Why weight loss is more than just about willpower

Shem Correces
Aug 8, 2017 · 9 min read

Losing weight seems to be the most common goal on everybody’s lists come the first day of the year. That, I can understand. But trust me on this one — by February more than half of everybody who have woken up to see the brand new day full of determination either went back to their old eating habits, or scratched off their diet only to try something new.

That’s not a new territory nobody has come across. If I ask you right now, how many times have you decided to start dieting only to fall for another treat that’s lying in your home? Too many to count, right? And yet, most of us have blamed ourselves time and time again for our lack of self-control whenever we fell for a gorgeous looking pizza, a delicious-looking cake, or a whole slice of melting brown chocolate just because they taste yummy.

Pizza! Can I have a slice? Oh wait, I’m counting calories!

If you’ve always been frustrated for falling for that “trap” again and again, maybe you better stop whipping yourself in the ass — science has determined many times that you need more than willpower in the battle for weight loss to win the whole war.

It Comes Down To Your Environment
Duh, this is obvious. If you’re surrounded by fat people who like to eat, you’re likely to eat, right? Have you ever wondered why this is so?

That’s because we’re social creatures. When we’re surrounded by people who are eating something, we’d most likely want to have it, too. That’s never been more evident in a social setting like parties or family gatherings, when we don’t want to be the odd man out just because we’re counting calories. And it would ring the bell even more if the food they’re having happens to be an all-time favorite. Now who can resist that?

At a party, I’ll just eat whatever.

But take it a few years back when the only people we’ve ever known were our mom and dad. While obesity is part genetic and part environmental, you can’t deny that our own eating habits have been developed since the time when we were born. And that includes those from our own parents, who may either be eating like there’s no tomorrow so we got to pick up their habits, too. So don’t blame yourself entirely just because you seemingly can’t control your urges. Habits are extremely hard to break especially if they’ve been a part of you since you were five — sometimes you get to do them just even without thinking.

Habits Make You Eat Even The Bad Ones
Since we’ve been talking ‘bout habits, here’s another even worse news. If you’ve already been habituated to eat something in a specific environment, no matter what that food tastes you will still get to eat it — just because you’re used to.

Habits determine 45 percent of the choices we make every day, and that is a lot especially if that includes our eating and fitness habits as well. So if we have bad habits, that can equate to some unnecessary pounds that might be hard to erase with exercise alone.

Researchers from USC found that habits are what drive people to eat a certain food in a given environment even if that food does not taste good.

In a study, researchers gave people about to enter a movie theater either fresh popcorn or a week-old stale popcorn, which didn’t taste just as good as the fresh ones.

It was reported that movie goers ate just the same amount regardless of whether the popcorn was stale or not.

“When we’ve repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present,” said David Neal, one of the researchers for the study.

Who needs popcorn while watching movies?

If we apply this discovery in real life, that would mean we get to do the same things every day when certain environmental cues entice us to eat. That includes sitting in front of the tv at night, before the computer, or while reading a book. That will cause most of us to eat mindlessly, without caring how much calories we put in.

So how do we counteract this habit if we’re faced with these situations every day?

Researchers suggest using our non-dominant hand to disrupt one’s eating habits. This will cause us to pay more attention to what we were eating, and that will help us eat less.

A Strong Resolve Is Not Enough
At the end of the day, while all of us have that strong resolve to eat only the healthy ones, that seem to break later on which cause us to go back to our old ways of living. And why is this so?

According to Dr. Howard Rankin, an expert on behavioral change:

“What drives our behavior is not logic but brain biochemistry, habits and addiction, states of consciousness and what we see people around us doing. We are emotional beings with the ability to rationalize — not rational beings with emotions. If we are stressed, depressed or addicted, no matter how good the advice we are given, chances are that we will not be able to act on it. The more primitive, emotional brain generally has precedence over the newer, more rational brain.”

Which means that while we humans think we have more control over our choices, the reality is we are emotional beings, and factors like stress, anxiety, addiction and heck even our emotions can limit our choices which may not be the ones we consciously want.

One moment we’re fully determined to choose what’s good for us and avoid the wrong ones, but at the end of the day something happens that really upsets us which cause us to throw away the smart choices we’ve made, and say to hell with it and eat something comforting.

