Why You Should Not Rely on Willpower

There are all kinds of diets out there that teach people how to eat healthier to lose weight.  They generally all have you reduce fast food, and eat more vegetables.  At the heart of them all though, they essentially rely on willpower.  When you are given a list of foods you can’t eat, or told how many points you can have in a week, this is essentially proposing that you use willpower to resist the foods that cause weight gain.  When you are motivated to lose weight, this often works for a short period of time, but then slowly the weight always comes back.  This is why many people have tried several diets, all with different angles to them and different focuses, but have not managed to keep the weight off long term.  Why is this?  To understand this concept better, we need to understand willpower and why is does not work in the long run.

What Is Willpower?

Willpower is what you are using when you try to resist something.  Resisting something, whether it is spending too much money while shopping, an unpleasant emotion, or a food you are craving takes significant mental energy.   Research has shown time and time again that you do not have an unlimited supply of mental energy for these difficult tasks.  Willpower takes a large amount of your mental energy and becomes depleted over time. 

Roy F. Baumeister has studied willpower extensively.  One of his most famous experiments on willpower is described in his 2011 book with science journalist John Tierney Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.  In this experiment, students were asked to fast and then arrive hungry for experiments.  He randomized his subjects into 3 groups: One group was not offered any food, but the other two groups were placed in a room with both radishes and chocolate chip cookies.  The first group placed in the room with food was told they could eat anything they wanted. The second group was placed in the same room with both the cookies and the radishes but told they could only eat the radishes.  All three groups were then asked to work on very difficult, unsolvable geometry puzzles.  The results were fascinating in that the groups who were not offered food, or were told they could eat anything worked on the puzzles for approximately 20 minutes before giving up.  The group who had been exposed to the cookies, but told they could only eat radishes gave up after only 8 minutes! 

What can we learn from this experiment?  While you might be tempted to draw the conclusion that cookies are better for your brain than radishes, note that the control group that was not offered any food and had to work while hungry had approximately the same results as the group that ate the cookies.  Baumeister draws the conclusion that so much mental energy was used resisting the cookies that there was less mental energy available for working on the puzzles.  In this way, he proposes that willpower is a muscle that fatigues like any other muscle with significant use.  You can only do so many bicep curls at the gym before your muscle completely fatigues.  Similarly, you can only use so much mental energy before you lose your ability to resist. 

The same mental energy that is needed to resist temptation and exert willpower, is also the same energy that is needed to make difficult decisions and concentrate on difficult projects.  This is why the subjects in the experiment had difficulty with complex puzzles after having to use willpower.  With this in mind, you can start to see this in action in your own life.  A typical day might include getting stuck in traffic, solving difficult problems at work, and having an emotionally charged conversation with your teenager.  By the time you get home in the evening it can seem like an impossible task to even decide what to have for dinner.  This is due to the extreme mental energy that has been used all day, and by the time you come home you are literally running on empty.  This is the time when you are most vulnerable to go off your food protocol, and just order take out.  You no longer have the mental strength for willpower and your diet plan fails.

How to Not Need Willpower

If we know that our willpower will give out, how can anyone lose weight?  The key is to not rely on willpower.  Willpower takes far more mental energy, and will not serve you well in the end.  It may last for a few days but knowing that it will fatigue makes it a poor choice for long term success.

The first step is to plan ahead.  I recommend that you pick a day that works well for you to do your meal planning for the week.  For most of my clients, this is Sunday.  Schedule this time for yourself to think about what you would like to eat for the week, make a shopping list, and then get only the items on your list.  Plan all meals, including breakfasts, lunches, and dinners as well as your weekly joy eat if you choose one. By spending the dedicated time in advance, you are using the prefrontal cortex, the center of your brain that makes complex decisions (and takes all the energy!).  Once you have made these decisions, and written them down, you completely free up your brain and mental energy for the rest of the week.  All you need to do is stick to the plan – no decisions to be made.  You have a menu, you have the ingredients on hand, so sticking with your protocol becomes infinitely easier. 

What about temptations that come up during the day?  You will notice that cookies in the break room are harder to resist later in the day than the donuts brought in first thing in the morning.  By the afternoon, willpower is starting to give out as your mental energy is becoming depleted.  This is why it is so important to manage your thinking.  When you see a cookie that you want, you are not using willpower to “resist” the cookie.  You acknowledge the craving for the cookie, but remember that you are making a choice.  That cookie is not serving your long term goals.  Having your goals written down to refer back to is helpful in this situation.  You are not resisting, but rather allowing the urge, and making a different choice that you have decided on ahead of time.  This seems similar but is actually very different for your brain.  When you tell yourself you cannot have something, your brain becomes fixated on it, requiring more and more energy to resist it.  As you do this more, it becomes much easier, and uses much less mental energy than willpower. 

Plan Ahead and Manage Your Thinking

Planning ahead and managing your thoughts around your food plan will make the difference in your success.  In my coaching sessions we work extensively on how to manage your thoughts around food, so that you are not using willpower.  In this way, my clients learn to have freedom around food, and use far less mental energy to achieve their weight loss goals.  This is the key reason why most commercial diet plans fail.   

If you are interested in learning more, please schedule a free consultation session with me.