Just work hard. Push through it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much pressure we put on ourselves to do it all. As a society, we aren’t particularly forgiving. The notion is often that you work for what you want, and if you aren’t getting the outcome you desire, it must be your fault.
The reality is, our brains were not designed for that. Our brains, like our bodies, need to recharge. We are not Energizer bunnies. We will eventually crash. We need to understand how our brains work in order to effectively make changes we can sustain over the long-term.
Look at those “Disciplined” People
Let’s take a look at the people who keep up healthy habits on a regular basis, year after year. Are they fighting tooth and nail to keep up with their habits? Are they dragging themselves out of bed each day to exercise, or begrudgingly going to the grocery store to get healthy foods, groaning each step of the way?
Most likely not.
Although there are probably healthy habits they do that they don’t love, it’s unlikely that they are feeling intense desire to go back to bed, or stay home and eat chips for dinner each day, and yet still doing the opposite.
In fact, it’s unlikely that they have more “willpower” than the average person at all, but instead they’ve learned to use self-control when it counts. They may also have really clarified their most important values, whether consciously or not, and set goals from there. That is, their healthy habits are likely to be incorporated into the person they see themselves as, part of their identity, versus a choice they make every day that is hard.
Brushing our teeth, for example, is a habit that many of us have made automatic. But we ultimately do it because we value either fresh breath or simply taking care of our teeth as part of our overall value of health. Although we don’t necessarily think all of this consciously, it’s there, operating under the surface, affecting our behavior whether we like it or not.
Self-Control Depletion: What Uses Up our Willpower
There is a large body of research examining self-control and the conclusion is clear:
We have a limited amount of self-control that gets used up over time. And not just with food or exercise-related choices, but with a variety of things we do throughout the day.
Think of self-control or “willpower” as a cup full of sparkling water. Each morning, assuming a decent night’s sleep, you start with a full cup. Different tasks will require different amounts of self-control. Imagine that the spring that you get the water from is about a mile way from your home. You can fill it back up at times throughout the day, but doing so is going to take time and some intentional effort.
Examples of things that use self-control include:
- Holding in anger (like while trying to stay calm and give choices to a screaming toddler)
- Regulating emotions (holding back tears at a funeral or while watching a sad movie because you don’t want your family to see you cry)
- Resisting a food you really want (not having cake at the birthday party even though you really love cake)
- Controlling your attention (ignoring the email pop-ups in the corner of your screen while you try to focus on work, or ignoring the noise your kids are making in the other room while you work from home)
- And many, many more
Mental and Physical Willpower Come from the Same Cup
Although we might think that mental fatigue and physical fatigue are different, they actually both use water from the same cup.
A number of different studies have examined this question, but one large set of lab studies demonstrates many of the different ways our self-control can be depleted (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998).
First, they had participants increase or decrease their emotional response to an upsetting movie. They had them watch a 3 minute movie about environmental disasters and the impact on wildlife that showed sick and dying animals. There were 3 groups:
- Group 1 was told to increase their emotional response: “Get really into the movie, feel as much emotion as possible”
- Group 2 was told to decreased their emotional response: “Avoid letting the movie affect you, hold back your emotions, and don’t let your emotions show on your face.”
- Group 3 was not asked to change their emotional response: “just watch the movie”
After the movie, researchers measured physical strength using the handgrip test. This has been shown by prior research to be a good measure of physical self-control versus absolute physical strength as it requires you to keep consistent pressure. If you stop exerting yourself for even a moment, the grip will loosen.
Groups 1 and 2 had significantly poorer performance on the handgrip test. That is, being asked to regulate your emotions (either up or down) made people perform worse on a physical self-control task. Interestingly, mood didn’t differ between groups after the movie, but participants who tried to change their emotions reported being more tired and this was associated with their performance on the handgrip test (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998).
Take home message? Mental/emotional self-control depletes physical self-control.
Pushing Down Thoughts Reduces Our Mental Ability
The next study examined whether suppressing thoughts would reduce perseverance (how long people will keep trying) on a frustrating mental task.
Participants were asked not to think about a white bear, and then asked to solve an unsolvable word problem (this assesses level of frustration tolerance or perseverance). Participants who were asked to suppress their thoughts (don’t think about a white bear) did consistently worse on the word task, showing less frustration tolerance than the group not asked to suppress their thoughts (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998).
Take home message? Mental self-control depletes mental self-control. So if you have a long taxing day of solving problems, you may not be feeling up to planning and cooking a meal from scratch.
Pushing Down Thoughts Reduces Emotion Regulation Ability
Finally, the researchers had participants try to solve math problems while suppressing thoughts about a white bear. They then watched an 18 minute movie with various comedy acts. Participants were asked to try to avoid showing any amusement while watching, so to avoid laughing, smiling, or responding in any way to the video. They were videotaped and coded by someone who did not know which group they were in.
