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Why Do We Become Unfit? Here’s How To Maintain Fitness

3rd May 2023

Fitness Health

3rd May 2023

By Beth Shelper

We’ve all been there – your rest day lasted a little bit too long. Talk about rest week, or maybe even rest month(s). Now you’re stuck in the vicious cycle of wanting to get back into it, but not wanting to get back into it because you just know that you’ve lost some of that all-important progress that you made in terms of fitness, stamina and technique.

Don’t worry – it’s totally normal. And more so something that we’ve all struggled with. But why does exercise get harder when we’ve been doing less? What is the science behind becoming unfit?

Well, Leeds University have provided the answers. The answers we’ve all been waiting for, more accurately.

But first, what do we technically mean by ‘unfit’ and is it truly feasible to always maintain fitness? Why is it that exercise gets harder?

Here’s what ‘unfit’ really means

When one describes a physically unfit person, there are a few key signs and features that are considered. It’s important to note that being described as unfit isn’t a personal or even negative description, just one that considers physical and psychological attributes and abilities.

Key signs of an ‘unfit’ person include:

  • Laboured breathing
  • Chronic illness
  • Excess weight
  • Insomnia
  • A high resting heart rate
  • Diabetes
  • Heart disease
  • High blood pressure

The study: why exercise gets harder the less you do

The brand-new study released by students from The University of Leeds investigates the age-old conundrum around a decrease in performance and ability following a lack of exercise.

The study was conducted through the observation of mice, chosen due to our sharing of a particular protein: Piezo1, a blood flow sensor that is thought to have a pretty large impact on the transportation of blood to the muscles, and as a result, of course, on our performance during exercise.

The study (and the mice) highlighted a crucial link between exercise and the production of the Piezo1 protein, showing that the less exercise we do, the less of this protein is produced, and thus when we do eventually reengage in said exercise, it’s levels are limited.

Aka – exercise gets harder because our ability to exercise reduces from a scientific perspective. This shows its actually nothing to do with motivation at all, either.

So, how can we maintain fitness?

From these findings, and from our understanding of health and wellness, its clear that maintaining fitness is pretty important. We’re only human, and we all slip up from time-to-time, but by putting in that extra bit of effort, we can make things easier for ourselves in the long run.

If you’re struggling to get fitter or to maintain your motivation, try out some of the below tips and remember whilst you should always push yourself to do better, it’s just as important to listen to your body and rest when you need it. That’s all part of progress, too.

  • Keep it up, little and often

When we talk about exercise, that doesn’t always have to mean an extended session at the gym, all-day every day. It’s all about getting examples of exercise in little and often.

Walk to the corner shop rather than drive, take advantage of your lunch break and go on a quick walk, get outside and go for a short run around the block, or even cycle to work (where you can) when the weather is nice.

These are all great examples of integrating exercise into your routine in a realistic and manageable way!

  • Set realistic goals

If you haven’t been on a run in a little while and you’re thinking of running a marathon next week, we’re going to go out on a limb here and say it’s probably not the best idea. Aside from setting yourself up for a pretty painful experience, it’s quite likely that you’ll injure yourself here.

So, whilst its admirable that you’re setting your sights and expectations high – and whilst we have no doubt that you’ll get to that marathon finishing line following a good training regime, make sure that the goals you set are realistic, and you’re able to hit them often to keep those motivation levels tip-top.

  • Create attractive rewards

If you planned to go to the gym 3 times this week and you went 3 times: you’ve got to reward yourself. Whether that’s an extra 30 minutes in bed, a cheeky extra treat on the shopping list, or even that pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing up online, treat yo’ self! It’s all about recognising your achievements and rewarding yourself for them.

  • Bring a buddy

Exercising can be boring if you’re lacking the motivation, but you’d be surprised how much your mood changes if you bring a friend along for the ride. Whether its your parent, friend, colleague or even your dog that joins you for that evening run around the park, you don’t always have to go solo.

