Interesting Article on Self Control

Interesting indeed! I particularly liked:

"These are skills that you build over time. The more you realize that those impulses are perfunctory and you can resist them, that ability gets stronger and stronger. Then stopping yourself feels less like an exercise of willpower and more like a reflex. It creates momentum, and you’re conditioning yourself to get better at it every time. That makes people feel good about themselves and want to keep going."

Yes, it absolutely applies to health and weight loss. Taking care of ourselves shouldn't be a constant exercise in willpower, but just a habit. As she said, how long it takes to form new habits is up to each individual, but the point is we DO have control over what we do and what we don't, whether it's shopping or overeating. Once you realize that it makes the process so much easier.

Thanks for sharing!

That's great!

I especially thought this part resonated when thinking of the parallels with food/eating:

Why am I turning to this activity to calm stress? When I started keeping a record, I got really good data on myself. Like, okay, when I’m hungry, when I need to drink water, when I feel ugly, whatever it might be, these are time periods when I am more susceptible to browsing Ross. That helped me to see that there were other things that I was trying to address through shopping.

Once I saw patterns emerge, it became a lot easier and even fun. It felt exciting to master some of these impulses.

Plug in eating for shopping in those paragraphs, and it's advice we give and take around here all the time. To me, the "empowerment" aspect of succeeding can become a superpower, helping me realize that if I could gradually and patiently change my routine eating/activity habits in small steps over a long time period, that was actually a skill I could apply to other domains like finances, home improvements, learning new skills/hobbies, and more.

The section @tulips_and_tea pulled out resonates with me, too. It reminds me of the MFP-er who compared changing eating habits to training a puppy. If the puppy's grown-up is consistent with training for a time, the results are better and come quicker than when they give in to the undesired behavior and give up the training.

For weight management, I'm not saying "tough it out with white-knuckled willpower", because IMO there absolutely exist weight management tactics that are too extreme to work long term - we see people struggling with them here sometimes - and that need for ultra-strong "motivation" or "willpower" can be a red flag identifying the too-extreme things. But even reasonable changes of habit take a little bit of positive self-talk to accomplish.

So many good technique tips in that NY magazine article (tagged as temporarily free, BTW), easy translation to food issues and even inactivity habits. I'm almost tempted to read her book, even though I don't over-shop.

Thanks, Spring - so good!