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We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on

We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on where to allocate this very limited resources, especially in situations where people are otherwise struggling. All of which is to say -- these exhortations can play a useful role. :)

LorenPechtel 9mo ago
Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.
- CrossVR 9mo ago
  This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.
  - PeterStuer 9mo ago
    It feels very different. Depressed people lack the motivation/energy to start exercise, fat people seem more in line with addiction in not being inclined to overcome short term craving for more feed. While at a certain level of abstraction you can reduce both to A -> !B -> C, that generalization seems to obfuscate specific important differences that impact pathways to treatment. Craving is not the same as lacking energy. Craving, while subversive, energizes, depression does not.
  - browningstreet 9mo ago
    If you eat poorly, those foods will not satiate and the "hunger" (it's not the hunger of a body starved of calories) persists. Eat for sustenance and the hunger you may feel will be different. I also know that if I overeat, I have a strong urge to keep feeding (more chips, more pizza, more chipsahoy). Whereas when I eat a proper meal, I'm fine when the eating of that meal ends.
    - skywhopper 9mo ago
      I hope you realize that what works for you and your body doesn’t work for everyone. Your experience is not universal. Your body chemistry and genetics are not universal.
      - carlosjobim 9mo ago
        When it comes to the most basic instincts, it is universal and genetic. We do not differ in that.
      - browningstreet 9mo ago
        We can argue about whether or not punching yourself in the face will hurt, universally and for all, or we can acknowledge that arguing about this is picking the wrong level of information with which to take issue. Kids often still need to learn that punching yourself in the face hurts.
  - carlosjobim 9mo ago
    It takes a tremendous amount the first 3-7 times. After that it is a learned skill.
    - bunnybomb2 9mo ago
      The entirety of this thread is people thinking life is easy. Kill yourself or get over it, and I mean in a sentimental way.. (Not literally) The only thing that helped my depression, apathy and executive dysfunction was realizing I was going to rot anyways, I was never going to be happy, so I may as well start the startup, go on runs, and succeed. Let go of the expectation you will want to/be in the mood or feel good from it Life is not chocolate malts and gummy bears
  - WalterBright 9mo ago
    Curiously, if I'm busy I don't get hungry. I don't eat before going out dirt biking, and don't feel hungry at all until after the riding is done and the bikes loaded on the trailer and turning on to the road home.
    - tayo42 9mo ago
      Boredom snacking durring the work day kills me, maybe even slowly litteraly.
- 46Bit 9mo ago
  Overeating is often a coping mechanism. It’s really hard to displace unless your life is going fantastic. Even with GLPs.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- avidiax 9mo ago
  My suspicion as someone with lifelong weight struggles and having tried GLP-1 medication: overweight people require more willpower to lose or maintain weight relative to those of normal weight. So the advise or admonishment of the normally weighted that losing weight "just requires willpower" is true but facile. If we were to medically induce a constant feeling of hunger and insatiability into a person of normal weight, I'm sure they could keep the weight off, but would find that their willpower is highly depleted. There are medications that cause increased appetite and weight gain (ex: some bipolar depression medications, prednisolone). This effect is so pronounced, that if a doctor sees the patient not gaining weight, they will suspect non-compliance and have to rule it out. Of course, some patients use extreme diet and exercise (willpower) to avoid these effects, but a normal person accustomed to expending a normal amount of willpower to maintain weight will find themselves gaining.
  - azkalam 9mo ago
    Over-eating is not strictly a choice. Corporations spend billions on manipulating the public because it works. Regulation is needed, not willpower.
    - WalterBright 9mo ago
      I don't believe regulation is the answer. As I get older, I've become increasingly skeptical of any information coming from the government.
      - mm351206 9mo ago
        But somehow information from corporations is good and we should let me do whatever?
        WalterBright 9mo ago
        Your inference does not follow.
- dahart 9mo ago
  I wouldn’t phrase it that way. Relying on willpower is a recipe for failure. Humans generally don’t have enough willpower, it goes for most things, even when you don’t have strong physiological forces involved. The key to getting a diet to work is in figuring out how to not require willpower, which means thinking about it differently, forming new habits. Stress and social environment also need attention or they will steamroll your goals.
  - thewebguyd 9mo ago