 

  • Fuel yourself sufficiently

Exercising too hard can leave you feeling completely depleted of energy, and actually be detrimental to your physical development. Make sure you're feeding your body with ingredients that will help you to recover and replenish fully to avoid injuries that might take you off course for longer than you'd hope. Try The Recover Capsules to give your body the nutrients it needs, along with a protein blend to support muscle recovery and development. 

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How To Stick To Your New Year Fitness Routine

It’s that time of the year again - the New Year's fitness buzz. A time where motivation is high, new workout plans are made, gym bags make a return, and everything feels full of possibility! And yet, for many people, this momentum is short-lived. By mid-February, routines can start to slip. Sessions get skipped. Motivation fades. The resolution quietly dissolves, something often accompanied by frustration or guilt. If that sounds at all familiar, it’s firstly worth saying this upfront: it’s not a personal failure. In most cases, it’s a structural one. It might sound strange, but having a long term and consistent fitness routine isn’t solely about having the most ‘willpower’, or forcing yourself to run just because it’s ‘new year, new me’, it’s about building an individual routine that works for you and sets you up in the best position to hit your workout goals in the long term. To make things easier, we’ve put together this nifty guide diving into the science of new year’s fitness, why traditional workout resolutions so often fall apart, and what genuinely helps when it comes to building habits that last for the long term. Right, let’s get into it. Why New Year’s fitness resolutions don’t succeed  Before exploring how you can set your fitness goals for the long term, it’s important to understand why so many fall short.  The main reason comes down to something psychologists call the “fresh start effect”. This is a period that interrupts the calendar schedule (such as New Year's), creating a mental separation between the past and the future. Such a fresh start makes change - like the restarting of a fitness routine - mentally easier to overcome because the past feels neatly boxed away.  While this sounds good on paper, the problem is that motivation alone isn’t enough to sustain long-term behavioural change.  Many New Year’s fitness routines struggle to last because they often: Focus on outcomes instead of training plans and sustainable behaviours. Target instant change Focus on unrealistic fitness goals Shall we run from the top? Outcome-based targets One pitfall people often find themselves in is setting a New Year’s fitness goal that is driven by outcome without proper planning.  Some examples might be: Losing weight  Getting fit  Running a marathon All great targets to strive for, yet without a training plan or strategy to achieve them, they can quickly feel unattainable and therefore interest drops off. This makes creating and sticking to a new year’s exercise plan key to achieving your goals, asking: what do you want to achieve? What steps are you going to take to achieve them? And how will you measure your progress? Too much change and unattainable fitness goals With the fresh start effect, it can feel productive to try and overhaul all your health practices. A new training plan. A stricter diet. Earlier mornings. Fewer social plans. Better sleep. More productivity. Individually, these changes are all positive (we’ve spoken about the positive effects of many in the past ourselves). Making all these large life changes in a short space of time, however, can lead to something called ‘cognitive overload’. Each new habit requires attention, decision-making, and self-control, leading to decision fatigue buildup and increasing the likelihood that behaviours will be dropped rather than maintained. Sustainable change tends to work the opposite way. Small, manageable shifts layered gradually over time allow habits to stabilise before new ones are added. Instead of replacing your entire lifestyle in January, long-term routines are built by choosing one or two priorities, letting them settle, and then building from there. Unrealistic fitness goals Another common reason why new year workout plans don’t work is that the end goals being set aren’t realistic to achieve in the time frame given. Training every day. Completely overhauling diet. Expecting visible results within weeks are just a few sure-fire ways to see your fitness plans gone by the end of January. This is because when progress isn’t immediately visible, individual motivation drops. Any missed sessions start to feel like failure, and the routine becomes something to avoid rather than return to. This can lead to a plateau in motivation and a workout rut that sees you lose all motivation to continue your fitness plan. The best way to avoid this? Tailor your New Year’s workout plan to what is realistic for you to achieve. Remember, everyone is different and you should avoid trying to replicate someone’s workout plan who is at a much different point in their journey. What helps you stick to a fitness routine So now we’ve covered the pitfalls faced with New Year's resolutions, what are some of the ways that you can set yourself up for success going into 2026? Starting your workouts small It might sound a little backward, but maintaining a new year’s fitness routine is all about incremental improvements - starting small and building up to ambitious fitness goals. In essence, try to make your workouts feel manageable from the outset.  