Motivation Is a Liar, Bipolar Is a Roller Coaster, and I'm Still Running
Motivation feels amazing… for about five minutes.
You watch one hype video, scroll past a transformation post, or wake up in a weirdly good mood and suddenly you’re convinced:
That’s it. New me. This time it’s different.
And sometimes it is different… for a bit.
But if you live with bipolar (like I do), plus a history of yo-yo weight, medication side effects, and life just repeatedly punching you in the teeth, you learn very quickly that motivation is one of the least reliable things on earth.
This is a story about:
- How I’ve lost weight multiple times in my adult life and gained it back again
- How bipolar turns that cycle into a full-blown roller coaster
- And how I’m slowly learning that discipline (boring, unsexy, tiny actions) is the only thing that keeps me moving when everything else falls apart
Also, yes, there will be running. A lot of running! 🏃
Growing up: disciplined without realising it
As a kid and teenager, I was active and disciplined without ever using those words.
- I played sport
- I moved a lot
- I didn’t obsess about food
- I never had any weight issues
My days were basically pre-structured for me. I went to boarding school for my teenage years too. There wasn’t much room to go totally off the rails.
The wheels only really came off when I became an adult and suddenly had free reign over my time and choices.
Turns out, that’s when you discover what you’re actually like without built-in structure holding you together.
Undiagnosed bipolar and the yo-yo years
In my early adult life, I started to yo-yo with my weight.
I’d drop weight, feel great, get complacent, life would happen, my mood would tank or peak, and I’d drift (or crash) back into old habits. Rinse and repeat.
At the time I didn’t know I had bipolar. I just thought I:
- Lacked willpower
- Was “all or nothing”
- Was either on or off with no in-between
Looking back, it’s very obvious that my undiagnosed bipolar was driving a lot of the weight fluctuations:
- Highs → hyper-focused, tons of energy, big plans, big changes
- Lows → fatigue, apathy, self-sabotage, “what’s the point?”
I only got officially diagnosed around 2016, which, funnily enough, is when another big player entered the chat…
Olanzapine and the 65kg → 101kg jump
Around 2016 I started regular antipsychotic medication (Olanzapine).
For me, that combination of mood stabilisation + side effects looked like:
- Insatiable hunger
- Cravings
- Sedation and lack of movement
- A body that didn’t feel like mine anymore
Over a few years I went from 65kg to around 101kg by the start of 2020.
It wasn’t some dramatic overnight thing. It was a slow, quiet drift:
- Bigger portions
- More snacks
- Less movement
- More sitting
- “I’ll lose the weight later”
And then one day, “later” turns into “how the hell did I get here?“
2020: the photo that changed everything
January 1st 2020, I took a photo.
It was after a night of heavy drinking and partying. I just remember looking at it and thinking:
This is the last time I will be this heavy.
That kicked off a year long series of small changes:
- Walking more
- Drinking less alcohol
- Eating slightly smaller portions
- Adding more fruit and veg
- Upping my protein
- Slowly getting into jump rope and weight lifting
Nothing extreme. Just less crap going in and a bit more movement, repeatedly.
Somewhere along the way I fell in love with jump rope, and I started using a weighted rope set from Crossrope.
Towards the end of that year when I lost a significant amount of weight, Crossrope actually used me in an email advertisement!
That was pretty surreal. Me? In a fitness brand’s ad campaign 😅
I managed to lose weight and make a lifestyle change despite Olanzapine working against me.
Running, love, and a very big December
Then things really escalated…in a good way!
- September 2020: I got into running and properly fell in love with it.
- October 2020: I met my future wife.
- December 2020:
- I reached my goal weight: 65kg
- I ran my first half marathon
It was one of those rare, golden runs in life where everything lines up:
- Health trending up 🏃♂️
- Mood more stable 😊
- In love 🥰
- Feeling capable and proud of myself 💪
And I managed to keep that momentum going into 2021 and most of 2022. I wish I could have kept it up but the universe had other plans.
