Want to Lose Weight? Forget About Willpower

Who hasn't tried to lose weight?  Or quit smoking?  Or tried to give up just about anything they don't really want to?

Self-control, we tell ourselves.  But now a new study says that it involves more than willpower, according to newswise.com.

"Temptations are arguably more readily available, more creatively engineered, and cheaper than any time in history," the web site quotes Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor and one of the report's authors. "Junk food gets tastier and cheaper every year. And then there's video games, social media, the list goes on. In parallel, there are public policy issues such as obesity, educational underachievement, and under-saving that result, in part, from failures of self-control."

A Weight Watchers coach I know well says forget about willpower when trying to lose weight. He's devised strategies to keep himself from over-eating, like eating a whole pizza one day a week, then sticking to protein, fruits and vegetables the rest of it.  He's not really sacrificing anything, just making space for something he really wants in a way that will keep him from gaining weight.

Based on their comprehensive review of available research, researchers propose a framework "that organizes evidence-based self-control strategies along two dimensions based on how the strategies are implemented and who is initiating them," newswise reports.

"They observe that in some cases the best self-control strategy involves us changing the situation to create incentives or obstacles that help us exercise self-control, such as using apps that restrict our phone usage or keeping junk food out of the house. In other cases it's more effective to change how we think about the situation -- for example, by making an if­-then plan to anticipate how we'll deal with treats in the office -- so that exercising self-control becomes more appealing or easier to accomplish."

Other strategies work better when someone else implements them for us. "For example, our electricity company might use social norms to prompt a change in our thinking, showing us how our energy usage compares with that of our neighbors," they write. And policymakers often use situational constraints to prompt behavior focused on the long-term. 

Examples? Tax rebates for eco-friendly building materials).  Penalties, like raising taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Employers are increasingly using another type of situational constraint -- defaults.  To encourage employees to save for retirement; many are requiring people to opt out of an employer-provided retirement plan if they don't want to participate.

Identifying four types of self-control strategies that go beyond willpower sends an important message, writes George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University), a leading researcher in the science of decision making and author of an accompanying commentary, "given that people often believe willpower is sufficient despite its high failure rate. One of the reasons people tend to fail in their New Year's resolutions is 'naivety about the limitations of the brute-force approach and ignorance of the far more effective strategies enumerated in the review," he writes.

But Loewsenstein notes some important caveats to keep in mind when interpreting the research, which the researchers also acknowledge in the report. Many studies have examined self-control strategies in small groups of participants over brief periods of time, which raises questions about whether they will remain effective if implemented at a broader scale and how long the effects will last.