Is Willpower Needed to Ditch the Fat? Or is that a Lie?

Is reaching goal weight as simple as intention,
setting a goal, and then taking action?

This morning, I received a comment from a reader who didn't like what I had to say about emotional memory and the body's biological instinct for survival.

The comment was from an anonymous reader who reacted to something I said on a post I wrote in September of 2011. (When I first wrote this post it was April 2015.)

The title of the post was Stumbling on Your Low-Carb Eating Plan? Here's How to Find Success by Using the Back Door! Click on that link if you want to read it to get the context.

The post was designed to help those who might be having trouble making it through Atkins Induction by offering a more gentle, alternative low-carb approach to drastically cutting carbs all at once. Some people do better when they ease into a low-carb lifestyle rather than ditching all carbs at one time.

A few years after I wrote it, someone found that post and thanked me for writing it. It was encouraging for them. In my reply, I shared how I was thinking of using the back door approach myself, once I'd gotten my thyroid problems straightened out.

What the anonymous commenter took offense to was the idea that the backdoor approach "might not spook the body as much as I have spooked it in the past."

The commenter didn't believe that.

"You don't spook your body, that's all in your head. Get some will power."

[I did follow through on this approach to calming the body down and managed to carve off 40 pounds of the 80-pound gain due to the Graves Disease. With time, and patience, I've also been able to return to a low carb diet. Today, it's June, 2018.]

The myth of willpower being the answer to obesity still hasn't died out, I guess. Not even within low-carb circles. People continue to believe that losing weight is as easy as setting an intention, creating a goal, and then following through with action.

While that's often the case, it's not always true. If you go into starvation mode, for whatever reason, the body will fight you when you try to return to Keto.

This attitude regarding willpower is sad because will isn't something that everyone has. Will is something that you have to develop and nurture.

What is Willpower?

Willpower and will are not the same thing, although a lot of people get the two different concepts mixed up.

Willpower is actually an outdated concept as it is typically defined. It was discredited as being a false ideal over a decade ago by scientific methods.

The truth is there is no magical substance inside your body or mind that can be called willpower, no special power you can use to lose weight.

There is no force that you can call on to override your biological nature. Nature isn't transcended by force. It can be worked with, and adjusted, but not controlled.

Willpower is a lie that many dieters buy into.

It doesn't exist.

It's just a fancy word someone made up.

For many people, willpower is just something you can blame when you try to do something you don't really want to do -- and fail.

Will Requires You to Change Your Nature

Real change requires you to question your habits
and what most people refer to as human nature.
This type of deep reflection isn't easy to do.

Your mind, body, and emotions are complicated and a conflicting group of:

• chemicals
• hormones
• thought patterns
• emotional reactions
• behavioral conditioning
• hereditary tendencies
• emotional memories
• sensory integrations
• habitual programming
• and core purpose

All of these things have been developing and controlling your thoughts and behavior since the day you were born, and maybe even before that.

Overcoming all of these forces and complicated habitual programs, so you can carry out your will, requires you to literally change the way you THINK about low-carb diets.

This type of change requires you to question what most folks call human nature and decide for yourself if the methods you are using to get what you want are helping you to achieve what you're aiming at today -- or holding you back.

Questioning your thoughts and where they come from isn't easy to do, and the ability to do that goes way beyond the idea of choosing between a slice of chocolate cake and a scoop of tuna salad.

The Myth of Willpower Controls You

Cheating on your low-carb diet is about VALUES.
It has nothing to do with Willpower.

If you're buying into the ideal that you have to have some imaginary magical substance called willpower to lose weight, that's exactly what the mind will create.

If you hate your body and treat it as if it's an offensive nuisance you're temporarily cursed with, you'll keep failing until you believe you have the willpower you think you're supposed to have.

If you believe you're weak and don't have willpower, your mind will create experiences that show you that's true.

Yummy food will suddenly jump out at you wherever you go. You'll see it, smell it, taste it, and sometimes even dream about it. It will torture you until you give in to temptation.

By the same token, those who run around condemning others for not having willpower (like they do) are actually seeking for signs that willpower exists. Throughout the seeking process, however, they are actually crystallizing their belief within themselves.

Crystallization can be quite dangerous.

It roots a particular limiting belief so far into your psyche that, eventually, if it isn't re-evaluated, and dug out by the roots, nothing will ever be able to pry it loose. The belief will become rock-solid and permanent.

Like all myths, what you believe controls you.

Your weight-loss efforts fly or fall on what you believe or don't believe about yourself and others.

Why?

Because beliefs control what you DO.

Beliefs work within the subconscious mind like computer programs. They have a life of their own. You will react according to what you believe, even if you don't remember accepting those beliefs in the first place.

Dump the Myth of Willpower

The principles of low carb go against
what most people have always believed is true. 
Willpower is no different.

Look at how people have trouble accepting many of the low-carb principles. Low-carb ideas often go against what you have always been taught is true. They are strange and different. They don't follow the crowd.

Due to those past beliefs, you might be tempted to try and bring some of those ideas into your low-carb diet, rather than evaluate them and experiment with them for yourself.

At the same time, swallowing what the greater majority of the low-carb community believes, just because it's believed by experts, can also work against you.

As an individual, it's always in your best interest to run your own experiments -- one principle or belief at a time.

If you're trying to do something you don't really want to do, it's time to dump the myth of willpower and reevaluate what you want.

If you're trying to do something you do want to do, then it's time to evaluate why low carb is not working for you and make a course correction.

Almost always, there is some hidden belief or false ideal that is blocking the way. Find the illusion, find the lie, and you will come face-to-face with the truth.