THE WAR AGAINST WILTING WILLPOWER

Many thanks to longtime reader Annette for the link to this article,  and for pointing out its correlation to dieting. Although the article itself addresses the question of why it is so difficult to escape poverty, it discusses in detail the psychology of self-control, including some interesting studies. In a nutshell, writes author Jamie Holmes, "Willpower seems to be a depletable resource". She quotes a researcher from Case Western University, Roy Baumeister, who found that "After you exert self-control in any sphere at all, like resisting dessert, you have less self-control at the next task." Additionally, the researchers found that any decision requiring a tradeoff (such as skipping bread so you can have dessert) also wears down our willpower for future decisions.

The article suggests that the poor must constantly make difficult decisions, resulting in mental fatigue and actually reducing willpower and the ability to make good decisions. Every decision is more consequential to the poor, because it costs them more in terms of money and resources.

It's easy to see how this applies to those of us struggling with weight and health. We have to make dozens of decisions every day about what and how much to eat, and anyone who does this for any length of time, even successfully, realizes that it does indeed get  very tiring.

The question is, how can we circumvent the mental fatigue and reduction in the potency of our willpower, especially since we know we're going to face these decisions every single day?

Annette suggested, and I think she's right, that the food plan is one way to go about it. I've been a big fan of Dr. Beck's food plan idea from day one, and I think it has significant advantages over the traditional food log. Here's the difference: a food log or journal is simply a record of what you've eaten on a particular day. It is supposed to help by keeping you accountable. I have never liked them because they seem to me to have a punitive nature --- you MUST report what you ate, you pig! --- and because they seem to me to take control/ownership away from you. They are reactionary instead of being pro-active.

A food plan, on the other hand, gives you a roadmap which YOU create. You can choose what foods to eat, when, and how much. You are in control. And all you have to do is write it every day and follow your plan. It takes the last-minute decision making out of the picture, because you have ALREADY made a decision about what to eat, and you have ALREADY made a decision to follow that plan. You may have to remind yourself, firmly, that you have made this decision, but it's kind of like arguing with a little kid. This is what we said we'd do, and we are going to do it. This is how we do things.

Another way to bolster that willpower is through constant reminders about what your goals are and why you want to reach them --- such as the lists of reasons why you want to lose weight and your written responses to the excuses your brain comes up with. It's really important to keep these things at hand and use them to reinforce your decision to be healthier as often as it takes. And it will take many, many repetitions.

I know that these things work. They're how I've lost weight in the past. The trick for me seems to be coming up with new, creative delivery systems, because even the best reminders can lose their power after a while. You've got to make it as easy on yourself as possible to have success  by planning, by reminding, by keeping your tools at hand, and by taking yourself out of trigger situations. And you just have to repeat as necessary. No one's going to have a one hundred percent success rate; it's not about that. It's about keeping at it. Every moment is a new opportunity.

And now, if you'll excuse me ... I have to write my food and exercise plan for tomorrow.  I did well today -- stayed on plan despite frozen yogurt temptation, and did my cardio. Tomorrow's workout includes the dreaded Abs Ripper but I will just crunch away, imagining that the sweat is fat cells melting off my body! Or as someone once told me, "That's not sweat, that's your fat cells crying!" And I will make them howl!

Comments

[Jamie]

Thank you and I agree with the meal planning. Most of the time it is hard to be has disciplined as I'm supposed to be with my eating habbits. I have figured out a meal planning system that works for me it is similiar to the Jamie Holmes information. I figure out what I'm going to eat for a week, then make the grocery list and go to the store. This helps make my day to day decisions much easier.

[Gregory Schieffer]

Psychology and willpower are interchangeable aren't they. The environment we are surrounded by certainly has a role in how we behave in everything we do. Our ability to pick and choose what and how we eat is definitly connected to our means. There have been a lot of studies done about the kinds of foods that lower income people have access to and most of the studies show the cheaper the food the worse it is for your diet. Thank you for the information.

