How Can I Get The Willpower To Loose Weight?
I hate to say it, but relying on willpower alone to reach your health goals simply won’t cut it.
Instead of focusing on willpower, Try To Shift Ones Energy and Focus Onto Your Why? Why do you want to improve your health.
Focusing on your why will help you to create and sustain a healthy lifestyle.
Lately I’ve found that by solely focusing on my willpower alone doesn’t always work.
Instead focus what you think and say to yourself.
Why, because there’s power in what we think and say, and it can be mentally draining using negative words.
An example would be saying, ‘I have to cook something for dinner’, or I have to go to the gym today.
Instead choose words like, ‘I get to prepare something healthy for my family’, ‘I have a healthy, strong body that can go to the gym’.
It’s all about making a mental shift.
2: Be prepared. Being prepared helps you avoid the pitfalls of temptation and sets you up for success.
You don’t have to muster up all of your willpower to avoid the chocolate cake in the canteen aisle, because you have your healthy treats with you.
Is the concept of willpower flawed?
I’ve wrote about how changing habits can improve your lifestyle.
According to Wendy Wood, PhD, professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California, once a habit gets ingrained into your everyday routine, it becomes automatic-which takes willpower largely out of the equation.
So focus on changing your habits and working in the direction of being consistent.
Practice Self-Control
This takes me to my next point about willpower- which is the psychological science of self-control.
At its very essence it’s about the ability to resist short-term temptations to achieve long term goals.
University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth, PhD, and Martin Seligman, PhD, explored self-control in eighth-graders over the course of the school year.
The researchers first gauged the students’ self-discipline (their term for self-control) by having teachers, parents, and the students themselves complete questionnaires.
They also gave students a task in which they had the option of receiving $1 immediately or waiting a week to receive $2.
They found students who ranked high on self-discipline had better grades, better school attendance, and higher standardized-test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a competitive high school program.
Self-discipline, the researchers found, was more important than IQ in predicting academic success.
June Tangney, PhD, of George Mason University, and colleagues compared willpower by asking undergraduate students to complete questionnaires designed to measure their self-control.
The scientists also created a scale to score the student’s relative willpower strength.
They found the students’ self-control scores correlated with higher grade-point averages, higher self-esteem, less binge eating and alcohol abuse, and better relationship skills.
In Conclusion
During tough times I’m grateful that I’ve had the ability to tap into my willpower when I wanted to achieve a goal. And I’ve always put it down to when I want something nothing can stop me, and I’ll be damn sure if I let myself down.
On the other hand as I’ve covered willpower above you can go only but so far on willpower.
There are times when the temptation has been hard to resist, and I’ve caved into pier pressure and stress. These are times I rely on ingrained habits that I’ve attained over the years.
So when I fall off I say hey girl you’ve done this before, it’s like riding a bike, all you got to do is get back on and it’ll come to you.
The habits I’ve formed then become like a muscle that never left my brain. I can therefore choose to make that muscle grow or get weaker.
Each moment we can choose to strengthen our willpower by maintaining our daily habits.
I want to finish off with my favourite quotes on self-control:
“If you can learn self-control you can master anything”.
“Self-Control is Strength,
Right Thought is Mastery,
Calmness is Power”.