Thursday, 23 February 2012
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The Secret is Out: Losing Weight is NOT about Willpower
This is a guest post from Heather!Your body's response to crashes in your blood glucose tells you to eat. How strong your willpower is has nothing to do with it.The average American diet causes blood glucose spikes and crashes like a roller coaster.
Crashes and spikes in your blood glucose leads to:
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Inflammation
- Depression
- Lack of energy
- Sleep issues
- Muscle aches and pains
- PMS
- Joint pain
- Hormonal issues
- Menopausal problems
- Peri Menopausal problems
- Mood swings
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Insulin resistance
- Metabolic Syndrome
- Type 2 Diabetes
Spikes = High-Glycemic Eating/High Blood Glucose Levels (Hyperglycemia). Your blood glucose levels spike too high due to high-glycemic eating, too much food, too little exercise and/or stress. This causes your pancreas to secrete extra insulin to lower the blood glucose levels.
Symptoms:
- Thirst
- Hunger
- Frequent urination
- Fatigue
- Nausea
- Blurred vision
- Headache
- Nervousness
- Confusion
Crashes = Skipping Meals/Low Blood Glucose (Hypoglycemia). Your body goes into a state of emergency. Your adrenals begin to secrete cortisol because your body is stressed. It knows it needs energy and needs to bring the blood glucose back up, so it craves simple carbs and sugars because they break down the fastest.
Symptoms:
- Shakiness
- Sweaty
- Hunger
- Anxiety
- Nervousness
- Confusion
- Lethargic
- Weak
- Acting Angry or Irritable
- Slurred Speech
- Headache
- Urges/Cravings (not about will power)
These spikes and crashes repeat throughout the day, over and over, like a sugar roller coaster.
Your body actually prefers to keep your blood glucose levels in a narrow band. You can do this by following a low-glycemic lifestyle, exercising and stress management. A low-glycemic lifestyle means eating foods that release glucose more gradually into the bloodstream. There are many benefits to a low-glycemic lifestyle including: energy, weight loss, loss of belly fat, reduced inflammation, controlling diabetes and high cholesterol, reduced sugar cravings and healthy living.
I was so relieved when I learned that giving in to my cravings was not because of my "lack of willpower." It was how my body was responding to the high-glycemic foods I was eating. I used to have so much guilt over my "lack of willpower."
Now, instead of feeling guilty I am focusing on creating a low-glycemic lifestyle... and you can too.
Have you ever blamed your lack of willpower for your lack of weight loss? What do you think about willpower? Do you think it plays a large role in losing weight?
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Comments (49)
No, your cravings are not due to lack of willpower, but when you start binge eating, THAT is lack of willpower -.-
This still doesn't overlook the fact that you need to have a balanced diet with exercise.
This is really interesting. I remember hearing about something similar to the "high's and lows" on a T.V. show a while back. It's nice to see it explained a bit more.
For me though, it's all about my willpower. I have developed a willpower of steel when it comes to dieting. But I guess 10 years of dieting and eating disorders will do that to you.
Don't try to convince the ignorant.
The ones who don't have weight issues prefer to think it's because they are BETTER, somehow...and they are allowed to bash people who do, without any guilt.
Well, I'm currently having a harder time losing weight than the last time around (after baby 1 was easier than 2). However, I'm not sure which factors are contributing to that (age, depression, etc). I do know that while this is a huge factor, I'm sure - willpower CAN significantly help. I know I have more of it than my husband does.
So I believe willpower is very important too. You can't simply eat like a chocolate crazed addict (or insert your food weakness in place of chocolate) and blame it on biology. There has to come a point when you take responsibility for your actions & decide that you simply won't buy the bad stuff or you won't buy much of it & you'll fight those bodily cravings when they hit. Does that mean deprivation? NO! That will set you up for failure. It just means responsible eating.
Trust me - I KNOW this & yet I'm still having trouble losing weight this time around. I'm not a hypocrite, just someone who is also trying to remind myself that I need to work harder.