The groups did not differ on how amusing they found the video, or their mood, however, participants asked to suppress their thoughts did significantly worse at suppressing their amusement for the funny movie (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998).
Take home message? Mental self-control depletes emotional self-control. So after a long day of mentally tiring work we are less able to control our emotions as needed.
Take Home Message
Using self-control in one area (regulating emotions, doing a challenging mental task) universally reduces self-control in other areas. So when we think about changing our eating and exercise habits, we not only need to consider what we are doing to make those changes (grocery shopping, meal prepping, counting nutrients) but also the other things in our day that might be depleting our self-control resources so that we can work smarter, not just harder.
Application to Eating Habits
There are a number of ways that this can impact eating habits, particularly among those that are “dieting.” When it comes to making a change in your life, some degree of self-control or willpower is needed. However, “dieting” often has us using precious mental self-control in ways that are ineffective and likely distract us from changes that would truly help us long-term.
Consider the typical “diet” where it has you tracking every morsel you put into your mouth on a daily basis. Don’t think that takes self-control? Try it for a week and report back to me.
In a study where participants were asked to do a challenging counting task, then “taste test” snacks, those who scored higher on restraint and dieting scales had even more reduced self-control from the counting task (Hagger et al., 2013), suggesting that dieting itself already had put a mental burden on those participants.
The more we approach behavior change from an empty cup, the worse we will do, promoting the vicious cycle of perceived failure and frustration.
7 Ways to Use Up Less from our Willpower Cup
Given this information, it’s crucial that we take steps to set ourselves up for success. Here are some suggestions:
- Change you environment. Start with the home. Avoid bringing high calorie tempting foods into the home. Buy healthy foods and make them readily available to grab, like cut up and right at the front of your fridge. Put tempting foods high up in places where they are more likely to be “out of sight, out of mind.” If you have control over your environment at work, make a change there too.
- De-Clutter. Interestingly, de-cluttering your home may also help. One study showed that when people were placed in a chaotic environment and also asked to recall a time where they felt out of control, they snacked more. This did not occur in the less cluttered environment (Vartanian, Kernan, & Wansink, 2016).
- Re-allocate your willpower. Where will you get the biggest return on your self-control investment? No matter who you are, unless you can hire a personal chef or your partner is doing all the healthful cooking and placing the meal in front of you, you will likely need to use your self-control resources to engage in grocery shopping, meal planning, and meal preparation. If you naturally like this, well you my friend are ahead of the game. If you don’t (like me), you will still probably have to do some of it. But instead of doing a food journal for the millionth time in your life, why not allocate some of that precious self-control to making a meal plan and doing some of the prep that will make your life easier. Perhaps trying a meal planning service to make things easier. Allocate time for meal planning and prep, and say not to other obligations that drain you.
- Look for ways to delegate. Look at the things you do each week that take the most energy and time, and also look at the things that drain you the most. Do you dread meal planning and grocery shopping? Do you absolutely hate doing some other task around your house that you do regularly, like cleaning the dishes or doing the laundry? If these things are really draining you, then they are making it harder to make and sustain healthy changes in your life. Think about who in your life you could ask for help from, or maybe even pay for help. Grocery meal planning and delivery options are more available and affordable than ever, so many you look into that. Is there a kid in your house or in the neighborhood looking to make some extra cash? Or is hiring a cleaning person in your budget? Consider the ways that freeing up that mental energy will help your health when you consider whether it’s worth the cost or not.
- Use mindfulness to replenish your self-control. Brief mindfulness meditation has been shown to replenish self-control after a task that reduced it. So if you are feeling depleted and physically or mentally tired, mindfulness may be an effective tool for filling that cup back up so that you can take on more challenging tasks (Friese, Messner, & Schaffner, 2012).
- Reflect on your values. Although self-control is a limited resource for everyone, people who are making autonomous choices, meaning because they truly want to, tend to be able to sustain hard tasks longer. For more guidance on clarifying your values, check out my free resource here.
- Express your emotions. Remember the study about regulating your emotions? Finding ways to express your feelings in a safe and judgment free zone is key to long-term habit change. Ideally, this is with another person like a trusted friend or family member, however, it can also be writing down your emotions and letting yourself feel them while alone as long as you do so without judgment. Just remember: keeping them in is depleting your willpower, so it’s time to stop.
References
Friese, M., Messner, C., & Schaffner, Y. (2012). Mindfulness meditation counteracts self-control depletion. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 1016-1022.
Hagger, M. A., Panette, G., Leung, C., Wong, G., Chan, D. K., et al. (2013). Chronic inhibition, self-control and eating behavior: Test of a ‘Resource Depletion’ Model. PLoS ONE, 8, e76888. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076888
Muraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Self-control as a limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 774–789.