Willpower is a matter of practice, habit, and positive reinforcement. I found this blog article very interesting on the subject.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/0...hen-willpower/

I've heard it's because there is very very little focus on nutrition in medical school.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/he...chen.html?_r=0

That's similar to the statement a doctor said on the CNN DOCUMENTARY, "ESCAPE FIRE" which is about the health care industry. If it comes on again try and watch it it's excellent.

There was a heart surgeon pn the show and he said he was taught how to perform heart surgery but no one taught him HOW TO PREVENT HEART DISEASE.

2feelbetter,

This may be way oversimplifying it, but the intention is to be helpful.

My husband does the same thing, and I've taken a piece of tape and a marker and I label his snacks. No joke. I put his name on it, that way I know they're his snacks which is why he purchased them. Obviously, I'm welcome to them, but I don't want them. It's hard to separate the need for food when it's sitting right in front of us. I don't think that's an overeating problem (just my opinion) - it's human nature to eat in the presence of food.

If your'e not mentally depressed, then give yourself a different mental signal. "Oh, those are DH's snacks, not mine. See, they have his name on them. They're not for me. Am I hungry anyways? Where are my healthy snacks?"

Hope that helps. Good luck

Haha....Look what just came up on my facebook feed:

We're all such complex beings. What works for me may not work for others. For me, it's all very much a mental thing--of being in the moment and asking myself when tempted: "is my body hungry or is my head hungry?" Right now, I'm in a good place mentally and have the determination to keep going. I hope it lasts...

I recommend that you read a book called The Pleasure Trap.

This isn't about "willpower" or anything like that. There's nothing wrong with you. In fact, there would be something wrong with you if you didn't feel compelled to consume calorie-dense foods. It's a very normal survival instinct. The problem is this unnatural environment, where everything is so readily available and highly processed. Corporate greed created the "obesity epidemic". People like ourselves are just following our instincts and getting screwed for it. So, please don't hate on yourself like that; it's not your fault.

What worked for me is to not say "I can't eat whatever" but to choose to say "I won't,don't eat whatever it is."

When you say "I can't" you are setting yourself up for whatever it is that sets off a food fest.

When you choose to say "I won't" or "I don't" at this time, you give the power back to yourself.

Barring some horrid world meltdown, we will always have chips and chocolate and beer and wine and fries and so on. The choice is ours.

I agree with the saying " I don't".

Here's why. I don't chew gum. When someone offers me gum I say I don't chew gum and they just move along. However what I've noticed is when I say that is some small since of control/power. I've always felt that and you just confirmed it. I'm going to start saying that to myself more often although it works vetter when someone offers you something and you say you don't eat it for whatever reason.

I'm glad I came across this thread. I was just saying to myself that weight loss is 10% physical and 90% mental. What that means to me is that, doing exercises is the easy part. I may not always like the physical activity but I can do it. This whole process has been a mental battle. Not just my relationship with food but with my relationship with myself. I always tell myself that I can't do this, will never be that weight, will never look like my thinner friends, etc. etc. I think that this is along the lines of what you were saying.

I don't quite understand how some think willpower has nothing to do with it but to each his own. If willpower wasn't the issue then none of us would be overweight! lol. Just my opinion. But I know I have a harder time because i don't have much support here at home. My family doesn't really care much about nutrition so it can be difficult for family gatherings and such. But I've distance myself quite a bit and focused more of my attention to 3fc and other weight loss communities. Now that I am stronger mentally with regards to nutrition and my overall self esteem, I can be around my family and not indulge in their bad eating habits.

I think that the issue is that so many times we set ourselves up for failure, and then think we have no willpower when we fail.

• We eat too little of satisfying foods (protein/fat), so we're always hungry
• We eat too much of craving-inducing foods (sugar/starch), so we're always hungry
• We exercise too much, so we increase our hunger
• We have unrealistic goals of losing quickly (more than a pound or so a week)
• We have such a restrictive plan that we have to make too many changes at once to our diet

Our bodies have a very strong urge to eat when it thinks you are hungry (or worse, starving). And many plans focus so much on making a calorie deficit or restricting this or that, or HAVING to do X hours of serious cardio/resistance exercise each week, that you're basically fighting your own survival instincts.

