The first time I tried to lose weight, I attempted to follow a fairly straightforward piece of advice: avoid sugar and junk foods. What I love about that advice is that it's powerfully simple, maybe even common-sense. It's also damned hard to follow. If you're overweight, and eating junk food is what got you to that point, your goal is to break that habit. Unfortunately, habits die hard. A couple hours hadn't gone by before my willpower withered away and I gave in. I know I'm not alone.
Marshmallows and Self-Discipline
Stanford University psychology professor Michael Mischel began an experiment in the 1960s meant to track the role of self-discipline (he defined it as "the ability to delay instant gratification for long term goal achievement") in lifelong success. He sat hungry 4-year-old children in a room, one-by-one, and told them they could have the marshmallow on the table in front of them. Before leaving the room, he offered to give the child 2 marshmallows if they waited patiently for him to return. The only catch was that they could not eat the marshmallow in front of them while the experimenter was away.
If you've spent any time with little kids, you can imagine what the results were like. Most of the kids could not stop fidgeting, adopting all kinds of strategies to cope with the pressure. Only a third of the children managed to wait for the full 15 minutes. Many of the others couldn't last 3 minutes. Another third grabbed the lone marshmallow as soon as the experimenter left the room.
The most successful kids were the ones who had the ability to distract themselves from the marshmallow. The ones that could exercise the self-discipline that Mischel was studying. Blogger Peter Bregman relates this study to two challenges we face when managing our behavior: the challenge of restraint and the challenge of initiative. The challenge of restraint is the challenge to keep from doing something, while the challenge of initiative is the challenge to begin something, or take the initiative. These children faced the former challenge, and so the successful ones adopted the more appropriate strategy of distracting themselves.
Weight Loss and Self-Discipline
Although Bregman writes about corporate management, this perspective fits well with weight loss. The problem with weight loss is that its a two-headed dragon. With it, one faces both the challenge of restraint and initiative. There is the challenge to begin leading a healthy lifestyle, and there is the challenge of keeping away from junk foods and unhealthy behavior styles.
I won't write about the challenge of initiative here because I'll assume for now that if you're reading this, you've already made some active decision to be healthier. Besides, the solution to the challenge of restraint is devilishly easy: be a 4-year old. Adopt the same strategy the self-disciplined children did and find ways to distract yourself. Instead of focusing on not eating junk foods, set up distractions so that you don't have to think about it. Your goal is to not make decisions, but to rely on the distractions to make your job easier.
A couple examples: Every time you want to eat something you probably shouldn't, open up a book instead. If reading isn't your thing, go for a walk outside. Not only will you avoid the junk, you'll be doubly healthier for it. Adopt a plan to make yourself more productive. Have a to-do list on hand and complete one task every time you want to open up a bag of chips. If you're really addicted to junk foods, you'll get a lot of work done.
I suggest keeping a tally of every time you distracted yourself away from unhealthy choices. If the going gets tough, and trust me, it will, refer back to this list. The idea is with time, you won't have to actively focus on distracting yourself. At some point, you'll have broken the habit. And that's all you were going for in the beginning.