[Princess Dieter]

~~Princess Dieter, you are right that establishing those habits does make it easier. (Dr. Beck calls it "exercising your resistance muscle"). The problem is that every time you fail to exercise that muscle, you reinforce the wrong habits and can slip back into your old ways. You have to be very vigilant, which of course gets tiring. This is what I am now most interested in, this next phase: how do we maintain these habits which, after all, are not natural to us? ~~

I tell my fatfighting buddies this all the time: that "vacation" from the diet will make it harder to get back on track. I don't take vacations. Not on days off, not on birthdays. I plan for the extra calories, say, 400 more calories at a party/Thanksgiving, by cutting back the week before/exercising more, then enjoy the extra food. But it's extra good food, not a pass to eat half a cake!

The majority of folks I've seen decide to just eat the way they want for a cruise or special event then has to struggle like mad to get back in losing/maintaining mode, and some never get back on track weeks and months later.

I learned that lesson from Kessler: don't mess with the new habit circuitry. You do so at your own habit-peril.

Every excess needs to be carefully chosen and planned for, and that's where vigilance comes in. The eating plan itself should be auto-matic pilot mostly. Daily life can be...routine. It's the speical occasions/holidays/vacations that are minefields above all. And some folks have an excuse to break plan every weekend (anniversary, birthdays, holidays, church event, conference, etc). We like making excuses to overeat, don't we?

And yes, very complex. It's not just about decision making/willpower. It's a convergence--a perfect storm--of bad things hitting us. Food advertisement included. I mean, honestly, did they have a barrage of perfectly plotted food commercial attacks in great grandma's day?

[Cindy]

Rebecca, you're right, and what a vivid image! Having done a couple of aqua aerobic classes I know just what you mean! But I can't help but wonder if a more positive image might help. I envision this as a journey with no destination, a long and interesting road from which I will sometimes detour ... at times on purpose, and other times accidentally ... but I can always find my way back to the main road and keep going. All I have to do is keep moving. And there are many, many rewards (as well as challenges) along the way!

Princess Dieter, you are right that establishing those habits does make it easier. (Dr. Beck calls it "exercising your resistance muscle"). The problem is that every time you fail to exercise that muscle, you reinforce the wrong habits and can slip back into your old ways. You have to be very vigilant, which of course gets tiring. This is what I am now most interested in, this next phase: how do we maintain these habits which, after all, are not natural to us?

As for the obesity epidemic among the poor
(and not just the poor), I think there are a number of factors that contribute. We are a much more sedentary society and grow increasingly so every generation; poor quality, high calorie fast food is cheap, plentiful, and readily available on every street corner especially in urban areas; many families no longer have a designated "homemaker" with time to prepare healthy foods. There is also a distinct lack of education about *real* nutrition, and often the information that is available is heavily influenced by corporate food interests. It's a complex issue.

[RebeccaNYC]

Such a thought provoking post, Thanks. I think of this process as keeping a ball underwater at all times. Its hard...and eventually you will lose grip of the ball. My thing is to acknowledge that, allow the ball to fly up, then grab it and shove it under water again. I do this over and over again. Exhausting.

[Princess Dieter]

This was discussed in books on "change" that I read as I began my weight loss journey in earnest last year. I wanted to know HOW humans change, so instead of diet books, I chose those kinds.

What I find is that if you ingrain the habits, it gets easier, because the "making a decision" factor is basically minimized or eradicated. You already know what foods/meals to make (a sort of repertoire of solid foods and meals that successful dieters/maintainer rely on), what to order in restaurant, so decision-making is not really an issue. You are in ZEN zone. Which is why I believe it's worth making the effort at first to get into that groove of what you will and won't eat, what meals and snacks work best, and then go on semi-automatic pilot.

As far as the poor--and my famly was once in that category, immigrants, living in the South Bronx, depending on rice and beans to fill our bellies--why are the poor now so fat when they weren't in the past? The poor now have actually fewer stresses than the poor in PRE-safety-net days (ie, before Medicaid, food stamps, Welfare programs, SSI), they still had the hard decisions to make in the past (when it was literally life or death, even, without the social networks today, as iffy as they can be).

The poor in previous generations were not fat, but still had hard and numerous decisions to make daily about bills, shelter, meals, education for children, work (or search for work), charity, etc.

But we have an obesity epidemic among the poor.