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www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Don't worry about willpower, distract yourself

Poor willpower is unavoidable. It is in short supply, and the area of the brain where it is stored has a lot of other jobs to fuss over, so willpower tends to get the short straw. It is inherently unreliable. We need other strategies.

A famous piece of research, the Marshmallow Test, by Walter Mischel of Columbia University, shows that the ability to distract yourself is really helpful in achieving your goals. He invited young children the chance to eat one marshmallow now, or to wait 20 minutes and get an extra marshmallow later on. Some succumbed to eating now, but those who held out were using their powers of distraction.

When we are making plans to lose weight, the goal is in the future, but the temptations are now. We need to find ways to keep that long term goal in sight. Distraction is one way. (This is a cognitive behavioural technique.)We all know that we eat less when we are really busy and focused. So what things allow you to get really involved? Finding one may make all the difference.

Another good cognitive behavioural technique has been developed by Peter Gollwitzer of New York University. He has identified that short strategic implementation plans make all the difference. For example, if your goal is to cut out snack foods at home, then he suggests making If Then plans. Find out the problem situation, such as coming home from work tired and snack-focused. So maybe the answer is, If I come home from work tired, then I shall put a ready meal in the oven, and go for a walk for 10 minutes. What If Then statements might help you?

And hypnosis will help you embed them so deeply that they become automatic. Great.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

More on that loss of willpower

Willpower is managed in the pre-frontal cortex part of your brain. This is the bit that deals with planning, proper social behaviour and other elements of "executive function".

Baba Shiv Professor at Stanford University, shows that it is pretty fragile in his research demonstrating why and how willpower is so feeble. Like Baumeister, his research shows that even small actions can deplete willpower.

But willpower can be developed. If you practice doing things that are a bit uncomfortable or a bit unpleasant, then you will strengthen your willpower. Shiv suggests that the prefrontal cortex can be compared to a bicep muscle. Exercise it and it will develop and strengthen.

This could be consciously improving your posture. Or regularly tidying up after yourself, or doing the filing regularly, or phoning your mother, or writing that letter. Avoiding procrastination generally. So if you face up to and do moderately unpleasant things, you will find that your willpower will increase. And you will be able to accomplish the goals that you desire.


http://www.carolinebrowntherapy.com/

Shake, rattle and roll

I have said before that exercise will not really help in losing weight. Exercise is good for its own sake as it maintains your health. Eating less is a better way to manage your weight, because cutting down by 250 calories a day is much easier than exercising it off.

Indeed, you may have noticed that you consider walking to the bus stop with the goal of exercising away that chocolate bar. Wishful thinking because to work off 4 ounces of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk needs you to walk 5 miles (10,000 steps) at a fast pace.

We often make mistakes about weight control strategies. For example, drinking diet fizzy pop doesn’t help us reduce weight. We tend to compensate for it by eating something else, taking the view that diet pop is the diet!

But doing nothing and lying about is generally a bad thing.

Peter Katzmarzyk and colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center examined the links between time spent sitting (at school, work, and at home) and mortality (death) in a representative sample of more than 17,000 Canadians. They report that time spent sitting was associated with increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality (there was no association between sitting and cancer death). Individuals who sat the most were about 50% more likely to die during the follow-up period than individuals who sat the least, even after controlling for age, smoking, and physical activity levels.

The researchers also examined the association between sitting and mortality after control for body weight in some cases. They report that sitting remains a significant predictor of mortality. This suggests that all things being equal (body weight, physical activity levels, smoking, alcohol intake, age, and gender) the person who sits more is at a higher risk of death than the person who sits less.( Fidgetting has been shown to be an effective strategy. So don’t listen when people tell you to stop!)

Most of us are sedentary throughout the work day and so most of us are at risk. And at home too, we spend little time working in the kitchen, cooking, laying the table, washing up. Even in front of the telly we don’t get up to change the channel. Our whole environment seems to be geared to minimising effort.

What to do? Throughout the day to move about and fidget as much as possible. Seek out opportunities to make more effort. Walk whenever possible.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Dieting makes you fat

One of my clients the other day told me that she had "been on a diet for 30 years on and off, but was stubbornly one stone overweight". Clearly dieting doesn't work for her.

Jennifer Savage and Leann Birch from Pennsylvania State University have just published research on this very problem!

A total of 176 women were assessed at baseline and followed over four years to see how their weight changed. There were 3 types of women identified.

1. Those making no effort to control their weights (N)
   
2. Those using healthy strategies (H)
   
3. Those using both healthy and unhealthy strategies (H+U)

Women using a mix of healthy and unhealthy strategies (H+U) gained significantly more weight (4.56 kg) than the N group (1.51 kg) and H group (1.02 kg) over the four year observation period. This was after taking statistical account of things like education, income and initial BMI..

Perhaps not surprisingly, the H+U weight control group demonstrated greater anxiety over weight concerns and restraining their food intake and had poorer eating attitudes than women in the H or N groups.

So what were the strategies these women were using to control their weight?

Healthy strategies included reducing calories and amount of food, eliminating sweets, junk food and snacks, increasing activity, eating more fruit and vegetables, eating less fat or less high-carb food, and eating less meat.

Unhealthy strategies included skipping meals, using diet pills, liquid diets, appetite suppressants, laxatives, enemas, diuretics, and fasting. The women who used these strategies gained weight.

As the researchers point out, the probable reason that women who used healthy weight control strategies were more successful was simply because these strategies are more sustainable. Unhealthy strategies can lead to loss of control, overeating and bingeing, which over time results in increased weight. So it is the way you try to control your weight that determines success.

Another important aspect of this study noted by the authors is that women who worry about their weight were more likely to engage in unhealthy practices. If this proves to be true, simply promoting weight concerns and worries may exacerbate weight problems in the long run.

But the study also shows that women who adopt healthy weight control techniques can very much minimise weight gain over time, even if no actual weight is lost in the long run.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com