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Thought this was just me and it’s so refreshing to hear. I can never eat just part of a bag of chips. Or save the really good sandwhich for later. Or not drink

Thought this was just me and it’s so refreshing to hear. I can never eat just part of a bag of chips. Or save the really good sandwhich for later. Or not drink another coffee because I already had one. Etc. etc Do lots of other folks experience this? I seem to only have self control when it hurts my job or income, and even then, barely.

eterm 4y ago
I'm similar, but I'm far from neurotypical, so I can't say whether it's typical or not.
hemreldop 4y ago
scruple 4y ago
> Do lots of other folks experience this? I don't think we're alone but I doubt that we're "normal."
- newbamboo 4y ago
  I’m normal.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Anybody want to define "normal" ?
  - scruple 4y ago
    I'm Joe, nice to meet you.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
I think a lot of people with ADHD would relate, or have been able to at some point.
- evergreyskies 4y ago
  ADHD here. Kids are ADHD. My Malinois has to be ADHD. Being ADHD like I am with almost two decades of IT under my belt has felt weird. I crave my YouTube channels and certain news sites since the content creators I watch/read put out daily content. Ditto my insane amount of caffeine and nicotine consumption, which I learned from having my kids diagnosed, is me self medicating in lieu of something pharmaceutical. I'm also OCD, so that doesn't help. People with ADHD/OCD need closure something fierce, so when I feel like I'm not getting it, I feel the world is not right. On the professional side, my ADHD/OCD makes for some clean code and pedantically-set up servers. Nothing says ADHD/OCD like taking two days to crank out code which some of my colleagues can crank out in half the time. I'm told I'm too pedantic sometimes. Too much of a perfectionist. ADHD can do that to you. I'm happy with my lot in life.
  - jotm 4y ago
    I don't know why this comment feels like a punch in the face... I have severe ADHD, it's been getting worse and only medication helps, and I cannot get it. I have failed my whole life, I cannot start shit, I cannot finish anything, I'm just an impulsive monkey who is unfortunately aware of their own situation, stuck inside a body, forced to watch a deadly trainwreck in slow motion. The little I've achieved has taken me 10x as much time as it would've a normal person. And I'm pissing it all away anyway. This is hell. And then I see "everyone in my life is ADHD lolkek" "I'm happy". Sorry. Glad your case is mild enough.
    - tlokas 4y ago
      I don't have ADHD, but I have family with ADHD. Wouldn't you say that ADHD affects the person, and therefore the type of personality would change the outcome? (In contrast to ADHD defining the person) Edit:spelling
    - s5300 4y ago
      Why can’t you get medication? Is it because of the country you live in?
    - 4y ago
sgtnoodle 4y ago
I think it's pretty common. I personally call it "Goldfish syndrome", although apparently that's caught on with another informal meaning according to the internet. Eating and drinking delicious high calorie things rewards your brain. On an evolutionary time scale, delicious things were relatively rare and often required expending a lot of energy to acquire. In the last 100 years or so, modern technology has shifted the typical diet to be primarily cheap, processed high calorie foods. If you want to change your behavior, I would suggest calorie counting with a phone app. Do it every meal or snack, before you eat it. Even if you don't restrict yourself, it will make you consciously aware of your intake. You'll naturally start thinking in terms of energy intake rather than sensory intake. You'll also start to be able to correlate your emotional state to your current level of hunger rather than the other way around. "I am so hungry I could eat 300 calories of potato chips!" I did that for a few months recently and lost 8 pounds. I stopped doing it more recently, and have gained 3 back. If you're a hipster at heart and have free time, you could also start doing more of your own food processing at home. Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch. If you really like good coffee, buy a hand grinder and whole beans, or figure out how to roast your own beans. If you think you're eating unhealthy and having external pressure would help with your self control, maybe just go see a primary care physician and request a cholesterol check and to be screened for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. If you have indeed been too indulgent and lethargic over an extended period of time, your cholesterol will probably read high, and you probably have fat in your liver that may be causing slightly elevated enzyme levels. A Dr. telling you to try to eat healthy may not be motivating, but quantitative data may be.
- crdrost 4y ago