This removes much of the physical and mental friction caused by sharp changes and removes the possibility of overtraining syndrome - something that can lead to both physical and mental fatigue. Instead of asking your body and mind to adapt to a dramatic shift all at once, you allow both to adjust gradually - which is exactly how sustainable habits are formed. Personal, not performative goals A common reason New Year's fitness routines fall apart is that the goal itself was never truly personal.  Many resolutions are shaped - often unconsciously - by external pressures: how we think we should look, what others are doing, or what feels ‘socially impressive’. These goals can create a strong initial push, but they rarely provide enough depth to sustain effort in the long term. Personal goals, by contrast, are rooted in lived experience. They’re connected to how you want to feel day-to-day, not how you want to appear to others. Wanting more stable energy through the afternoon, fewer aches and pains, better sleep, or improved resilience during stressful periods may not sound as dramatic as a body transformation, but they’re far more motivating over time.  This is supported by behavioural research showing that exercise routines rooted in intrinsic motivation - feeling better, moving more easily, managing stress - are significantly more likely to be maintained long-term than goals shaped by appearance or external pressure. These outcomes are felt quickly and repeatedly, which reinforces the habit itself. Fitting fitness into your routine Again, seems counterintuitive, but a workout routine that only works under perfect conditions won’t survive beyond January.  You can’t change things like long workdays, family responsibilities, travel, and low-energy weeks, and you shouldn’t try to. Your regular workout routine should function around these things. The key here is that fitness is flexible. It allows for shorter sessions, longer sessions, varied training styles, and a broader definition of movement that can all be tailored to your day-to-day routine. Your also not limited by location, you could workout at home, at the gym, with groups, whatever fits into your routine.  The role of recovery in New Year’s fitness One of the most overlooked reasons people struggle to stick to New Year’s fitness routines is actually physical and mental fatigue. While this is to be expected to some extent - and you can control fatigue by following the above tips - you also need to consider the importance of effective recovery and how you are fuelling your body between workouts. Just some of the ways you can improve recovery are: Sleep quality: Quality sleep is when the body actually recovers, repairs tissue, and resets energy levels for the next day. Without it, even light training can start to feel disproportionately demanding. Effective hydration: Staying properly hydrated helps support circulation, muscle function, and focus, making both workouts and recovery feel smoother and more manageable. Complete nutrition: Providing the body with enough protein, carbohydrates, fats, and micronutrients gives it the building blocks it needs to repair, adapt, and maintain steady energy over time. It’s also worth considering tailored nutrition-focused supplementation such as Innermost’s The Recover Capsules and The Hydrate Blend. Reframing New Year fitness: from resolution to routine An effective mindset shift you can make this new year is moving away from the idea of a “resolution” and towards a routine. Resolutions are often outcome-focused - lose weight, build muscle, run faster. Routines are behaviour-focused - train three times a week, walk daily, prioritise recovery. This reframing is also key when thinking about how to stick to your New Year’s fitness resolution. Instead of asking, “Am I seeing results yet?”, the more useful question becomes, “Can I repeat this next week?” Remember, the most effective fitness routines aren’t created in January - they’re carried through February, March, and beyond. References Dai, H., Milkman K.L., Riis,J. (2013).The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science. 60 (10), 2563-2582. Click here. Cezar, B., Macada, A. (2023). Cognitive Overload, Anxiety, Cognitive Fatigue, Avoidance Behavior and Data Literacy in Big Data environments. Information Processing & Management. 60 (6). Click here. Ntoumanis, N., Healy, L. et.al. (2014). Self-Regulatory Responses to Unattainable Goals: The Role of Goal Motives. 13 (5), 594-612. Click here. Cleveland Clinic. Overtraining Syndrome. Click here. Sebire,S., Standage, M., Vansteenkiste,M. (2011). Predicting objectively assessed physical activity from the content and regulation of exercise goals: evidence for a mediational model. 33 (2), 175-197. Click here.  
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Why the Festive Period Breaks Your Habits