    > figuring out how to not require willpower This goes for coping with a lot of executive function problems and disorders. Part of how I have to manage my rather severe ADHD is specifically crafting an environment that's as ADHD friendly as possible, much to my wife's dismay. That means nothing can ever be hidden away or out of sight, otherwise I will immediately forget it exists. It means every bill must be on autopay, or it will not get paid. It also means living as minimally as possible, for me. Even something as "simple" to a neurotypical like washing dishes or doing laundry is a seemingly impossible mountain for me to climb. I solve that by owning as little as possible, and I also remove choices by, for example, just owning multiples of the same exact outfit. The moment any sort of friction or context switching is involved in a task, I am going to fail, so I have to architect my life in a way that reduces friction as much as possible.
    - iammjm 9mo ago
      I also have ADHD and i also find living as minimally as possible very helpful. Could you elaborate on more of those tactics that work for you? I am also curious how you apply this to your work life
      - thewebguyd 9mo ago
        Basically things that eliminate friction. I wear only slip on shoes because having to tie & untie is friction. I replaced our kitchen cupboards with those glass window ones so I can see whats inside every cabinet without opening it. I have multiple laundry bins, so I actually don't put clothes away in a dresser when done. I just leave them in the bin, pull out what I'm going to wear, and then have separate bin(s) for dirty. Eliminates a huge friction point (folding & hanging) when it comes to doing laundry. For work, that's mostly just luck. I'm a solo sysadmin for a non-tech company, and I work from home so I have a great deal of freedom. Outside of interruptions for help desk level tickets/emails (which suck and do throw off my flow), no one really oversees what I do and I set my own deadlines for the most part so I can work when and however it suits me to take advantage of days where I have good flow state.
- smeej 9mo ago
  To solve digestive problems, I managed to eat the exact same meal every single meal for 20 straight months. And it didn't help me lose weight. So I dispute this statement with some enthusiasm.
- kayodelycaon 9mo ago
  I seriously dispute this. I spent weeks not being able to eat enough. I hardly lost weight despite being close to the optimal calorie range to do so.
  - Jblx2 9mo ago
    You should try out for the "Alone" game show: https://www.history.com/shows/alone https://www.history.com/shows/alone ...not losing weight on a limited diet would be a huge advantage over the other players.
ToucanLoucan 9mo ago
It's also worth noting that willpower in general is constantly being whittled down by how stressful and, for lack of better term, fucking annoying modern life is. I'm reminded of a quote from my favorite article from Ed Zitron: > In plain terms, everybody is being fucked with constantly in tiny little ways by most apps and services, and I believe that billions of people being fucked with at once in all of these ways has profound psychological and social consequences that we’re not meaningfully discussing. And I think one of those psycho-social consequences we're not discussing is everyone is just... fucking annoyed now, constantly, about shit that it doesn't feel right to really complain about. Like, you plus or minus live on your phone, and I'm very much including myself in that statement. Every time you get logged out of an app you use every day to, for example, board your morning train, or park your car, or have to reset a password to pay your power bill, just like, all of that? Every time your day is interrupted with stupid bullshit from Modern Life takes a tiny bit of that energy, and I dunno about everyone reading this, I have a quite well managed and streamlined life, and I still have just... dozens of these. Every single day. I can't fathom being one of the folks who ISN'T as well versed in tech as I am, existing for them must be utter HELL. And that's the essentials, that's not even going into how most tech products now are constantly begging for your attention, for your engagement, trying to pluck the strings of your psyche into making you angry, or horny, or whatever. Engage with platforms, buy these products, watch 9 TV shows so you're not out of the loop, you've been added to an SMS spam group, and everyone is replying to it saying they're not interested, on and on and on. Sorry this turned into more of a rant than I really envisioned but yeah. I can easily comprehend a day where I try and go to my gym, and the fucking app doesn't work right and I can't get in, and I just quit because I've already solved 20 fucking captchas today and I simply lack the energy to do another, to help train some goddamned AI, for a company I don't know, you know?
- smeej 9mo ago
  > existing for them must be utter HELL. You've certainly hit upon why they use the same password for every single thing.
- parpfish 9mo ago
  I just got a new phone which meant I had to read-login and set up every app and account. It was an intense deluge of SMS codes, flipping back and forth to the Authenticator, dismissing welcome popup modals, security email notifications. I was frazzled by the multitasking and can only imagine how hard it would have been for some senior citizen that was badgered into updating their device.
hn_acc1 9mo ago
AIUI, the whole "certain amount of willpower" was a misunderstanding / exaggeration / bullshit claim that's not really held to be true anymore.
- boplicity 9mo ago
  Source? I'd love to learn more about this!