  If you want an altogether nerdier name maybe call it Wittgenstein syndrome? Drury reports a conversation with the famed philosopher: > So the next day when we were alone I asked Wittgenstein to tell me more about Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein: “Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.” He then went on to speak of the three categories of life-style that play such a large part in Kierkegaard’s writing: the asethetic, where the objective is to get the maximum enjoyment out of this life; the ethical, where the concept of duty demands renunciation; and the religious, where this very renunciation itself becomes a source of joy. Wittgenstein: “Concerning this last category I don’t pretend to understand how it is possible. I have never been able to deny myself anything, not even a cup of coffee if I wanted it. Mind you I don’t believe what Kierkegaard believed, but of this I am certain, that we are not here in order to have a good time.”
criddell 4y ago
For me it depends on how my day is going. When I first read about willpower being an exhaustible resource, it totally aligned with my experience. A few years later I read that those ego depletion studies had been invalidated and that surprised me. Running out of willpower seems like something I experience.
- tlokas 4y ago
  That is my experience too. But it might be something that is subjectively felt, and people then attributed it to be something that depletes. Even if the depletion is invalidated, the subjective feeling might however still be valid. --- If I should suggest another possibility on the spot, I would suggest mental fatigue. You get tired of denying yourself things the same way you get tired of denying your kid pestering you for a treat. It's not directly depletion, but I could subjectively describe it as a resource getting depleted.
  - nebulous_two 4y ago
    It might be worth thinking about what it is that is being depleted, exactly. When I "run out of willpower" it doesn't really feel the same as when I "simply cannot do it anymore". If I lift a weight enough times, eventually I simply can't anymore, no matter how much I will it. It's not a decision, like a decision to stop working on a problem. That would be a lack of willpower to continue...? Is there really a mental equivalent to physical exhaustion that leaves us beyond the ability to make a decision? Is that what running out of willpower would be?
    - Metalbourne 4y ago
      Believe it or not, even something like physical exertion has hard-to-define limitations. The amount of reps that you can do of an exercise is more based on how forcefully your brain drives your nerves to activate your muscles and keep going. If you have a habit of sticking to sets of 10 reps, odds are you will feel exhausted at 10 reps, and this is because once you hit your magic goal, you're no longer applying the same concentrated mental energy, and you suddenly feel tired and stop there. But if you did that set like as if it were the last set of your life, or like you were at the olympics trying to break records, you'd be able to push 15 or 20 reps, rather than just the 10 that you do as your comfortable limit. You have the physical ability to keep doing something until the moment that your muscles lock up from lactic acid buildup and you just drop. But people rarely ever reach that state. They stop much sooner because pushing further requires more concentrated brain input which they don't want to dedicate. Maintaining your current routine is effortless, and we tend to favor the easy, comfortable. Pushing your limits is uncomfortable, and in a world where we have become so accustomed to prioritizing indulgence and comfort it becomes hard to break out of our safe zones.
joaomacp 4y ago
It may be a common trait in programmers, since we're rewarded by getting to the bottom of things: "why is this function failing? who calls it? in which possible states?" Most programmers have experienced being so immersed in code that we don't notice time is passing, forgetting to eat or sleep. It's similar with immersion in social media / food / whatever. We become lost in the activity and lose our sense of self. I've recently heard of the concept of conscientiousness as a personality trait. People with low conscientiousness tend to procrastinate more, and it's tied to ADHD. Apparently it can be trained. I'm trying (though not really succeeding) to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?". Seems so basic, like I've regressed to being a child who has no self control...
- bityard 4y ago
  I identify with all of this, but this: > to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?". this too can have its pitfalls. In my case, I always feel like I have BOTH too many things that I WANT to do and too many things HAVE to do and whenever I step back and try to look at the bigger picture, I realize that I don't feel like I'm making tangible progress on any of them. And then the anxiety sets in and I feel like, "well, if I'm working this hard and not even keeping up, why am I working at all?" And so I sort of "give up" for a few days or a week and feel even MORE guilty because literally nothing is getting done and I'm getting even further behind. A lot of the comments I write here may sound like I really have my shit together, but that's just because I have a lot of generalized experience that just basically comes from lots of introspection and time being alive. But I have yet to figure out the one weird trick to being both productive (making progress toward future life goals) and happy (enjoying what I have in the present).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - robocat 4y ago