I'm sorry...I have had weight issues, and I've lost to a healthy weight now, and it is about willpower to some extent. I agree that it's not as much about that as some people think, but it's still part of it.
A low-glycemic lifestyle (which was part of what I did to lose weight) massively helps, but it doesn't do all the work for you. You still have to have the willpower to say no to most sugar and to overeating. You can eat a low-glycemic diet, but if you let yourself overeat all the time, you can still stay heavy.
I'm sorry to be a wet blanket, but I've been through this. Keeping your blood sugar steady is an amazing aid to health and weight loss. It doesn't take choice out of our hands, though. We're still responsible for what we eat and how much, and we have a daily choice to be moderate or not. No food secret will ever make us not responsible for that.
For all of you who say that it's just about willpower, how do you get your willpower to control biological processes that are completely outside of your conscious control, involving endorphins and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis?
You could make millions of dollars and save millions of lives by selling your willpower secrets to all kinds of addicts -- overeaters, drug addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, smokers, etc.
Please do explain.
I actually do think willpower has to do with my weightloss, well more like my eating habits. It took me over a year to lose 40lbs, and i think willpower had a lot to do with it. I put my mind into eating healthy and workout. SOME people gain weight because they eat out of boredom and just can't control it. If you can control your eating habits, well then you're good. I have a friend who's been trying to lose weight for over a year and she would lose 15lbs then gain 10lbs back. Mostly because she doesn't have the willpower to control her eating habits. Eating carbs, proteins, no veggies, sugary stuff, junk food. She could workout though, great runner, but not eater. But this is all of my opinion and experience.
"following a low-glycemic lifestyle, exercising and stress management" requires serious willpower yo.
@Of_Ravens_And_Roses@xanga - That's exactly what I was going to say
Well, you're right and you're wrong. Right because losing weight has nothing to do with how hungry you can make yourself be. Wrong because changing your diet and sticking with it does require willpower. It's hard to change eating habits that you've had for a long time, maybe even your whole life. Maybe before that, if your mother ate the same things while you were a fetus.
I think weight loss is all about will power. You need to stop eating sugary foods to stop the cravings in the first place and that takes will power to ignore whatever your body is telling you. The cravings won't be your fault, but indulging them will be.
You're wrong. It DOES take willpower to sustain a healthy life style and exercise when you're trying to lose weight. MAINTAINING good eating habits and choosing the right thing to eat, are two totally separate entities. I can see how there's a correlation... but substantial enough to blame "losing weight is NOT about willpower" independently.
weight loss is about willpower....I go on diets but I never stick with them because I dont have the willpower to give up bad food like cheeseburgers and pizza :)
weight loss is ABSOLUTELY about willpower. You have to have the WILL to lose weight, as in you have to want to do it. Willpower is setting your mind to the task and seeing it through.
Like quitting smoking. Everyone says its bad for you, but until you make up your mind to quit and set out to follow through (willpower) then you won't.Same with eating. If you set your mind to eating better, and less, then your willpower will enable you to follow through. But unless you want to do it nothing will change.Willpower will stop you from putting the crap in your grocery cart, and remind you to hit the produce section instead. Willpower will help you get up at 6am to hit the gym for an hour (or in my case, go to my evening classes where as before I wouldn't because I always felt like the "fat girl" in the room. Im over that).I saw this on a commercial a little while back, and I'm about to put this into practice by carrying healthy snacks and eating balanced meals. I'm attempting to lose weight, obviously. But I'm not sure what the best way is.
Coming from someone who has not only struggled with weight herself, but has many family memebers who struggle with weight, this blog is only part of the story. Weight loss and gain is something, like most issues with people, that can't be put into a box. Each person is different. They have different needs, different health issues. It is partly genetics, and mostly will power. If you do have issues that need to be addressed outside of diet and exercise (thyroid issues, diabetes, etc. etc) it takes willpower to get them taken care of. It takes the determination to not let it defeat you.