Can You Train Your Willpower?
Which begs us to question our willpower. Are we hopeless, after all, in choosing what’s best for us and sticking to it? Does willpower really play a role in fitness, nutrition and weight loss?

Science says hope is not lost. The good news is it’s possible to practice and strengthen one’s self-control or willpower — and eat healthy and lose more weight.

While this is a little too obvious (after all you get to exercise more and make healthier choices if you will yourself and practice self-restraint), an experiment was conducted to know if this can be done.

Researchers from The Miriam Hospital’s Weight Control and Diabetes Center conducted a test on 40 people who were enrolled in a six-month behavioral weight loss intervention.

After each session, participants were asked to do the handgrip task, a tool commonly used to measure how long one can hold onto a handgrip. The participants experienced an averse stimuli, during which they had to override it with their desire to end that task which was to hold on to it with an intensity for as long as possible.

The second study involved twenty-three participants in the same session, this time with the handgrip task done before and after each weight loss session.

Individuals who have lost weight, not only showed immense self-control, but also attended more group meetings and immersed themselves more in physical activity and ate healthier.

Lesson of the story? Even if old habits die hard, will yourself to replace them with new ones on a consistent, daily basis until they become second nature to you.

A “Coach” To The Rescue
The environment really does take play the odds in one’s possibility to lose weight more than people ever do realize, and for those who’re either too prone to give up in the middle of the journey, or strong enough but feel alone in their weight loss goals, sometimes, a social support system will do more than just wonders in their success.

According to a study from the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at the Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island, a weight loss coach can greatly help you towards the fulfillment of your goal. And it doesn’t have to be someone you paid for, either. A good friend who’s already in the same boat as you is good enough to help you achieve the same thing.

In a study involving 44 people, it was found that having the help of a health coach made them lose 9% of their body weight on average over 24 weeks, something that was considered a big success for a weight loss program.

In the beginning of the study, the participants met with their coaches weekly, and then less frequently as the study progressed. In the weeks they did not meet their coaches, they would send an email regarding their fitness and eating progress, as well as their calorie count. Their coach would then give them feedback via email.

Even though the experiment only involved a small number of people, I still understand why having a coach will greatly boost your weight loss efforts. Losing weight is such a tedious thing. It’s not an overnight task that will be completed in a matter of days. Most of the time, it takes months, and even years. And once you lost all that weight, you need to stick to it for the rest of your life lest you go back to your old self again.

You need a coach sometimes.

And that’s the reason why most people give up. We all can eat a healthy breakfast, or exercise in the morning. That can take a week. But after that, expect a lot of major relapse. Most people will simply go back to their old ways of sitting on a couch eating potato chips or ice cream while watching tv. That’s easier. But exercising, eating the things you normally don’t like, that takes a lot of hard work. And willpower. And sheer amount of absolute determination.

Will you go back to the couch and say f*ck it all?

Now, can you do that for a year — or more?

If you can do it alone, congratulations. But to most of us who’ve been wired for instant results, someone who will encourage us, and even congratulate us, may not pull off a miracle, but will surely spell a huge, huge difference. Why?

Compare that to being on a sports team. When you’re an athlete and have a coach to teach you, he’s supposed to see your faults and your strengths which you normally overlook. If he tells you where you’re good at, that will normally boost your morale as a person, and will likely push you towards success. And if he tells you your flaws and how to tweak them, you’re even more likely to accomplish your goals more because you now have all the tools to achieve what you thought was once “impossible”. (It should be a given that you’re willing to work hard and not half-ass midway yourself.)

So there’s that advantage of being consistent on a daily basis because he gets to keep up with you, push you and literally take you by the hand, and having the emotional support for a goal that most people do alone all by themselves. If you don’t progress, he’ll have to kick your behind which is way more effective than having your lonesome mentally tell yourself to do this, and that — which sometimes doesn’t end up being done at all.

Maintaining a healthy weight, being fit and healthy is something that is becoming more and more like a pipe dream to some people. But to most of us, the simple notion that it’s hard to keep off all those pesky pounds all our lives is getting truer by the day as we struggle with our environment, our genes and our habits. But it doesn’t have to be that way. While willpower shouldn’t be our only weapon in our daily journey towards fitness, we should also rely on science to know what’s working, and use it every day to our advantage to replace the habitual and environmental factors which no longer serve us. ;)

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