    Perhaps try to distinguish where your wants and pressures come from? So many of our "wants" are social status goals, or social expectations. I find it very hard to discriminate my own desires from my unconscious programming by others. Whenever you feel pressured, try and find the root cause of the pressure? Just an idea - perhaps damaging but hopefully enabling.
stult 4y ago
Yes indeed, many of us do. Nearly everyone I've ever dated gets mad at me at some point because I can't keep cookies in the house or I will eat them all. You are far from alone, and in fact I suspect the overwhelming majority of people are the same. Hence the obesity epidemic. Personally I find that my self-control is limited to the same extent that my time and energy are limited. If I'm tired, it's harder for me to be disciplined, and the place that I most often tired is at home at the end of the day, when temptation to over eat is at the greatest. I believe there is a fairly substantial body of evidence that shows I am not unusual in this regard. This phenomenon is why groceries stores put candy in checkout lanes, when you are mentally tired from exercising discipline by not picking up the delicious-looking tray of cupcakes in the bakery aisle and thus are most susceptible to temptation. I think some people can just use willpower to maintain their discipline in every situation, but those people are extreme outliers. Like Navy SEALs or Olympic athletes or other extreme high performers, and not even all of them. Those who can are experts at delayed gratification and are able to visualize what they want and then never deviate from their plan for how to achieve it, regardless of their current emotional state or energy levels. But that is vanishingly rare and often their behavior is a result of some deep trauma (eg someone who is super disciplined about their diet because their dad died early from an obesity-related illness) rather than a positive focus on a certain outcome. The truth is that the vast majority of people just follow their natural inclinations and do whatever is easiest for them. The path of least resistance. As one such weak-willed person, my approach has been to structure my life to remove temptations, much as the GP comment above described their approach to curating their internet content. For example, I have lived almost exclusively in big cities for my entire life until the last year, when I moved to the middle of nowhere. Which means I can't get takeout food delivered and it's much harder to go out and get ice cream on a whim. Compared to living in a major city where I could get Michelin star restaurant food delivered in a matter of minutes, the temptation is just much, much less powerful. I order my groceries online too, which also dramatically reduces the tendency to impulse buy anything unhealthy (I get to skip the checkout lane with the candy, for one thing). On the other side of the caloric equation, I set up a home gym so that travel time to the gym doesn't become an excuse not to exercise. Basically I add barriers for bad choices and remove them for good ones. I am in the best shape of my life as a result. I guess what I'm saying is that most people achieve good behaviors in part because of their intentional discipline and in part because their environment is conducive to those behaviors. The real trick is figuring out how to intentionally structure your environment to match whatever behaviors you want. It's effectively borrowing motivation from your peak-energy level periods to provide discipline during periods when you don't have the energy to generate it yourself. It can be incredibly hard to figure out, because you need to know how to change your environment and how you will actually react to that new environment, which isn't always predictable.
skocznymroczny 4y ago
An easy way to have self control is to switch to a keto-like diet. You don't even have to count calories and carbs in most cases. There's a variant called lazy keto, where you just stick to approved foods and don't need to count. It's surprisingly hard to overeat on things like cauliflower and pork chops. Be wary however of the more "extreme" advice on keto-like diets. You don't have to stuff yourself with fats, or put a stick of butter in your coffee.
- thoughtpeddler 4y ago
  100% this. People often ask me "How do you stick with keto? It's such a strict diet." I always answer: "It's actually one of the easiest diets: the answer to most 'can I eat this?' question is 'no'." There isn't a persistently high cognitive load on deciding what you can eat, once you master the foundational knowledge of eating low-carb.
  - riekus 4y ago
    I really want to follow it, but what about the bad breath?! It's definitely a thing, you can smell when people are in ketosis
    - jjtheblunt 4y ago