The plans that seem to work best are those that change things up one thing at a time rather than en masse, that are flexible enough to fit your lifestyle, and that have built-in positive feedback so that you feel like you're succeeding.

All of those things help so that you don't need to rely on "willpower".

I think that those who say that willpower doesn't have as much to do with it think of willpower as having to rely on "white-knuckling" through hunger all day every day in order to establish "good habits". Willpower is what you rely on to make you exercise for an hour every day even when you're hurting and you hate it.

So if you rely on that sort of "willpower", you're setting yourself up for failure, and you set up yourself to be "bad" because only if you succeed on your plan using strong willpower, you can be "good."

Personally, I think of willpower less strictly than that. I have learned that I need a plan that is flexible, low-calorie, avoids craving-inducing foods, and includes moderate, fun exercise. It has its own built-in positive feedbacks -- delicious food, minimum hunger, slow, steady weight loss, slow buildup of physical strength and endurance.

Otherwise I burn out early and often. And then my willpower has "failed" and I'm "bad".

I think we also tend to overanalyze things too. I mean, definitely there are deep-seated reasons for overeating or eating junk - childhood, emotional, filling voids, etc.

But sometimes you just gotta admit, JUNK FOOD TASTES DAMN GOOD! It just does okay? No one is going to convince me that Miss Vickie's salt and vinegar chips are "gross" or "too greasy" and "i know they're bad for me therefore they taste bad". You know what? They don't. They taste like angel tears being dropped on me while I'm laying on a cloud in heaven and if I could eat them every day I would. Seriously!

I'm thinking the biochemical, physiological response has WAY more to do with it than we give it credit for. Which is what lunarsongbird was also referring to.

Yes, yes, and yes....to the three sets of bolded passages above.

I believe that there are many, MANY ways to achieve weight loss - all one has to do is read the success stories here and elsewhere - but until an individual truly understands that food is fuel and nothing else, they are doomed to regain any lost weight, because they will continue to turn to food for comfort.

Food is the one addiction that you can't walk away from cold turkey. I get so mad when I hear people who believe that an overweight person has no "self control". It's one thing to keep yourself from ever having another cigarette. It's quite another to switch from eating to fill an emotional void to eating to sustain life. You still have to EAT.

Certainly we need to exercise willpower, but only to resist eating when we are not hungry.

People who use food to comfort themselves - and that includes the great majority of overweight people - are in a difficult position. The alcoholic can give up alcohol entirely; the smoker can give up cigarettes entirely; but someone addicted to food CANNOT give up food entirely. But they MUST give up using food for anything other than fuel for their body.

I see people writing that they can no longer eat __________ (insert name of trigger food here) because they know that if they do it will result in a binge. They do this because they believe that there's something inherent in that particular food that sets off some type of signal in their body that they simply cannot resist, much like alcohol does to an alcoholic or nicotine to smokers. And if that works for them, so be it.

But let's face it - we HAVE to eat. And I do believe that most people, once they understand that there's only ONE legitimate reason to open up their mouths to insert food (HUNGER), can then lose weight without feeling so deprived. And they can use ANY FOOD AT ALL to quell the hunger, as long as they don't eat more of it than they need to reach satiety.

Unfortunately, so many of us (myself included) have - at least temporarily - lost the ability to distinguish true hunger. I'm working on re-learning that skill every single day. Some days I fall right back into the trap of eating for comfort. But I keep working at it, much like everyone else here who does the same thing. The difference is - now I don't feel guilty about it. When I do it, I recognize it for what it is, and I stop. And plan to do better. And I am getting better - day by day.

So, going back to the original post in this thread - I agree that losing weight is mostly a mental exercise. And it's not easy. But it IS possible.