You only have one pot of willpower. If you use up all your willpower doing professional tasks, exercising, etc then you’ll have less willpower to resist over eating. If you use up all your willpower for weight loss, then you’ll have less willpower for other tasks.
This article (and other research done by the authors) talks about that sort of thing. This is why diets that work are ones that reduce the amount of willpower required, or shift the willpower requirements to situations where it is easier to control your decision making. For example, a low carb diet works because you simply don’t buy carbs at the store, so when you’re at home, you don’t have to expend willpower when you’re hungry and deciding what to eat. Intermittent fasting works because you simply don’t eat breakfast.
I eat for pleasure and I have a hard time moderating my intake, so I’ve worked around this by reducing my breakfast to coffee, yohimbine (caffeine/yohimbine is great for energy and appetite reduction), and fish oil (~2g). Lunch is two cups of milk and two scoops of protein powder as these are all that I have at work, so it is the only option—no willpower used. This puts my daily calories low enough that I can eat as much as I want for dinner and still lose weight consistently.
This puts my daily calories low enough that I can eat as much as I want for dinner and still lose weight consistently.
Maybe this is just a verbal quibble, but how can someone “consistently lose weight”? Losing weight, if successfully done, results in reaching some target, and then you don’t lose weight any more.
I’m training for strength sports, and this involves cycles of gaining weight to add muscle and losing weight to cut fat. As such, I’ve done a number of weight loss diets in the past two years, and this is what I’ve found to work every time for me (or, consistently).
Of course for some people it seems to take heroic amounts of willpower not to go shopping for more unhealthy food or go to a restaurant during the lunch break.
I’m experimenting with VLCD right now, and it doesn’t seem to take much willpower either. I think the calories are low enough that my body thinks it’s starving although it gets everything it needs, so I’m not constantly receiving hunger signals.
Danger! The book the Perfect Health Diet has some very negative things to say about this. As I recall, this kind of diet greatly increases the risk of some diseases.
I doubt I will do it longer than a month or two, but sure, success will be measured in a longer time span. I think losing weight is significantly harder than maintaining it, it’s just that most people fail to include maintaining weight to their plans.
Starving for a year doesn’t sound like a great dieting plan either.
You only have one pot of willpower. If you use up all your willpower doing professional tasks, exercising, etc then you’ll have less willpower to resist over eating. If you use up all your willpower for weight loss, then you’ll have less willpower for other tasks.
This article (and other research done by the authors) talks about that sort of thing. This is why diets that work are ones that reduce the amount of willpower required, or shift the willpower requirements to situations where it is easier to control your decision making. For example, a low carb diet works because you simply don’t buy carbs at the store, so when you’re at home, you don’t have to expend willpower when you’re hungry and deciding what to eat. Intermittent fasting works because you simply don’t eat breakfast.
I eat for pleasure and I have a hard time moderating my intake, so I’ve worked around this by reducing my breakfast to coffee, yohimbine (caffeine/yohimbine is great for energy and appetite reduction), and fish oil (~2g). Lunch is two cups of milk and two scoops of protein powder as these are all that I have at work, so it is the only option—no willpower used. This puts my daily calories low enough that I can eat as much as I want for dinner and still lose weight consistently.
Maybe this is just a verbal quibble, but how can someone “consistently lose weight”? Losing weight, if successfully done, results in reaching some target, and then you don’t lose weight any more.
I’m training for strength sports, and this involves cycles of gaining weight to add muscle and losing weight to cut fat. As such, I’ve done a number of weight loss diets in the past two years, and this is what I’ve found to work every time for me (or, consistently).
Of course for some people it seems to take heroic amounts of willpower not to go shopping for more unhealthy food or go to a restaurant during the lunch break.
I’m experimenting with VLCD right now, and it doesn’t seem to take much willpower either. I think the calories are low enough that my body thinks it’s starving although it gets everything it needs, so I’m not constantly receiving hunger signals.
Danger! The book the Perfect Health Diet has some very negative things to say about this. As I recall, this kind of diet greatly increases the risk of some diseases.
Danger noted. I’m doing this only a month or two, and don’t recommend this to anyone else.
As a side note, will you agree to update everyone in 6 months or a year with how your experiment went?
I doubt I will do it longer than a month or two, but sure, success will be measured in a longer time span. I think losing weight is significantly harder than maintaining it, it’s just that most people fail to include maintaining weight to their plans.
Starving for a year doesn’t sound like a great dieting plan either.