LorenPechtel 9mo ago

Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.

CrossVR 9mo ago
This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.
- PeterStuer 9mo ago
  It feels very different. Depressed people lack the motivation/energy to start exercise, fat people seem more in line with addiction in not being inclined to overcome short term craving for more feed. While at a certain level of abstraction you can reduce both to A -> !B -> C, that generalization seems to obfuscate specific important differences that impact pathways to treatment. Craving is not the same as lacking energy. Craving, while subversive, energizes, depression does not.
- browningstreet 9mo ago
  If you eat poorly, those foods will not satiate and the "hunger" (it's not the hunger of a body starved of calories) persists. Eat for sustenance and the hunger you may feel will be different. I also know that if I overeat, I have a strong urge to keep feeding (more chips, more pizza, more chipsahoy). Whereas when I eat a proper meal, I'm fine when the eating of that meal ends.
  - skywhopper 9mo ago
    I hope you realize that what works for you and your body doesn’t work for everyone. Your experience is not universal. Your body chemistry and genetics are not universal.
    - carlosjobim 9mo ago
      When it comes to the most basic instincts, it is universal and genetic. We do not differ in that.
    - browningstreet 9mo ago
      We can argue about whether or not punching yourself in the face will hurt, universally and for all, or we can acknowledge that arguing about this is picking the wrong level of information with which to take issue. Kids often still need to learn that punching yourself in the face hurts.
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  It takes a tremendous amount the first 3-7 times. After that it is a learned skill.
  - bunnybomb2 9mo ago
    The entirety of this thread is people thinking life is easy. Kill yourself or get over it, and I mean in a sentimental way.. (Not literally) The only thing that helped my depression, apathy and executive dysfunction was realizing I was going to rot anyways, I was never going to be happy, so I may as well start the startup, go on runs, and succeed. Let go of the expectation you will want to/be in the mood or feel good from it Life is not chocolate malts and gummy bears
- WalterBright 9mo ago
  Curiously, if I'm busy I don't get hungry. I don't eat before going out dirt biking, and don't feel hungry at all until after the riding is done and the bikes loaded on the trailer and turning on to the road home.
  - tayo42 9mo ago
    Boredom snacking durring the work day kills me, maybe even slowly litteraly.
46Bit 9mo ago
Overeating is often a coping mechanism. It’s really hard to displace unless your life is going fantastic. Even with GLPs.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
avidiax 9mo ago
My suspicion as someone with lifelong weight struggles and having tried GLP-1 medication: overweight people require more willpower to lose or maintain weight relative to those of normal weight. So the advise or admonishment of the normally weighted that losing weight "just requires willpower" is true but facile. If we were to medically induce a constant feeling of hunger and insatiability into a person of normal weight, I'm sure they could keep the weight off, but would find that their willpower is highly depleted. There are medications that cause increased appetite and weight gain (ex: some bipolar depression medications, prednisolone). This effect is so pronounced, that if a doctor sees the patient not gaining weight, they will suspect non-compliance and have to rule it out. Of course, some patients use extreme diet and exercise (willpower) to avoid these effects, but a normal person accustomed to expending a normal amount of willpower to maintain weight will find themselves gaining.
- azkalam 9mo ago
  Over-eating is not strictly a choice. Corporations spend billions on manipulating the public because it works. Regulation is needed, not willpower.
  - WalterBright 9mo ago
    I don't believe regulation is the answer. As I get older, I've become increasingly skeptical of any information coming from the government.
    - mm351206 9mo ago
      But somehow information from corporations is good and we should let me do whatever?
      - WalterBright 9mo ago
        Your inference does not follow.
dahart 9mo ago
I wouldn’t phrase it that way. Relying on willpower is a recipe for failure. Humans generally don’t have enough willpower, it goes for most things, even when you don’t have strong physiological forces involved. The key to getting a diet to work is in figuring out how to not require willpower, which means thinking about it differently, forming new habits. Stress and social environment also need attention or they will steamroll your goals.
- thewebguyd 9mo ago
  > figuring out how to not require willpower This goes for coping with a lot of executive function problems and disorders. Part of how I have to manage my rather severe ADHD is specifically crafting an environment that's as ADHD friendly as possible, much to my wife's dismay. That means nothing can ever be hidden away or out of sight, otherwise I will immediately forget it exists. It means every bill must be on autopay, or it will not get paid. It also means living as minimally as possible, for me. Even something as "simple" to a neurotypical like washing dishes or doing laundry is a seemingly impossible mountain for me to climb. I solve that by owning as little as possible, and I also remove choices by, for example, just owning multiples of the same exact outfit. The moment any sort of friction or context switching is involved in a task, I am going to fail, so I have to architect my life in a way that reduces friction as much as possible.
  - iammjm 9mo ago
    I also have ADHD and i also find living as minimally as possible very helpful. Could you elaborate on more of those tactics that work for you? I am also curious how you apply this to your work life
    - thewebguyd 9mo ago
      Basically things that eliminate friction. I wear only slip on shoes because having to tie & untie is friction. I replaced our kitchen cupboards with those glass window ones so I can see whats inside every cabinet without opening it. I have multiple laundry bins, so I actually don't put clothes away in a dresser when done. I just leave them in the bin, pull out what I'm going to wear, and then have separate bin(s) for dirty. Eliminates a huge friction point (folding & hanging) when it comes to doing laundry. For work, that's mostly just luck. I'm a solo sysadmin for a non-tech company, and I work from home so I have a great deal of freedom. Outside of interruptions for help desk level tickets/emails (which suck and do throw off my flow), no one really oversees what I do and I set my own deadlines for the most part so I can work when and however it suits me to take advantage of days where I have good flow state.
smeej 9mo ago
To solve digestive problems, I managed to eat the exact same meal every single meal for 20 straight months. And it didn't help me lose weight. So I dispute this statement with some enthusiasm.
kayodelycaon 9mo ago
I seriously dispute this. I spent weeks not being able to eat enough. I hardly lost weight despite being close to the optimal calorie range to do so.
- Jblx2 9mo ago
  You should try out for the "Alone" game show: https://www.history.com/shows/alone https://www.history.com/shows/alone ...not losing weight on a limited diet would be a huge advantage over the other players.

