Do you lack willpower:

[spatzcat]

quote (John Stone)

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again for those who may not have seen it. I call this my “Million Dollar Challengeâ€. If you think you lack willpower, then this is for you…

If I were to offer you one million dollars in tax-free cash just for sticking 100% to your fat loss diet and not missing any workouts for three months could you do it? Duh. There’s not a single person reading this right now who would not walk away with that million bucks at the end of the three months. So if you say things like, “Oh, I wish I had so-and-so’s willpower!â€, well you can just knock that crap off right now. Telling yourself that you lack willpower is an absolutely terrible excuse, and I just proved it.

Your success or failure really boils down to just one thing: do you want it, or not?

[Waldo]

If you lack the true desire to succeed, there really is no point in wasting your time trying to lose weight, you have already failed. Even if you happen to get lucky and lose a bit, the chance that it stays lost is virtually nil.

Dieting is not the answer. You have to be willing to commit to lifestyle change for good.

If your desire is right, failure simply isn't an option.

People have an amazing ability to tell themselves they want something, when the reality is they are just lying to themselves.

I have heard it phrased differently than $1M (paraphrasing a bit....). If your doctor told you that in exactly one years time if you failed to lose 50 pounds you would contract a painful terminal disease, would you fail? Almost nobody would. With strong enough desire there is no chance of failure.

[ETFnerd]

to me, willpower by itself is bullsh!t... you either have a good plan and execution or you don't... even with a good plan, you can still fail... if you don't commit all your chips at once, you can fail and fight another day...

to illustrate, take a battlefield for example... both sides want to win... have the willpower to do everything it takes because the stakes are high... only one side is going to win... same with a soccer game or a football game or tennis match... sometimes it's not for lack of willpower that you lose... sometimes you aren't ready to win... your planning and execution maybe just weren't good enough yet... the former is maybe terminal, the latter isn't...

do you think a team loses the super bowl because they didn't have the will to win? ... maybe, but more likely the plan and execution weren't good enough...

it's not enough to want to do it, you also have to know what to do and how to do it... we see examples of people here who stick religiously to their plan, bust their a$$, and don't end up with their desired results...

willpower is a necessary but not sufficient condition...

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

I ate 4500 calories on Saturday. Sometimes I choose not to have willpower. Sometimes I want a burger more than to lose weight. This is what makes me a fat kid. Trying to decrease the frequency of fat kid food is the key.

[spatzcat]

I ate alot of carbs on the weekend. I was on carb overload. sometimes I let life get in the way....and it cheeses me off. thank god it's monday.

[Waldo]

to me, willpower by itself is bullsh!t... you either have a good plan and execution or you don't... even with a good plan, you can still fail... if you don't commit all your chips at once, you can fail and fight another day...

to illustrate, take a battlefield for example... both sides want to win... have the willpower to do everything it takes because the stakes are high... only one side is going to win... same with a soccer game or a football game or tennis match... sometimes it's not for lack of willpower that you lose... sometimes you aren't ready to win... your planning and execution maybe just weren't good enough yet... the former is maybe terminal, the latter isn't...

do you think a team loses the super bowl because they didn't have the will to win? ... maybe, but more likely the plan and execution weren't good enough...

it's not enough to want to do it, you also have to know what to do and how to do it... we see examples of people here who stick religiously to their plan, bust their a$$, and don't end up with their desired results...

willpower is a necessary but not sufficient condition...

Team vs. team sports are a bad analogy though because there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser. Unless you have a medical condition that prevents it, everybody that wants to win can.

Pretty much everybody starts off with a poor plan and poorer execution. People that are successful continuously refine their plan and perfect their execution.

[reboundstudent]

I ate alot of carbs on the weekend. I was on carb overload. sometimes I let life get in the way....and it cheeses me off. thank god it's monday.

That was also my weekend, due to a lot of time constraints and emotional trauma. (I substituted a bowl of mustard pretzels for ice cream. Progress?)

Still, we also need to give ourselves credit when we do succeed. I think that's a big part of willpower. For example, on Saturday I went shopping with a friend. I knew in advance there would be nothing for me to eat, so I packed a snack of almonds and raw blueberries. After about an hour, the friend wanted to stop for a snack because she'd only had a few pieces of pizza for lunch, so I found myself sitting at a Cinnabon eating my almonds as my friend polished off an entire sticky bun. While complaining about her weight and how she needs to "cut out the crap."

High-fiving a million angels moment for me.

