How Long Does It Take to Make Exercise a Habit?

In the largest study we found that timed it, going to the gym took about two to three months to become a habit: 68 to 78 days, worked out from the check-in records of 60,277 gym members. Smaller studies give six weeks of four sessions a week as a minimum for new gym members, and a median of 91 days for 13 volunteers who each chose a daily exercise.

You may have read four to seven months instead. That figure comes from the first published version of the gym study, and its authors have since corrected it.

This page goes through what each study measured, who took part, and what the numbers can and can't tell you. The sources at the end say which papers we read in full and which as an abstract only. They were read on 8 and 9 October 2026.

The studies that timed an exercise habit

Study and what it followed	Result
Buyalskaya and others, 2023: gym check-ins of 60,277 members	68 to 78 days until going was as predictable as it was going to get
Kaushal and Rhodes, 2015: 111 new gym members over 12 weeks	At least four sessions a week for six weeks
Lally and others, 2010: 13 volunteers who each chose a daily exercise	Median of 91 days until it felt about as automatic as it was going to get
Fournier and others, 2017: 48 students doing a daily stretch	About 106 days in the morning group and 154 in the evening group, both extrapolated

These rows don't measure the same thing. The first uses recorded behaviour, the second and third use questionnaires, and the fourth extends a curve past the end of the study. The sections below take them one at a time.

Inside the gym study

This is the only study on this page built on recorded behaviour. The others asked people to rate their own habit.

• The data. Check-in records of 60,277 regular users of a North American gym chain, more than 12 million observations in all.
• What "habit" means here. The researchers trained a model to predict, from the circumstances of each day, whether a person would go to the gym. The better the model predicts someone, the more habitual they count that person's gym-going. A habit counts as formed when that predictability reaches 95% of its plateau on a fitted curve.
• The result. 68 to 78 days, which the paper sums up as about 2 to 3 months.
• Who the result covers. Gym-goers whose records the curve fitted well. The curves were fitted to tenths of the sample and not to each person. How many members were well fitted is in the paper's supplement, which we did not open.

The same paper ran the method on hand-washing by hospital workers, using more than 40 million electronic records. It started with 5,246 workers in 30 hospitals and analysed 3,124 of them. There the habit formed after 9 to 10 shifts, about 220 chances to wash. So in this study a frequent, simple act settled in weeks and going to the gym took months. One caution from the authors: the workers were only watched from the day the monitoring was installed, and many may have had the habit already.

Why you may have read four to seven months

The article as first published said that gym habits took 122 to 226 days, about 4 to 7 months. The authors later published a correction that replaces that sentence, and the corrected value is 68 to 78 days.

The old number is still easy to find. The copy of the article text that the Europe PMC archive served on 9 October 2026 still held the withdrawn sentence, and any article written before August 2023 could only quote the first version. If a page tells you a gym habit takes four to seven months, or about six months, this may be where it comes from. Check for the correction before you repeat it.

The paper's summary line holds under both values: months for the gym, weeks for hand-washing.

Four sessions a week for six weeks

Kaushal and Rhodes followed 111 new gym members over 12 weeks. Their finding: "exercising for at least four bouts per week for 6 weeks was the minimum requirement to establish an exercise habit".

Four things went with a habit that grew over those weeks, strongest first: exercising consistently, a workout that was not complicated, the surroundings, and how people felt about exercising.

We read this paper as an abstract only. The abstract does not say how each of those four was measured, and the result comes from one group of 111 people.

Does exercise take longer than other habits?

It looks that way, though no study here settles it.

In the 2010 study by Lally and others, each volunteer chose one daily behaviour and rated every day how automatic it felt. The median time to reach their own plateau was 91 days for the 13 people who chose an exercise, 65 days for the 10 who chose something to eat and 59 days for the 15 who chose something to drink. That difference was not statistically significant, and the authors say the study was too small to settle it. They do note that "the exercise group took one and a half times longer to reach their asymptote than the other two groups".

The gym study points the same way: months for the gym against weeks for hand-washing.

In the stretching study, 48 students tried for 90 days to adopt a daily stretch, either on waking or before bed. Extending the curves put the morning group at 105.95 days and the evening group at 154.01 days. Both values lie beyond the 90 days the study ran, so nobody was observed taking that long. We read this paper as an abstract only.

How long it takes to form a habit covers the studies on habits in general, including the 66-day figure.

What keeps people going back

The same days each week. In the gym records, 69% of members were more likely to go on the weekdays they had gone on before.

Short gaps. For 76% of members, the longer it had been since their last visit, the less likely they were to go on a given day.