      isn't that ketoacidosis not ketosis? (i'm genuinely asking )
    - Metalbourne 4y ago
      That usually happens because people use stimulants to accelerate energy burn and it dries you out, and when your body, especially your mouth, get dry, you will get bad breath immediately. If you want to test this out for yourself, try brushing your teeth while you feel very dehydrated. Your breath will smell bad soon after.
- uuyi 4y ago
  This is terrible advice. Any fads are. Ketogenic diets are not good for you in any way. Bad behaviour starts with acknowledgement and the best way to do that is to track what you eat and learn to adapt slowly and develop self discipline. Use a tracker app and set a reasonable daily break even nutritional target and start thinking about what you eat. Slowly substitute better choices in. Eventually you will develop self control. People want quick fixes but keto just breaks other things.
XCSme 4y ago
It's common. We tend to keep doing what we are already doing (an inertia of sorts). If we are eating, we keep on eating (even if we are not hungry anymore) until an external factor stops us (e.g. the food is over). Changing states (starting/stopping) is the hardest part, but if you trick yourself somehow to stop it's easy to just put the food aside. The question that remain is how do you stop yourself from doing what you are currently doing? Some people use an "1,2,3 technique", where you just count to yourself and once you reach three you start doing what's needed. Mindfulness also helps, where you take a breath and think exactly what you are doing and why (I am eating, I am putting my hand in the bag of chips, I am bringing the chip to my mouth even if I am not hungry and don't even enjoy it that much, this would just make me feel fat afterwards).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bsder 4y ago
> I can never eat just part of a bag of chips. To me, part of it is being mindful. Don't open the bag of chips and then watch a movie or surf the net while munching on them. You will eat the whole bag. If I mode change from sitting in front of the computer to standing in the kitchen eating the chips and then mode change to back in front of the computer, I don't mindlessly consume the whole bag. But I will still sometimes consume the whole bag. One thing I have also tried to do is differentiate between "I want chips because I'm hungry" vs "I want chips because I'm craving salt". It's not easy for me to tell the difference. I coat some baby carrots in salt or Old Bay seasoning and munch a few--if that keeps the munchies away, my body wanted salt. If I'm hungry again 15 minutes later, well, my body wants calories. Nevertheless, I'm mostly in the camp of "Just don't have chips/cookies in the house". It also helps that I learned to bake as a child. I like tasty desserts, and most of what now exists is mostly sugar overload with no flavor. So, a dessert easily sets off my "Is this dessert tasty enough to merit skipping two entire steaks <or insert whatever main course you like> to compensate?" And, if my that activates, the answer is almost always a resounding "No." and I skip dessert. Unfortunately for me, I found a middle eastern place that does homemade Baklava with a cream filling. It's right next to a Mexican restaurant that I also find quite nice. This is a bad thing for my waistline.
riekus 4y ago
This is me so bad. I have it in the good and bad ways. In the good I will run couple marathons a month and in the bad I will eat whatever I can find. I always felt like an outcast, good to hear I am not alone :) For media consumption it is exactly the same. The good is that I get to the nitty gritty of technical problems. But I also read the unless crap till no end. I have been able to ditch Twitter, reddit, Facebook and Instagram but I just substitute it with hackernews and YouTube.
- xkbarkar 4y ago
  Haha. Same here. I have gotten back into reading though. That took a while because I lost the ability to concentrate on books as I grew more dependent on streaming and social media. Its been about a year now, since I left all the major social media hubs, got incredibly selective on daily news (only one local media outlet and a couple of polar opposite international ones that I pay for) and cut down on watching streaming services, that I started to be able to concentrate on reading books again. I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on. I missed it terribly. HN and youtube still stick. Mostly tutorials, workouts or info videos ( Andrew Huberman, justforfunc, 3blue1brown etc. ) on youtube though.
  - riekus 4y ago
    Same, but with books and audiobooks I just misuse them in the same way, feels like consumption addiction, even though, like you, it is all in the selfhelp / tutorial / learning space.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dazc 4y ago
I think it's a common problem. My default method of weight control is not to have unhealty food and alcohol in the house except for weekends. In the office I only have healthy food available. It works and I have gotten used to it - mainly because my anything goes weekends act as a great pressure release valve.