[ETFnerd]

what if you come from a place where you are surrounded by bad role models, live in constant fear for your safety, have to work 3 minimum wage jobs to put enough food on the table, have to care for disabled people in your household, want to achieve professional success in a competitive field, are a student paying their own way through college without assistance, etc?

sure, you can come from a modest background and out-earn warren buffett, but what are your chances? if your willpower gets you a chance that is a zero followed by a decimal point, followed by many more zeros... then willpower is bullsh!t... not everybody can do it by force of will...

[Silvergamma]

It's been my experience that willpower is only one part of the equation for being successful. It's an important one for sure, but losing weight, getting healthy, meting goals involves more than just avoiding the cookie jar. Most of us put on weight due to deeper issues than just poor impulse control.

I know that for me personally, I packed on the excess weight due to a combination of depression, apathy, and low self esteem. My personal turning point involved learning to love myself, educating myself about what I should be doing to get in shape and eat better, and discovering the motivation that I needed to make it happen. Just straight deprivation style willpower lock down doesn't work for me, because when I fall (like we all do from time to time), the guilt can be almost as derailing as the cookie was.

[Waldo]

sure, you can come from a modest background and out-earn warren buffett, but what are your chances? if your willpower gets you a chance that is a zero followed by a decimal point, followed by many more zeros... then willpower is bullsh!t... not everybody can do it by force of will...

Yes but this requires an enormous amount of luck.

Losing weight is much closer to quitting smoking analogy-wise than out earning Warren Buffet. Everybody that smokes can quit smoking. If your desire to quit becomes absolute, you will eventually succeed even if you fall off the horse a few times along the path.

It was quitting smoking in fact (and a few failed attempts at both quitting smoking and losing weight) that showed me that the path to success is desire, get your mind in the right place and success will follow. And also what that state of mind truly is. You have to be totally on board with and willing to change your habits.

Between the two IMHO quitting smoking was more difficult. Once you pass through the hunger pangs of the first week or two, nothing with losing weight can compare to a really intense nicotine craving (which can come and go over the course of months/years, the worst were at the 1-2 month mark) or the real withdrawl symptoms (really bad sleeplessness for me, lasted 3 months).

Being fat isn't necessarily an addiction to eating like crap (so it is different than smoking in that sense), but the part that rings true is lifestyle/habit change. Changing your eating and exercise habits permanently is actually quite similar to changing your habits to quit smoking (especially the way I quit).

[Silvergamma]

... get your mind in the right place and success will follow.

The more eloquent version of what I was trying to say .

[oystergirl]

This is an interesting discussion and I kind of feel like I am on both sides of it.

Having a plan for me is key. I know no amount of willpower was gonna keep me sticking to a low fat, low nutrient diet. I needed to have a nutrient dense balanced program. I knew that no amount of will power was gonna make me stick to an excessive exercise program, and the minute i would injure myself, which I invariably would because I was not taking the limitations of my body into concern, that would give me the green light to feel sorry for myself and eat like crazy all the foods I had deprived myself of.

Having a moderate plan with a balanced diet, eating foods I love and cutting out things that I dont really mind but other people have trouble with (fruit, breads, candy, pop etc....can take them or leave them)..and having a consistent, focused and joint friendly exercise program with built in cheat days where I feel joyful eating or drinking what I want and have zero guilt about it because it is my reward for a week well done has helped me to stick to my program. As of now I have been on this program for 62 days and have not missed a day, nor fallen off the wagon and those days included christmas, thanksgiving, new years, a death in the family, my daughter in an accident, my dear friend with a dangerous illness and now my daughters friends father committed suicide. There are always reasons or excuses to fall off your program and for me, having a weekend where I eat carbs might be needed, but in the long run, the more you stick to it, the better you will feel and the more you will turn TO your program for comfort and not away from it.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

http://www.leangains.com/2010/01/marshmallow-test.html

It's funny that I just came across this article while reading leangains (IFing is fun!). It has great applicability. If you don't want to eat the marshmallow, don't focus on the marshmallow!

I'm getting using to fasting in the morning and I've found that if I keep myself busy and ignore the hunger, its much easier not to give in. Also, thinking of hunger as a positive thing helps a lot as well. i think of hunger as fat leaving the body, and it keeps me going a bit longer. I lasted until 2:30 today, which is basically my goal for my first meal.

[hfurm]

I like what Krista Scott Dixon (stumptous.com) has to say about willpower in her e-book F*** Calories.

If you struggle to "do the right thing" when it comes to food, you're not a sloth; your rational brain is just over-booked. Your self-control is busy preventing you from stabbing your boss, shoplifting, and running red lights.

Thus, "willpower" won't help you much when it comes to eating. It's an overdrawn bank account.

Use stronger stuff: scheduling, structure, social support, space, systems, and strategies.

Emphasis mine. When I find those six S's are on track and in line with my will to be healthy, everything falls into place.