Everyone has a plan…
You know that Mike Tyson quote:
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
2022 was the punch in the mouth.
I got put on a stressful project at work, and slowly but surely I fell off the wagon.
- Work stress went up
- Sleep got worse
- Less exercise
- Ate a lot more food
- I wasn’t taking care of myself like I used to
There wasn’t one big “I quit” moment. Just friction increasing everywhere until running, lifting, and everything else felt too hard to bother with.
By the time our wedding in July 2023 rolled around, I’d gained a fair chunk of the weight back.
It was an incredible day, genuinely the best of my life, but I remember also thinking:
I’m not the best version of myself right now.
In my vows, I promised my wife I would work on becoming that person again.
Grief, loss, and a manic detour
Then 2024 said: “Oh, you thought that was hard? Hold my beer.”
Losing Tia
Our beloved dog Tia died in January 2024.
She’d been with me for nearly a decade. For a long time, it was literally just me and her.
Coming home every day to her waiting patiently at the front gate was one of those small, quiet joys I didn’t realise I’d miss so much.
Losing my grandmother
In February 2024, my grandmother passed away.
At the time I thought I was “holding it together” but that grief had a delayed fuse.
Manic episode and the mental health unit
By April 2024, things went properly off the rails.
I had a manic episode and ended up in the mental health unit for a while.
The unit is a peculiar place. A couple of snapshots from my time there:
- I became convinced there was an exposed electrical wire that was unsafe, so I got someone to help me move these extremely heavy lounge chairs in front of it to “block” the danger.
- I clocked 30,000 steps in a single day just walking up and down the hallways. One of the nurses was genuinely shocked at the number.
- I thought there was an bear-like alien hiding in a security camera
- In the art room, another patient showed me her sketchbook and I was convinced the drawings were lifting off the page in 3D, moving and alive.
When you’re manic, you’re doing your best with the information you think you have, but your perception is not exactly reliable. Mania looks different for everyone. This is just what it looked like for me.
Coming home after that ordeal was such a relief.
After that, I made a big decision that has stuck:
I committed to stop drinking alcohol.
It wasn’t doing my bipolar any favours and I was using it as a crutch to cope with grief and stress.
(Disclaimer: I’m not telling anyone else what to do with their life or meds or alcohol. This is just what I chose for me.)
The TikTok accountability experiment (that backfired)
Post manic episode, I kind of cruised for a while.
Then around October 2024, I had an idea that felt smart at the time:
I’ll create a running TikTok page to keep me accountable
And it did work… at first.
- Having to post gave me a push to get out the door
- I liked sharing progress
- It felt fun and novel
But pretty quickly, it started to feel more like:
- Content I had to produce
- A chore
- Another thing I could fail at
By December, I was over it and dropped the whole thing. It reminded me again that external accountability can help, but if it turns into shame or pressure, it stops working for my brain.
From early 2025 to the start of June, my running was very sporadic. A bit here, a bit there, nothing consistent.
Motivation was flickering in and out like a shoddy lightbulb.
June 2025: discovering Runna and rebuilding
Around June 2025, I saw an ad for the app Runna.
I looked into it, liked the idea, and thought:
Stuff it, I’ll give it a go
I’ve been hooked ever since.
What works for my brain with Runna:
- The plan adapts as you go
- It integrates really nicely with my running watch
- It tells me what to do on each day so I don’t have to negotiate with myself
When I started, I could barely run 5km in 42 minutes.
As of this month, I’ve run 5km in around 25 minutes.
For non-runners: that’s the difference between “I’m dying” and “actually, I kind of enjoy this.”
In that time, I’ve:
- Lost 13kg+
- Moved to a better cocktail of meds. That is working so much better. (Lithium with Olanzapine as needed)
- Built a more sustainable weekly running routine
I can genuinely say:
I’m in the best headspace I’ve been in my entire adult life.
And I say that knowing it won’t stay like this forever.