eterm 4y ago

I'm similar, but I'm far from neurotypical, so I can't say whether it's typical or not.

hemreldop 4y ago

scruple 4y ago

> Do lots of other folks experience this? I don't think we're alone but I doubt that we're "normal."

newbamboo 4y ago
I’m normal.
- doubled112 4y ago
  Anybody want to define "normal" ?
- scruple 4y ago
  I'm Joe, nice to meet you.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

I think a lot of people with ADHD would relate, or have been able to at some point.

evergreyskies 4y ago
ADHD here. Kids are ADHD. My Malinois has to be ADHD. Being ADHD like I am with almost two decades of IT under my belt has felt weird. I crave my YouTube channels and certain news sites since the content creators I watch/read put out daily content. Ditto my insane amount of caffeine and nicotine consumption, which I learned from having my kids diagnosed, is me self medicating in lieu of something pharmaceutical. I'm also OCD, so that doesn't help. People with ADHD/OCD need closure something fierce, so when I feel like I'm not getting it, I feel the world is not right. On the professional side, my ADHD/OCD makes for some clean code and pedantically-set up servers. Nothing says ADHD/OCD like taking two days to crank out code which some of my colleagues can crank out in half the time. I'm told I'm too pedantic sometimes. Too much of a perfectionist. ADHD can do that to you. I'm happy with my lot in life.
- jotm 4y ago
  I don't know why this comment feels like a punch in the face... I have severe ADHD, it's been getting worse and only medication helps, and I cannot get it. I have failed my whole life, I cannot start shit, I cannot finish anything, I'm just an impulsive monkey who is unfortunately aware of their own situation, stuck inside a body, forced to watch a deadly trainwreck in slow motion. The little I've achieved has taken me 10x as much time as it would've a normal person. And I'm pissing it all away anyway. This is hell. And then I see "everyone in my life is ADHD lolkek" "I'm happy". Sorry. Glad your case is mild enough.
  - tlokas 4y ago
    I don't have ADHD, but I have family with ADHD. Wouldn't you say that ADHD affects the person, and therefore the type of personality would change the outcome? (In contrast to ADHD defining the person) Edit:spelling
  - s5300 4y ago
    Why can’t you get medication? Is it because of the country you live in?
  - 4y ago

sgtnoodle 4y ago

I think it's pretty common. I personally call it "Goldfish syndrome", although apparently that's caught on with another informal meaning according to the internet. Eating and drinking delicious high calorie things rewards your brain. On an evolutionary time scale, delicious things were relatively rare and often required expending a lot of energy to acquire. In the last 100 years or so, modern technology has shifted the typical diet to be primarily cheap, processed high calorie foods. If you want to change your behavior, I would suggest calorie counting with a phone app. Do it every meal or snack, before you eat it. Even if you don't restrict yourself, it will make you consciously aware of your intake. You'll naturally start thinking in terms of energy intake rather than sensory intake. You'll also start to be able to correlate your emotional state to your current level of hunger rather than the other way around. "I am so hungry I could eat 300 calories of potato chips!" I did that for a few months recently and lost 8 pounds. I stopped doing it more recently, and have gained 3 back. If you're a hipster at heart and have free time, you could also start doing more of your own food processing at home. Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch. If you really like good coffee, buy a hand grinder and whole beans, or figure out how to roast your own beans. If you think you're eating unhealthy and having external pressure would help with your self control, maybe just go see a primary care physician and request a cholesterol check and to be screened for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. If you have indeed been too indulgent and lethargic over an extended period of time, your cholesterol will probably read high, and you probably have fat in your liver that may be causing slightly elevated enzyme levels. A Dr. telling you to try to eat healthy may not be motivating, but quantitative data may be.

