. Let's get insanely practical. Here's a bedtime flow framework that you can try tonight. I already told you my clients, right? There's no perfection in this. No life overhaul. Just a clean experiment. So step one would be to Choose your phone to bedtime. Start with 30 minutes before you wanna be asleep. For me, it's two hours. Alarm goes off at eight o'clock. It literally says, take your magnesium and put your phone to bed. So set the alarm when it goes off phone, goes to bed out of your room. That's step one. Step two is to choose just two medium dopamine activities like I listed earlier. Skincare, tidying without a goal, laying out your clothes, smoothing your bed, making tea, stretching, showering, brain dump. Two is enough. Don't choose them all. Don't do 10, do two. Step three. Do a two minute brain dump. I do love that for you. Write what's on your mind, even if it makes no sense. Write what you're worried you're gonna forget. Write what you're pissed off about. Write what you wanna handle tomorrow. Write how you wanna feel tonight and then close the book. Step four, give your brain a closing statement. This is the piece high achievers need, say. I trust myself to deal with this tomorrow. Tonight I sleep, or tomorrow me has got this or it's safe to rest. That was one for me for sure. You're basically training your brain to stop acting like sleep is optional. Okay, and then step five, last step is a body check-in before sleep. You could even do if you're journaling anyways, like how do I feel in my body right now or without the journal? Just asking into self, what do I feel in my body right now? My jaw, is it clenched or is it soft? My shoulders, are they up or are they down my belly? Is it tight or is it relaxed? Take one. Breath. Are your shoulders drop? Done? That's it. That's your flow framework. It's not rigid, supportive. Let's connect this to, if you are interested, why this matters for consistency in fat loss. If you are a high achieving woman over the age of 35 and you wanna lose body fat, you wanna build strength, you wanna stop being obsessed about everything, your results are not gonna come from you pushing harder. You've tried that. You've tried. I can guarantee you've tried that. If you're listening to this, I've tried that. It felt terrible. They're gonna come from you becoming someone who can stay consistent in real life. Consistency is not built through restarting constantly. It is built through repairing, learning, and repairing bedtime routines. Sleep, nervous system regulation and dopamine management are not fluffy or woo woo. They are foundational for your body. I'm not just like making this shit up. The woman who sleeps regulates and reduces overstimulation is the woman who has the bandwidth and the energy to train consistently. Who has the capacity to like eat breakfast and feed her kids breakfast? Who does not binge at night? Who does not need to start over every Monday, who does not treat her body like a huge problem? And if you want to build strength and lose body fat without living in diet brain, you need a nervous system that can tolerate discomfort without running to dopamine for relief. That is literally the work. If this episode hit you and you're realizing you don't need to restart, you in fact need a repair, I want you to try That framework tonight. Phone to bed alarm. Two medium dopamine activities. A two minute brain dump, closing statement to yourself, one full body breath, and then message me on Instagram at Anne Jones Fit and tell me what changed. If you are ready to stop white knuckling your habits and start building a body and a lifestyle you actually want to live in, this is exactly what we do inside muscles and mindset. Strength training structure, nervous system support, and the mindset work to stop the all or nothing spiral because you are not a failure, but you're probably overloaded and we can fix that. And that is a wrap for today's episode of the Muscles and Mindset Revolution podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you get notified of the next one. And if you want to hear more episodes like this, I would love for you to leave a five star review. If you're looking for more free resources or just wanna connect, come find me on Instagram. I'm at@annejonesfit Okay, my friends, I so appreciate you being here. I love to see you showing up for and prioritizing yourself and your growth, and I will see you next time.