Motivation to Lose Weight: 2 Reasons Why Willpower Cause Diet Failure

So, I discontinue self-challenge of 10-days juice diet. It was on the day I cheated on my diet.

There's no specific reason for that. I just become less motivated to continue after slipping up. A bit.

Though staying motivated is a key success to any diet plan, it could be other factor for diet failure as well. You asked, "But how?" Gnolls has a long elaboration about it.

1. Motivation to lose weight requires energy
The brain area, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for willpower. Willpower is weak and requires real energy. It is a struggle for a tired and preoccupied brain to resist what it wants, though what it wants isn't what we need. A sudden change of habit probably asking the brain for too much. However, it is possible to strengthen the willpower by exercising it, as an experiment done by Prof. Baumeister in 1999.

The prefrontal cortex. Image from gnolls.org

2. Motivation to lose weight causes stress
Restrained eating using your willpower will only makes you feel stressed. And when you stress out, you tend to eat more.

Stress makes a person fat primarily because of an excessive secretion of the key stress hormone, cortisol, along with a reduced secretion of key anabolic hormones, such as DHEA, testosterone, and growth hormone. This combination of highly catabolic cortisol and reduced anabolic hormones causes the body to store fat, lose muscle, slow metabolic rate, and increase appetite—all of which have the ultimate effect of making a person fatter. Overall, stress makes you burn fewer calories and consume more food (especially carbohydrates), which increases your stress levels even more! - The Cortisol Connection

Final Thought
Weight loss is one of the most popular New Year's resolution. But it's a best approach to minimize the role of willpower to lose weight, as pushing the brain too hard will only makes it get tired and later result in diet failure. Practicing mental discipline in one area, such as self-control, can make it easier to met New Year's resolution to lose weight.

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