ToucanLoucan 9mo ago

It's also worth noting that willpower in general is constantly being whittled down by how stressful and, for lack of better term, fucking annoying modern life is. I'm reminded of a quote from my favorite article from Ed Zitron: > In plain terms, everybody is being fucked with constantly in tiny little ways by most apps and services, and I believe that billions of people being fucked with at once in all of these ways has profound psychological and social consequences that we’re not meaningfully discussing. And I think one of those psycho-social consequences we're not discussing is everyone is just... fucking annoyed now, constantly, about shit that it doesn't feel right to really complain about. Like, you plus or minus live on your phone, and I'm very much including myself in that statement. Every time you get logged out of an app you use every day to, for example, board your morning train, or park your car, or have to reset a password to pay your power bill, just like, all of that? Every time your day is interrupted with stupid bullshit from Modern Life takes a tiny bit of that energy, and I dunno about everyone reading this, I have a quite well managed and streamlined life, and I still have just... dozens of these. Every single day. I can't fathom being one of the folks who ISN'T as well versed in tech as I am, existing for them must be utter HELL. And that's the essentials, that's not even going into how most tech products now are constantly begging for your attention, for your engagement, trying to pluck the strings of your psyche into making you angry, or horny, or whatever. Engage with platforms, buy these products, watch 9 TV shows so you're not out of the loop, you've been added to an SMS spam group, and everyone is replying to it saying they're not interested, on and on and on. Sorry this turned into more of a rant than I really envisioned but yeah. I can easily comprehend a day where I try and go to my gym, and the fucking app doesn't work right and I can't get in, and I just quit because I've already solved 20 fucking captchas today and I simply lack the energy to do another, to help train some goddamned AI, for a company I don't know, you know?

smeej 9mo ago
> existing for them must be utter HELL. You've certainly hit upon why they use the same password for every single thing.
parpfish 9mo ago
I just got a new phone which meant I had to read-login and set up every app and account. It was an intense deluge of SMS codes, flipping back and forth to the Authenticator, dismissing welcome popup modals, security email notifications. I was frazzled by the multitasking and can only imagine how hard it would have been for some senior citizen that was badgered into updating their device.

hn_acc1 9mo ago

AIUI, the whole "certain amount of willpower" was a misunderstanding / exaggeration / bullshit claim that's not really held to be true anymore.

boplicity 9mo ago
Source? I'd love to learn more about this!