Why the Festive Period Breaks Your Habits

Every year, the festive period gets blamed for breaking people’s health. Too many meals out. Too many late nights. Too many “I’ll start again in January” moments. By the time the New Year arrives, the narrative is already locked in. Damage done. Time to reset, detox, or punish yourself back into shape. But here’s the truth. The festive period doesn’t ruin your health. Losing structure does. The end of the year is uniquely disruptive. Work schedules loosen. Social plans multiply. Travel, celebrations, and irregular routines blur the days together. Sleep shifts later. Meal timing becomes unpredictable. Hydration drops. Movement becomes sporadic. Stress quietly rises. Food gets the blame because it’s visible. But the real changes are happening beneath the surface. Our bodies are built around rhythm. Circadian biology governs hormones, appetite, energy, glucose regulation, and recovery. When sleep timing drifts and meals become inconsistent, insulin sensitivity drops, hunger cues become noisier, and cravings increase. Not because you’ve lost discipline, but because your physiology is responding exactly as it should. This is why willpower fails so reliably during the festive period. Willpower is not a plan. It never was. Behaviour follows environment. And the end-of-year environment is designed to disrupt even the best intentions. More social pressure. More choice. Less routine. Less recovery. Expecting motivation to override that is unrealistic. Yet the wellness industry loves this moment. January resets. Detoxes. Thirty-day transformations. The implication is always the same. You slipped up. Now fix it. That framing is wrong. You didn’t fail. Your anchors disappeared. So instead of trying to be perfect between now and the New Year, there’s a better approach. Protect structure. Not outcomes. I think of this as a Minimum Effective Routine. The smallest set of habits that keep your system regulated when life gets noisy. You don’t need control all day. You need a few non-negotiables. First, a morning anchor. How you start the day sets the tone for everything that follows. Consistent wake times, early light exposure, and hydration matter more than whether you train or not. Even during the festive period, waking within a similar window each day helps stabilise energy, appetite, and sleep later on. Second, a nutrition anchor. Health doesn’t unravel because of one rich meal. It unravels when eating becomes random. Skipped meals followed by late, heavy dinners create blood sugar swings that drive overeating. One simple rule makes a difference. Anchor at least one meal per day around protein and fibre. No tracking. No guilt. Just consistency. Protein in particular becomes critical when routines loosen. It supports lean mass, regulates appetite hormones like GLP-1, and reduces the likelihood of grazing later in the day. Third, a movement anchor. This is not about training hard. It’s about staying active. Walking, light resistance work, mobility, or a short session at home. Ten to twenty minutes counts. Movement improves glucose handling, digestion, mood, and sleep quality. It is one of the most reliable ways to offset stress and irregular eating. Fourth, an evening wind-down anchor. Late nights are part of the festive period. That’s normal. What matters is how often they stack. Alcohol, screens, and social stimulation all fragment sleep. A simple wind-down routine most nights helps signal safety to your nervous system. Lower lights. Fewer screens. Breathing. Reading. Repetition matters more than perfection. These anchors don’t make you “healthy”. They keep you regulated. Now, an honest word on supplements. Supplements won’t rescue a chaotic routine. Anyone promising that is selling shortcuts. But they can support physiology when structure is under pressure. Hydration often drops at this time of year, especially when alcohol intake increases. Electrolytes support fluid balance, nerve signalling, and muscle function. Protein becomes more important when meals are irregular, helping to stabilise appetite and maintain muscle. Micronutrients also matter when sleep, stress, and food quality are inconsistent. This is how we think about Innermost products. Not as a reset. Not as a fix. But as tools that support the fundamentals when life is busy and routines loosen. The biggest mistake people make is treating the festive period as a write-off and the New Year as a clean slate. That approach creates a cycle of extremes. If you protect structure now, the New Year doesn’t need repairing. There’s no detox required. No dramatic restart. Just continuity. Finally, as we close out the year, I want to say thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for trusting us in an industry that often values hype over health. And thank you for being part of a community that cares about doing things properly. I hope you enjoy the festive period with your friends and loved ones, get some well-earned rest, and step into 2026 feeling steady, not behind.
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