Consistency, more than willpower. A Dutch study followed 146 adults for about three months while each formed a habit they had chosen themselves. People who did their behaviour more consistently built a stronger habit. Self-control capacity did not. These habits were not all exercise.

Programmes help while they run. In a test of 54 four-week programmes with 61,293 members of an American fitness chain, 45% of the programmes raised weekly gym visits, by 9% to 27%. Only 8% had an effect that could still be measured after the four weeks. The best one offered small rewards for coming back after a missed workout.

A fresh start gives a push. At one university gym with 11,912 student members, the chance of a visit rose by 33.4% at the start of a week, 14.4% at the start of a month, 11.6% at the start of a year and 47.1% at the start of a semester. These are estimates against a baseline, from a single gym.

What these numbers can't tell you

• Predictable is not the same as automatic. The gym study measures how regular a person's visits are. It can't say whether going feels effortless.
• Gym visits only. The records show that someone checked in. They don't show what the person did there, and they say nothing about exercise outside a gym.
• Regular users. The 60,277 are described as regular gym users, so the result may not describe people who sign up and soon stop.
• Small groups elsewhere. The 91 days rests on 13 people and the stretching figures on 48 students.
• Extrapolated values. Both stretching figures lie beyond the days the study ran.
• Two abstracts. We could not open the full text of the new-gym-members study or the stretching study, so their methods are known to us only in outline.
• One supplement unopened. How many gym members the 68 to 78 days covers is in a supplement we did not read.

What to do with this

1. Plan for two to three months. Three weeks is too short a test. A 30-day sheet is the first of several, so print the 30-day habit tracker again when the first one is full.
2. Fix your days. Most members in the gym records were more likely to go on the weekdays they had gone on before. Choose the days once and keep them.
3. Start with four sessions a week if you can. That was the minimum for new gym members over their first six weeks.
4. After a missed session, go to the next one. The longer the gap, the less likely the next visit, and the programme that worked best rewarded people for coming back. Does missing a day break a habit has the studies, and how to build a daily streak has a rule for getting back the next day.
5. Keep the workout simple. Low complexity went with a habit that grew among new gym members.

For more figures on habits, goals and New Year's resolutions, each with its source, see the resolution and habit statistics. To keep an exercise goal next to its steps, GoalTracker holds your goals in your browser, free and with no account.

Sources

1. Buyalskaya, Ho, Milkman, Li, Duckworth and Camerer (2023). What can machine learning teach us about habit formation? Evidence from exercise and hygiene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, e2216115120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2216115120. Correction: doi:10.1073/pnas.2312763120. Open access, article and correction read in full; supplement not opened.
2. Kaushal and Rhodes (2015). Exercise habit formation in new gym members: a longitudinal study. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 38(4), 652-663. doi:10.1007/s10865-015-9640-7. Abstract only.
3. Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology 40(6), 998-1009. doi:10.1002/ejsp.674. Read in full.
4. Fournier and others (2017). Effects of circadian cortisol on the development of a health habit. Health Psychology 36(11), 1059-1064. doi:10.1037/hea0000510. Abstract only.
5. van der Weiden, Benjamins, Gillebaart, Ybema and de Ridder (2020). How to Form Good Habits? A Longitudinal Field Study on the Role of Self-Control in Habit Formation. Frontiers in Psychology 11:560. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00560. Open access, read in full; supplement not opened.
6. Milkman and others (2021). Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science. Nature 600, 478-483. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04128-4. Abstract only.
7. Dai, Milkman and Riis (2014). The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science 60(10), 2563-2582. Read in full.

FAQ

How long does it take to make exercise a habit?

About two to three months in the largest study that timed it: 68 to 78 days, from the check-in records of 60,277 gym members. A study of 111 new gym members found a minimum of four sessions a week for six weeks.

Does it take six months to form a gym habit?

The first published version of a 2023 study said 122 to 226 days, about 4 to 7 months. The authors corrected that to 68 to 78 days, about 2 to 3 months. A page that gives six months may be quoting the withdrawn figure.

How many times a week do I need to exercise for it to become a habit?

In one study of 111 new gym members, at least four sessions a week for six weeks was the minimum. It is a single study, and we read only its abstract.

Does exercise take longer to become a habit than other things?

It may. In one study the median was 91 days for exercise, 65 for an eating behaviour and 59 for a drinking behaviour, though the difference was not statistically significant. In another, hand-washing settled in weeks and going to the gym took months.

Does missing a workout break the habit?

In gym records, the longer it had been since a member's last visit, the less likely a visit became, and that held for 76% of members. So the thing to avoid is a long gap: go to the next session you had planned.