Weigh-in: Year 3, Week 30
Well, I had a worse week. I didn’t track at all. I only got in two workouts (though one was a 5 mile run and the other was a 5K run). I made some bad food choices.
And I lost 2 pounds. I chalk that up to momentum from the runs and not wearing jeans at this weigh-in (whereas I’d worn them the previous two weigh-ins).
My greatest difficulty of late has been restraint in the area of food. This brought to mind an article I came across some time back that bears repeating (I cannot remember if I’d posted about this before).
The article, “Fighting the Urge to Fight the Urge“, had the following key paragraphs which spoke volumes to me:
Ego also plays a significant role in whether we surrender to—or resist—tempting urges. We often associate giving in to impulses with a relaxed state of mind, but someone who is anxious because they constantly feel like a social outcast will have a more difficult time resisting temptation than someone who feels comfortable in their social surroundings.
“Coping with a stigmatized social identity” exhausts willpower, says Inzlicht. People who feel stigmatized are more likely to indulge in socially inappropriate behavior, which can further increase their sense of alienation.
The point being that there is a tendency for individuals to have a limited amount of willpower. That willpower is spread across many aspects of our life and not just in relation to food. Resisting the urge to get high, have intercourse, experience an outburst of anger, and many other things we hold back all pull from one bucket of willpower. We may find we can control our eating habits quite well one day, but have difficulty controlling our feelings at the same time. When we keep our feelings in check, we may find we make bad food choices.
We have to work on increasing the size of our reserve of willpower, because we are constantly resisting temptations on many levels of our lives. They don’t go away, but maybe we can eventually bring them all under control. Think about this the next time you do well on your diet, but still feel miserable because of some other issue you couldn’t deal with.
Also consider this from the point of view of those with New Year’s Resolutions. How many of those same resolutions cause you to dip into the willpower bucket? Maybe you have too many to deal with. I believe this is a very solid reason why so many fail at their resolutions. They overextended their willpower and failed at all of them when they only had enough reserve to work on one of them.
Just food for thoug….. Just something to think about.
Starting weight: 319.0 lb
Previous weight: 271.2 lb
Current weight: 269.2 lb
Current loss/gain: -2.0 lb
Total loss/gain: -49.8 lb
Cross-posted to FatBloggers.net
January 7th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Congrats on the 2 pound weight loss.
That is an interesting theory about willpower. I’ll have to give that one some thought.
January 7th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Congrats on the loss!
January 8th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hey Charles! Amy gave out you two’s sites. Just want to drop a line and say “Hi”. See you Sabbath.
yohance