Her book is awesome. You can download it here: F*** Calories (Did I mention it was free?)

[Sloth the Enduring]

If I have to rely on will power it's a struggle. What works better for me is to bypass will power and instead try to turn things into a habit or part of the daily routine, then will power only comes into play as you establish the habit. For example one way I cleaned up my diet was by buying fruit and yoghurt and getting in the habit of bringing it to work for breakfast instead of stopping for doughnuts - while I was establishing the habit I helped my will power by not carrying cash to work.

[Daffy]

If your doctor told you that in exactly one years time if you failed to lose 50 pounds you would contract a painful terminal disease, would you fail? Almost nobody would.

That sounds like it would be true, but unfortunately it sometimes isn't. My girlfriend's dad was a doctor who worked with diabetics and people frequently ignored his advice, even if it meant they would die. People would neglect to take their medicine, even if it was free. Some people did die or came close. It seems like some people just don't care much if they're alive.

Getting fit usually requires a mix of will power and environment change. It's hard to get fit in the wrong environment, no matter how much will power we have.

[Rosie]

coreyD that was a really interesting read. I agree that if you set it up to become a way of life, you're more likely to succeed. The amount of times I've seen colleagues go on a big health kick eating only salad for lunch and drinking water and yet they are the same colleagues who, 4 weeks later, are back on McDonalds cheese burgers! Whereas you see the ones who make smalll changes which add up to bigger changes and those are the ones that stick.

[ETFnerd]

That sounds like it would be true, but unfortunately it sometimes isn't. My girlfriend's dad was a doctor who worked with diabetics and people frequently ignored his advice, even if it meant they would die. People would neglect to take their medicine, even if it was free. Some people did die or came close. It seems like some people just don't care much if they're alive.

Getting fit usually requires a mix of will power and environment change. It's hard to get fit in the wrong environment, no matter how much will power we have.

That sounds right. If everybody heeded their doctor's advice there would be a lot less preventable terminal disease.

[Summer827]

At the beginning of this particular journey, I think that I did lack "willpower". I think I had more of a "grim determination." I'm feeling pretty motivated these days, though, and I am interested to see what's going to happen in the coming months/years. I got back in the gym with some regularity in late Oct/early Nov. 2011. Pretty much just because my pants were tight and I was not buying new ones. I knew what would work, so I cut the calories back and started exercising. For me, real motivation (same or different as willpower?) came after the fact. I have discovered that when I am exercising, I love it and when I'm not, I don't. Fortunately, this time I discovered that I really, really like weights and want

Kind of off-topic, but this time around (over the past 15 years I've never been consistent with exercise, but have started a similar process many times!) feels different. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have a desire to set goals beyond fitting into clothes. I don't quite yet know what are reasonable concrete goals for me yet...I'm in the beginning stages of strength training, but I feel like that will come as I consistently follow a program and learn more about what I CAN do. I hope that setting goals and celebrating victories along the way will help keep me motivated this time around!

[Guest Snake McClain]

maybe we should switch the word "willpower" with "dedication".

[spatzcat]

"It needs to be part of your daily routine, but it needs to blend in. Again, background noise and balanced. Or else you won't last."

I agree with this. I do think I have amazing will power, 90% of the time, but If I think of things as a life long goal, I don't freak out when I have the occasional poor judgement day.

It needs to be a lifestyle choice, a life long lifestyle - I 100% agree with this.

[msuroo]

coreyD that was a really interesting read. I agree that if you set it up to become a way of life, you're more likely to succeed. The amount of times I've seen colleagues go on a big health kick eating only salad for lunch and drinking water and yet they are the same colleagues who, 4 weeks later, are back on McDonalds cheese burgers! Whereas you see the ones who make smalll changes which add up to bigger changes and those are the ones that stick.

I don't really think it's the size of the change that determines success rate, but the motivation. Some people make small changes at a time, because it is the best way for them to be successful. For me, it was easier to leave all of the bad dietary habits behind at once - like Waldo's smoking example, the best way not to eat crappy food is to not eat crappy food! Anyway, the people that eat salads for 4 weeks then revert back to full time fast food don't really have a motivation to be healthy, or are lying to themselves about why they want to be. Once I realized I actually wanted to be fit, eating right was easy.

[aj_rock]

Guys, I think what ETF is trying to say is that willpower is powerless without the right amount of knowledge, planning, and execution involved.

I personally have seen friends of mine run themselves into the ground and overtrain. Why? Because they actually tried too hard .

Because they lacked the knowledge to know when to take things easy, or to just goddamn eat something, they lost everything. Good planning, consultation, and execution, combined with that willpower, would have got them where they wanted to go.