Many people believe that sticking to a nutritional plan (or "diet") is just a matter of willpower. And for a few people it is: they can give themselves strict rules and stick to them. But for most people, this is not a good long-term strategy. It's extremely difficult to keep willpower active all the time: in the face of constant advertising or peer pressure, after a poor night's sleep, during times of increased stress, etc.
What is "willpower" anyway? Ultimately, it's self-control: the ability to make ourselves do (or don't) some specific action or actions. Willpower can be called "tenacity" or "resolve." There is no standard measure for it, but we can consider two variables:
- The difficulty of the action or actions to control. For example, taking at least one hundred steps per day versus running five miles per day.
- The duration of the challenge. Using the previous example, consider having to run five miles per day for two consecutive days versus every day for a year.
The big problem with relying on willpower to reach your nutritional (or fat-loss) goals is that there is no fixed duration. You might try to drastically cut calories for a couple of weeks to drop some weight but once you go back to your usual diet you'll just put the weight back on (and possibly more).
Instead, we want to build good habits that we can keep up indefinitely without effort. We've already visited some of these, such as eating until 80% full, having an effective pre-sleep routine, tracking your food intake, and eating mindfully (or at least slower).
So why discuss willpower at all? Because it helps with building new habits. Every habit involves a loop of cue, routine, and reward. In order to change a habit, we need to change the routine we do when presented with a cue. At first, that will take conscious effort: willpower. If we can do it long enough, the automatic response to the cue will be the new routine and thus a habit. So while willpower isn't the long-term solution, it is a valuable tool in developing habits that will last (no pun intended).
Fortunately, there are things we can do to help develop our willpower. That's what we'll be doing in this Blitz: some exercises to develop willpower. While continuing our previous activities, of course, because they can involve willpower too.