crdrost 4y ago
If you want an altogether nerdier name maybe call it Wittgenstein syndrome? Drury reports a conversation with the famed philosopher: > So the next day when we were alone I asked Wittgenstein to tell me more about Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein: “Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.” He then went on to speak of the three categories of life-style that play such a large part in Kierkegaard’s writing: the asethetic, where the objective is to get the maximum enjoyment out of this life; the ethical, where the concept of duty demands renunciation; and the religious, where this very renunciation itself becomes a source of joy. Wittgenstein: “Concerning this last category I don’t pretend to understand how it is possible. I have never been able to deny myself anything, not even a cup of coffee if I wanted it. Mind you I don’t believe what Kierkegaard believed, but of this I am certain, that we are not here in order to have a good time.”

criddell 4y ago

For me it depends on how my day is going. When I first read about willpower being an exhaustible resource, it totally aligned with my experience. A few years later I read that those ego depletion studies had been invalidated and that surprised me. Running out of willpower seems like something I experience.

tlokas 4y ago
That is my experience too. But it might be something that is subjectively felt, and people then attributed it to be something that depletes. Even if the depletion is invalidated, the subjective feeling might however still be valid. --- If I should suggest another possibility on the spot, I would suggest mental fatigue. You get tired of denying yourself things the same way you get tired of denying your kid pestering you for a treat. It's not directly depletion, but I could subjectively describe it as a resource getting depleted.
- nebulous_two 4y ago
  It might be worth thinking about what it is that is being depleted, exactly. When I "run out of willpower" it doesn't really feel the same as when I "simply cannot do it anymore". If I lift a weight enough times, eventually I simply can't anymore, no matter how much I will it. It's not a decision, like a decision to stop working on a problem. That would be a lack of willpower to continue...? Is there really a mental equivalent to physical exhaustion that leaves us beyond the ability to make a decision? Is that what running out of willpower would be?
  - Metalbourne 4y ago
    Believe it or not, even something like physical exertion has hard-to-define limitations. The amount of reps that you can do of an exercise is more based on how forcefully your brain drives your nerves to activate your muscles and keep going. If you have a habit of sticking to sets of 10 reps, odds are you will feel exhausted at 10 reps, and this is because once you hit your magic goal, you're no longer applying the same concentrated mental energy, and you suddenly feel tired and stop there. But if you did that set like as if it were the last set of your life, or like you were at the olympics trying to break records, you'd be able to push 15 or 20 reps, rather than just the 10 that you do as your comfortable limit. You have the physical ability to keep doing something until the moment that your muscles lock up from lactic acid buildup and you just drop. But people rarely ever reach that state. They stop much sooner because pushing further requires more concentrated brain input which they don't want to dedicate. Maintaining your current routine is effortless, and we tend to favor the easy, comfortable. Pushing your limits is uncomfortable, and in a world where we have become so accustomed to prioritizing indulgence and comfort it becomes hard to break out of our safe zones.

joaomacp 4y ago

It may be a common trait in programmers, since we're rewarded by getting to the bottom of things: "why is this function failing? who calls it? in which possible states?" Most programmers have experienced being so immersed in code that we don't notice time is passing, forgetting to eat or sleep. It's similar with immersion in social media / food / whatever. We become lost in the activity and lose our sense of self. I've recently heard of the concept of conscientiousness as a personality trait. People with low conscientiousness tend to procrastinate more, and it's tied to ADHD. Apparently it can be trained. I'm trying (though not really succeeding) to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?". Seems so basic, like I've regressed to being a child who has no self control...

bityard 4y ago
I identify with all of this, but this: > to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?". this too can have its pitfalls. In my case, I always feel like I have BOTH too many things that I WANT to do and too many things HAVE to do and whenever I step back and try to look at the bigger picture, I realize that I don't feel like I'm making tangible progress on any of them. And then the anxiety sets in and I feel like, "well, if I'm working this hard and not even keeping up, why am I working at all?" And so I sort of "give up" for a few days or a week and feel even MORE guilty because literally nothing is getting done and I'm getting even further behind. A lot of the comments I write here may sound like I really have my shit together, but that's just because I have a lot of generalized experience that just basically comes from lots of introspection and time being alive. But I have yet to figure out the one weird trick to being both productive (making progress toward future life goals) and happy (enjoying what I have in the present).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- robocat 4y ago
  Perhaps try to distinguish where your wants and pressures come from? So many of our "wants" are social status goals, or social expectations. I find it very hard to discriminate my own desires from my unconscious programming by others. Whenever you feel pressured, try and find the root cause of the pressure? Just an idea - perhaps damaging but hopefully enabling.