Motivation vs discipline when you’re on the bipolar roller coaster
So what have I actually learned through all this?
1. Motivation is a nice bonus, not a plan
If I only trained, ate well, or took care of myself when I felt motivated, I’d still be 101kg, drinking too much, and wondering why nothing ever changes.
Motivation is allowed to come and go.
The point is not to build a life that relies on it.
2. Discipline isn’t beast mode. It’s micro-decisions.
Discipline has been marketed as this hardcore, aggressive thing.
For me, discipline looks way more like:
- Putting my shoes and gear out the night before so there’s one less excuse
- Pressing start on my running watch even if I don’t feel like it
- Aiming for “good enough”, not “perfect”,
- Making the next meal slightly better, not starting a new detox on Monday
Discipline is not yelling at myself to be better.
It’s preloading my life with small decisions so future me has less to argue with.
3. Bipolar changes the rules, not the goal
Bipolar means:
- My energy isn’t consistent
- My mood isn’t consistent
- My sense of what’s possible can swing pretty wildly
The goal: to be healthy, present, and around for the people (and animals) I love, stays the same.
But how I chase that goal has to account for:
- Medication side effects
- Sleep quality
- Stress and grief
- Early warning signs of mood shifts
That might mean:
- Scaling workouts down instead of skipping them entirely. Something is better than nothing.
- Recognising when I need to walk during runs. I’ve had to walk portions of my long runs because my body was telling me it needed a break.
- Resting when needed. It’s productive too.
- Checking in with my care team when things feel off instead of waiting until it’s a crisis.
- Being honest with my wife when I’m struggling. She can’t help if I pretend everything’s fine when it’s not.
- Having backup plans for bad days. Pre cooked meals in the fridge/freezer, a simple routine I can fall back on when decision making feels impossible.
4. Falling off the wagon isn’t the end. It’s part of the pattern.
I’ve lost weight more than once.
I’ve gained weight back more than once.
I’ve gone from unfit to fit and back again.
For a long time, I saw that as proof that I was broken, weak or incapable.
Now I see it as proof that:
- I can build habits
- I can change my body and health
- Life will absolutely throw things at me that knock me sideways
The skill I’m trying to build now isn’t:
Never fall off the wagon again
It’s now:
Shorten the gap between falling off and climbing back on.
What discipline actually looks like for me now
Right now, discipline in my life looks like:
- Three to six runs a week following my Runna plan
- Lift weights at least 1-2 times a week
- Simple, repeatable meals instead of elaborate perfect diets. At work, I eat the same lunch of sardines, mussels and rice. The lunch room smells..interesting.
- No alcohol
- Accepting that some weeks will be easier/harder than others
- Tracking my progress religiously (because I’m a data nerd and graphs make me happy)
- Letting past me help future me (laying out clothes, planning runs, meal prepping)
If you’re on your own roller coaster
If any of this sounds familiar: the yo-yoing, the mental health stuff, the “I was doing so well and then everything fell apart again”. A few thoughts from someone still very much in the trenches:
- You’re not weak because you struggle with consistency.
- You’re not a failure because life events knocked you backwards.
- Weight regained doesn’t delete the version of you who lost it.
- Progress doesn’t have to be linear to be real.
If you’re living with bipolar (or any mental health condition), things might just work differently for you than they do for other people.
And that’s okay.
Please also:
- Talk to professionals (GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists) if you can access them
- Don’t make big medication or lifestyle changes based only on internet stories.. including mine
- Be kinder to yourself than you think you “deserve” to be
Because here’s where I’ve landed, for now:
I’m pretty sure this exact version of my headspace won’t last forever.
That’s not how bipolar works. Moods will shift. Life will throw more punches.
But if I can keep practicing:
- Showing up over feeling ready
- Consistency over perfection
- Small, boring habits over giant, unsustainable changes
…then I think I’ll be okay 😊
And on the days I’m not okay?
I’ll try to at least put my shoes on and walk around the block.
Sometimes, that’s enough discipline for one day.