Michelle Segar
Dr. Michelle Segar is an award-winning, NIH-funded researcher who investigates the drivers of sustainable behavior change. For more than thirty years she has studied how to help people adopt physical activity and other lifestyle behaviors in ways that can be sustained within the unpredictability of daily life.
Dr. Segar’s research is widely recognized as practical for real-world application. She was previously the inaugural chair of the United States National Physical Activity Plan’s Communications Committee, and has been an advisor to the World Health Organization and the Department of Health and Human Services. She is frequently interviewed in major media including The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, Forbes, Prevention, Real Simple, and TIME Magazine.
Her pragmatic research questions reflect the synergy between her academic work and the sustainable-change lifestyle coaching she’s been doing with individuals since the late 1990s. Dr. Segar’s interdisciplinary research focuses on three areas: (1) understanding the influence of people’s beliefs, mindsets, and goals on their daily priorities and health-behavior-related decisions; (2) the role that cultural norms and pressures play in shaping people’s thinking and approach to lifestyle behaviors; and (3) developing theory-based systems and messages to help people reframe their mindsets, goals, and tactics to better motivate and support long-term behavioral maintenance. She develops sustainable-change interventions for lifestyle behaviors across digital, telephonic, and in-person settings within academia and industry.
Dr. Segar’s training and insights are uniquely comprehensive. She has a doctorate in Psychology (PhD), a master’s degree in Health Behavior/Health Education (MPH), and a master’s degree in Kinesiology (MS) from the University of Michigan (UM). She was awarded fellowships in health care policy and translational research from the UM, is a fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and has received numerous grants including from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation, and the National Physical Activity Plan Alliance. Her research is published in peer-reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and Journal of Obesity, and in 2025 she was senior author on a “Paper of the Year” in the American Journal of Health Promotion.
No Sweat!, her bestselling book about lasting exercise motivation - was chosen as one of the “Ten Best Books on Health, Fitness, and Nutrition” by The Economic Times, won the “Health: Diet & Exercise” category in the USA Best Book Awards, and is being used to train health coaching professionals. Her second book, The Joy Choice, explores the science-based “how to’s” for creating sustainable eating and exercise and was named “one of the best health books experts read” in The Washington Post.
For more information: MichelleSegar.com