stult 4y ago

Yes indeed, many of us do. Nearly everyone I've ever dated gets mad at me at some point because I can't keep cookies in the house or I will eat them all. You are far from alone, and in fact I suspect the overwhelming majority of people are the same. Hence the obesity epidemic. Personally I find that my self-control is limited to the same extent that my time and energy are limited. If I'm tired, it's harder for me to be disciplined, and the place that I most often tired is at home at the end of the day, when temptation to over eat is at the greatest. I believe there is a fairly substantial body of evidence that shows I am not unusual in this regard. This phenomenon is why groceries stores put candy in checkout lanes, when you are mentally tired from exercising discipline by not picking up the delicious-looking tray of cupcakes in the bakery aisle and thus are most susceptible to temptation. I think some people can just use willpower to maintain their discipline in every situation, but those people are extreme outliers. Like Navy SEALs or Olympic athletes or other extreme high performers, and not even all of them. Those who can are experts at delayed gratification and are able to visualize what they want and then never deviate from their plan for how to achieve it, regardless of their current emotional state or energy levels. But that is vanishingly rare and often their behavior is a result of some deep trauma (eg someone who is super disciplined about their diet because their dad died early from an obesity-related illness) rather than a positive focus on a certain outcome. The truth is that the vast majority of people just follow their natural inclinations and do whatever is easiest for them. The path of least resistance. As one such weak-willed person, my approach has been to structure my life to remove temptations, much as the GP comment above described their approach to curating their internet content. For example, I have lived almost exclusively in big cities for my entire life until the last year, when I moved to the middle of nowhere. Which means I can't get takeout food delivered and it's much harder to go out and get ice cream on a whim. Compared to living in a major city where I could get Michelin star restaurant food delivered in a matter of minutes, the temptation is just much, much less powerful. I order my groceries online too, which also dramatically reduces the tendency to impulse buy anything unhealthy (I get to skip the checkout lane with the candy, for one thing). On the other side of the caloric equation, I set up a home gym so that travel time to the gym doesn't become an excuse not to exercise. Basically I add barriers for bad choices and remove them for good ones. I am in the best shape of my life as a result. I guess what I'm saying is that most people achieve good behaviors in part because of their intentional discipline and in part because their environment is conducive to those behaviors. The real trick is figuring out how to intentionally structure your environment to match whatever behaviors you want. It's effectively borrowing motivation from your peak-energy level periods to provide discipline during periods when you don't have the energy to generate it yourself. It can be incredibly hard to figure out, because you need to know how to change your environment and how you will actually react to that new environment, which isn't always predictable.

skocznymroczny 4y ago

An easy way to have self control is to switch to a keto-like diet. You don't even have to count calories and carbs in most cases. There's a variant called lazy keto, where you just stick to approved foods and don't need to count. It's surprisingly hard to overeat on things like cauliflower and pork chops. Be wary however of the more "extreme" advice on keto-like diets. You don't have to stuff yourself with fats, or put a stick of butter in your coffee.

