You have willpower
Willpower is also the self control necessary to let things remain unsaid that should remain unsaid. Willpower is the control you exercise every morning when you get up and go to a job you don't love. Willpower is what makes you do a lot of things you have to do but don't want to. Willpower gets the house clean and the dishes done and the kids fed and clothed.
And research has proven we all have a finite amount of willpower.
The answer most likely lies somewhere in between but the reality is you are walking around saying "I have no willpower" you are certainly going to behave in a manner consistent with your statement.
This Is where Self-Love and trust come into play in such a big way. Stopping the negative self talk will have an enormous impact on your ability to believe in yourself.
In one willpower study subjects were given radishes and cookies and told to eat only radishes or cookies. Following the snack they were asked to perform a difficult puzzle. Subjects that had eaten radishes (and resisted the cookies) gave up after only eight minutes. The people who had eaten the cookies persisted for an average of eighteen minutes. Of course the study assumes resisting cookies requires more mental effort than it takes to resist radishes, but it showed interesting results. Willpower is a mental effort and we all have a limit to how much mental effort we can exert in a given time. Studies on multitasking suggest that multitasking decreases productivity. It has also been shown that resisting temptation makes other cognitive tasks more difficult.
the mere act of making choices can affect future self-control
Based on what we already know about willpower, decision making, and mental functioning and the draining effects these tasks have on each other there are some simple things you can do to help yourself stick to your healthy eating plan, or any plan.
- Since decision-making can impair future self control limit the decisions you need to make by making them in advance.
- Every laundry-day pick out your clothes for the following week and put the in the closet in order that you plan to wear them.
- Do your meal planning for the entire week in advance, make a list and bring the list to the store. This not only reduces the mental effort required on a daily basis it reduces the mental effort required in the grocery store.
- Don't keep trigger foods in the home, and if you do keep them out of sight, and out of reach.
- Don't go hungry. It requires a lot more mental effort make a healthy choice when you're hungry.
- Stay away from temptation, make your own coffee instead of stopping to buy it at a coffee shop that also sells unhealthy foods.
- Plan your schedule and make your to-do lists in advance.
And Finally, loving yourself and your body actually helps willpower. When you want good health more than anything else, and it's a priority and not just a preference, you will find that over eating and eating junk foods becomes less and less appealing in the first place.
Nothing is worse than negative self-talk. If you keep telling yourself you can't -- you won't be able to. use affirmations or positive thinking to help you with willpower.