One year, I worked with a dorm floor of freshman (in college) students to basically watch over their schoolwork and make sure they were pointed at help when they needed it. That's when I came to a revelation: they weren't lazy or unmotivated or unfocused or had low willpower like (I admit) I sometimes thought they might. Keeping up with school, for them, was as difficult as staying in shape was for me; and I didn't think I was lazy or unmotivated (I was getting straight-A's, working this job, participating in campus activities and student groups, going home to see family every other weekend, etc)
And that's when I figured that everyone has at least one thing in their life that they 'let go'. We all have so much to worry about--family, career, education, friendships, perhaps volunteer work, or hobbies that we work on (e.g. music)..and finally, health. At least one of those things has to be a safety valve, to let off the pressure, and we all choose differently. A lot of us (unfortunately) end up choosing physical health...we don't sleep enough, eat right, or exercise, let's face it, at all.
So, I agree with the article; it's not about willpower. Willpower helps, but it's not the primary thing you need on a weight loss or fitness or health mission. The primary thing is PRIORITIES. Until you declare that physical health will no longer be your 'safety valve,' that something else labor-intensive will be slacked on first, that you will put time and energy and money (if possible) into your fitness journey, you'll get nowhere.
I used to value my education and work over all else (except maybe family). Now I'm not so sure. My life would be meaningless without the health and skill to enjoy a range of active hobbies and people to enjoy them with. So I look away from what I think are judgmental glares from my advisor and coworkers when I need to go to the gym, or to an appointment, or to see my boyfriend, or simply to get home and cook dinner before I get Chinese takeout from across the street. I'm not being lazy. I'm just redirecting my energy and motivation.
@xobrandilynn_surveys@xanga - I would recommend seeking professional (doctor or nutritionist) advice. Simply because there is SO MUCH misinformation on what is 'healthy' on the internet.
@JimPurdy.blogspot.com - You don't have to follow your endorphins. The way the brain works, it can fix this problem in various ways, including vesicles (the transmitting end of neurons) which have fewer neurotransmitters, changing your post-synaptic-densities (the receiving end) to have fewer receptors, growing more inhibitory synapses (some neuroscientists think these have a lot to do with self-control, but it is still an unknown, as is much of neuroscience), or increasing the action-potential (the point at which a neuron activates).
What this means in simple terms, if you resist temptation, the temptation will get easier to resist.
Please note that I'm not saying you should starve yourself, that's not healthy. You need to have a balanced diet.
That's the biology of it, but there's still the mental aspect to it. That's where the willpower comes in. You may be hungry because your blood sugar is low, but instead of eating a zebra cake, which you crave due to its high sugar content due to having gone so long without eating, you need to have the willpower to say NO and eat grapes (which are sweet and healthy) instead. Just an example of course, but you get the idea. It's not as easy as just a simple biological construct. APPETITE is driven by all sorts of things unrelated to actual HUNGER which is driven by everything you mentioned up there. It's related to memories, emotions, situations, people you're with, time of day, everything around you can drive you to eat certain things (due to the release of certain hormones acting on certain parts of the brain.) So you have to ignore all those cues (ie. use willpower) in order to lose weight...
It is absolutely about willpower. You might as well say that quitting smoking has nothing to do with willpower because your body is addicted to the nicotine, so there's no reason to feel guilty when you go out to buy another pack of cigarettes...even if it's going to kill you.
You choose what to put into your body, just because we may be designed to crave sugary fatty high-calorie foods doesn't mean we can just be like "Welp, that's just how my body reacts to those foods so it has nothing to do with my choices."
I lost 30 lbs after 5 years of carrying that extra weight around, and it was absolutely all about willpower and making better decisions.
Now I have to quit smoking.
I'm hypoglycemic and it's always a roller coaster, but I've realized that if I consumed more protein then my spikes or crashes aren't that bad...
not only are you wrong, your own arguments dont even support your conclusion
@Of_Ravens_And_Roses@xanga - Lawyered!