thoughtpeddler 4y ago
100% this. People often ask me "How do you stick with keto? It's such a strict diet." I always answer: "It's actually one of the easiest diets: the answer to most 'can I eat this?' question is 'no'." There isn't a persistently high cognitive load on deciding what you can eat, once you master the foundational knowledge of eating low-carb.
- riekus 4y ago
  I really want to follow it, but what about the bad breath?! It's definitely a thing, you can smell when people are in ketosis
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    isn't that ketoacidosis not ketosis? (i'm genuinely asking )
  - Metalbourne 4y ago
    That usually happens because people use stimulants to accelerate energy burn and it dries you out, and when your body, especially your mouth, get dry, you will get bad breath immediately. If you want to test this out for yourself, try brushing your teeth while you feel very dehydrated. Your breath will smell bad soon after.
uuyi 4y ago
This is terrible advice. Any fads are. Ketogenic diets are not good for you in any way. Bad behaviour starts with acknowledgement and the best way to do that is to track what you eat and learn to adapt slowly and develop self discipline. Use a tracker app and set a reasonable daily break even nutritional target and start thinking about what you eat. Slowly substitute better choices in. Eventually you will develop self control. People want quick fixes but keto just breaks other things.

XCSme 4y ago

It's common. We tend to keep doing what we are already doing (an inertia of sorts). If we are eating, we keep on eating (even if we are not hungry anymore) until an external factor stops us (e.g. the food is over). Changing states (starting/stopping) is the hardest part, but if you trick yourself somehow to stop it's easy to just put the food aside. The question that remain is how do you stop yourself from doing what you are currently doing? Some people use an "1,2,3 technique", where you just count to yourself and once you reach three you start doing what's needed. Mindfulness also helps, where you take a breath and think exactly what you are doing and why (I am eating, I am putting my hand in the bag of chips, I am bringing the chip to my mouth even if I am not hungry and don't even enjoy it that much, this would just make me feel fat afterwards).

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bsder 4y ago

> I can never eat just part of a bag of chips. To me, part of it is being mindful. Don't open the bag of chips and then watch a movie or surf the net while munching on them. You will eat the whole bag. If I mode change from sitting in front of the computer to standing in the kitchen eating the chips and then mode change to back in front of the computer, I don't mindlessly consume the whole bag. But I will still sometimes consume the whole bag. One thing I have also tried to do is differentiate between "I want chips because I'm hungry" vs "I want chips because I'm craving salt". It's not easy for me to tell the difference. I coat some baby carrots in salt or Old Bay seasoning and munch a few--if that keeps the munchies away, my body wanted salt. If I'm hungry again 15 minutes later, well, my body wants calories. Nevertheless, I'm mostly in the camp of "Just don't have chips/cookies in the house". It also helps that I learned to bake as a child. I like tasty desserts, and most of what now exists is mostly sugar overload with no flavor. So, a dessert easily sets off my "Is this dessert tasty enough to merit skipping two entire steaks <or insert whatever main course you like> to compensate?" And, if my that activates, the answer is almost always a resounding "No." and I skip dessert. Unfortunately for me, I found a middle eastern place that does homemade Baklava with a cream filling. It's right next to a Mexican restaurant that I also find quite nice. This is a bad thing for my waistline.

riekus 4y ago

This is me so bad. I have it in the good and bad ways. In the good I will run couple marathons a month and in the bad I will eat whatever I can find. I always felt like an outcast, good to hear I am not alone :) For media consumption it is exactly the same. The good is that I get to the nitty gritty of technical problems. But I also read the unless crap till no end. I have been able to ditch Twitter, reddit, Facebook and Instagram but I just substitute it with hackernews and YouTube.

xkbarkar 4y ago
Haha. Same here. I have gotten back into reading though. That took a while because I lost the ability to concentrate on books as I grew more dependent on streaming and social media. Its been about a year now, since I left all the major social media hubs, got incredibly selective on daily news (only one local media outlet and a couple of polar opposite international ones that I pay for) and cut down on watching streaming services, that I started to be able to concentrate on reading books again. I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on. I missed it terribly. HN and youtube still stick. Mostly tutorials, workouts or info videos ( Andrew Huberman, justforfunc, 3blue1brown etc. ) on youtube though.
- riekus 4y ago
  Same, but with books and audiobooks I just misuse them in the same way, feels like consumption addiction, even though, like you, it is all in the selfhelp / tutorial / learning space.

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dazc 4y ago

I think it's a common problem. My default method of weight control is not to have unhealty food and alcohol in the house except for weekends. In the office I only have healthy food available. It works and I have gotten used to it - mainly because my anything goes weekends act as a great pressure release valve.