Willpower. Muscle or Myth?
How do you find willpower?
Do those quotes we download on our phone really work?
Does willpower really work?
When it comes to your body changing in midlife, you may be still searching for willpower to adhere to a diet, to combat this betraying body of yours.
MBB. Menopausal Body Betrayal. It sounds like a “thing” doesn’t it?
It feels like our bodies betray us. They’re really doing the things they are meant to do. And we don’t like it.
So we try to control our bodies, our MBB with diet and exercise, just like when we were 20.
If we were to pull out the well meaning advice of using willpower around food temptation, I believe we would OVERSIMPLIFY the willpower concept.
(Prefer to listen or watch? Here’s a video!)
Willpower, or control/struggle in the moment, is opposite to practicing conscious eating.
When you learn to eat consciously, mindfully, intuitively, you can create CHOICE not STRUGGLE.
But there’s so many books…
There are no shortage of books that help you tap into your willpower FOR SURE, and maybe they work for you. If you found one that had a life changing, sustainable effect on you, let me know!!
It isn’t a “you have it or you don’t” kinda thing.
Let’s get real here, we still look down others who seem to have no willpower.
We judge someone else as unhealthy by the size of their body, (how do we even know that?). I’ve been around people who then degrade others, silently behind their back, for eating cake. We are judgemental creatures, and we all want to belong, and exclusion is just one way of gaining that sense of belonging. If you’ve ever had a kid in school, you know exclusion first hand.
When we feel unmotivated, we call ourselves lazy, stupid or someone lacking control. We feel less than, like we lack worthiness and power.
We also feel pressured with these messages of the 21 day habit myth. What’s with this 21 days to a habit? And is this true?
The European Journal of Social Psychology shares that this is a myth. It originated in the 1960’s book, written by by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, called Psycho-cybernetics. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who became a psychologist, and said that his patients got used to a new face, an amputation, etc., in 21 days.
He extended this to other changes, and, like the urban legend of chewing gum never digesting in your stomach, it somehow became a “thing”.
Time spans for habit change, in studies I looked up, ranged from 18 to 254, with an average of 66 days. We know that people with the simplest habits to change may do better than those with complex or broad, complicated ones. In fact, that’s one of our pillars as coaches, to help others find simple ways to incorporate change that they desire.
That’s another “job” of a coach. To work with YOUR desires, not ours.
When we feel like we lack willpower, or motivation, we judge ourselves. This dialogue can almost feel good, like we are having an honest conversation with ourselves. We degrade our bodies with our friends, and that is a form of belonging, is it not?
We’ve all engaged in the “I’m so (fill in the blank with negativity)” conversation haven’t well?
We’re really not engaging in helpful conversation, we’re engaging in a worry and agitation conversation and that puts the brain into a survival focus… aka stress. We release stress in our body.
When you think of diet culture, that culture that wants you to feel pretty guilty for overdoing it on the ginger bread, or the potato salad, or for gaining 5 pounds, it can co-opt this concept of willpower AND motivation and stick it in with weight loss.
If you are told that you lack willpower and motivation, well then, you think you need to find it.
Diet culture tells us to look OUTSIDE of ourselves for these things, and when we fall short, we feel like failures.
Well, guess what.
Like cravings, sleepiness, and hunger, WILLPOWER is said to ebb and flow.
There is this underlying assumption that if you are in a lack of willpower state, then there is something wrong with you.
If you just got back on the diet wagon, if you just worked harder, if you just had willpower, TONIGHT, at your holiday party, or backyard BBQ, you will be OK. You will succeed at NOT overeating, or eating the “right” things, which means what?
When you think of overeating, how do you feel? What does overeating mean to you?
Before we attach willpower to overeating, or take it away, answer this question to yourself. Write it down and look at it. If you want to share your aha moment with me privately, send me a message, or come chat in my Community for Conscious Midlife Women.
When I looked at what overeating meant to me, I saw it was all about control. The fact that I felt that I had none over my life and circumstance. It was also something I learned to use early on in life to calm my anxiety.
You will find that there is a belief system attached to YOUR concept of over eating, or eating in general.
We are moral about food. Food seems to be virtuous or “bad”. Otherwise, why would that truffle on the holiday party table seem “sinfully” delicious? Why would choosing the “clean” option of veggies, and only a bit of that dip ‘cause it’s got fat or whatever…Why does that feel better?
According to Dr. Carl Erik Fisher (who is assistant professor at Columbia University, a practicing psychiatrist and addiction specialist), he is skeptical about the concept of will power. He wrote an article for Nautilus (database for science writing) and I heard him on CBC radio discussing this subject.
He believes this overarching concept of willpower does more harm than good. It doesn’t address all the psychological nuances of self regulation or control, and that willpower, as a concept in self help is, in fact, not helpful.
It is stigmatizing, much like fat and body shaming is.
Willpower was a Victorian era concept of virtuosity, this idea that self denial and perseverance made one better. Interestingly parallel to our diet culture mentality.
And in Victorian times, this morality concept was used around addictive substances. Now we also lump food in there as addictive.
Students who were made to exercise self-control performed, worse on subsequent psychological tests, suggesting that they had exhausted some finite cognitive resource.
Control.
We can’t all walk around having temper tantrums in the mall when things don’t go as planned. This is self regulation. Not willpower.
Dr. Fisher says that this willpower concept may not hold water, as it isn’t encompassing all the little goings on that make up SELF CONTROL. It may be cementing stigma and moralization and that is not helpful when someone is trying to change a behaviour.
So when we lump willpower in with choosing food at parties, and family gatherings, or even alone, tie it up with some self compassion. Where willpower and food is concerned, we stand on the slippery slope of self deprecation and negative thinking.
As a Holistic Health & Mindful Eating Coach for mature women, who are tired of rolling in and out of the diet revolving door, I get tired of all these “holiday survival tips ” and “ditch dieting - just portion control” posts.
They aren’t helpful. They don’t work with someone who struggles with food in an emotional capacity.
The person who eats for reasons OTHER than hunger. That’s me. And if you have read this far, that is you too.
No amount of white knuckling through a holiday party will keep you from craving and caving at another point in time. That’s the evidence behind diets. Deprivation does not work and diets aren’t sustainable long term.
Look as women, we all have to come face to face with a body change, at MANY POINTS IN OUR LIVES. Be it size or sag, dimple or wrinkle, no amount of willpower will keep that process form happening
Even Dr. Fisher, on the CBC interview, feels that the concept of willpower, when paired with food, (aka dieting), wasn’t effective.
“Reflecting on emotional components driving your urges, or your broader motivation would be more helpful than a moment by moment struggle.”
By using the concept of awareness in Mindful Eating, you can get out of automatic behavour, automatic pilot, and be more AWARE of what is driving your eating behaviour in the first place.
And Mindful Eating pairs this awareness with compassion for yourself while you practice it.
You can create conscious choice not struggle.
Isn’t it time we changed this story?
If you are ready to try couscous eating for yourself, download my Conscious Cravings Guide right here, and let me know what you think!
xo
Tanya