
The Myth of Willpower and “Eat Less, Move More” - jlees
http://www.fitocracy.com/knowledge/the-myth-of-willpower-and-eat-less-move-more/
======
dkarl
Urgh. People argue these issues over and over and shave points so finely that
I don't see the point any more. Who cares if, by some interpretation of the
words, you can make the claim that "cardio alone is ineffective for weight
loss?" Some people take up running and lose weight.

There are a thousand different ways to approach fitness, and apparently the
important thing is not to present an original or enlightening perspective but
to shit all over other people's perspectives, to call them "stupid," "dogma,"
"myths," and "big fat lies" that "prevent you from creating a healthy
lifestyle."

Creating a feedback loop in which results motivate continued effort is _one_
idea that has been around for decades and works for a lot of people. So is
going for a run every morning. So is being "hard core," for that matter. For
some people, the idea of being "hard core" is an exciting one that gets them
out of bed early in the morning and helps them say no to excess food. If these
ideas work for people, then they can be valuable, positive ideas, right?
Wouldn't you want to make sure that people gave them serious consideration in
case they were, for them, effective ideas?

Why would you steer people away from alternative ideas by presenting them in
the most negative possible light, in narrow, off-putting formulations?

Oh, right, because this isn't fitness advice. It's marketing for a company
selling a fitness product.

~~~
dicktalens
Someone missed the point of the article.

~~~
newsit
Someone missed the point of the comment

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schtev
If you eat less (below maintenance) and move more, you'll lose weight. That's
just biological reality. I did that and have lost 15lbs in the past two
months. Any psychological factors don't alter this basic fact.

~~~
300bps
On the one hand, you have people who are not trying to sell you anything
telling you the simple (but difficult) truth:

Eat less and burn more calories, you'll lose weight.

On the other hand you have people who are trying to sell you something tell
you all manner of complicated ways of losing weight that basically amount to
being what overweight people want to hear.

In this case, you have a company called Fitocracy telling you:

 _Willpower will not bring you success._

It's a great statement that absolves overweight people of much of their
responsibility for keeping themselves healthy. Fitocracy should sell well with
this technique.

~~~
dicktalens
I'm just gonna copypasta the end of the article here, since you seemed to
angry to actually read (not skim) past the title.
____________________________________________________________________________________

At this point, I know what some people are thinking. “Well, Dick. If you’re so
smart and it’s not about willpower, I guess no one is at fault for being fat
then, huh?”

On the contrary. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in my decade of talking to
thousands of people between forums, clients, Fitocracy, and real life, it’s
that _people are responsible for their own failures_. _Most times, it is their
fault_. But it’s not for the reasons that most people think. Most don’t fail
because they didn’t eat less or move more.

They failed because they could not see beyond the oversimplification of “eat
less, move more.”

Many times, this is a problem of hubris; they failed to be curious,
introspective, and mindful. These people also beat themselves up for all of
their past failures, not realizing those plans had them doomed for the start.

The Biggest Loser will have you believe that fitness success is about being
tough, being hardcore – dangerously hardcore. In fact, it’s about the exact
opposite.

Fitness success is about humility – realizing you cannot reduce one of the
world’s most challenging problems to “eat less, move more,” and then seeking
out the knowledge to improve yourself. Success also requires compassion –
forgiving yourself for past failures so that you can try again.

Those things are the exact opposite of being “hardcore.”

That’s the ultimate irony. It’s why people are ultimately responsible for
their failures – not because they failed to shrink their waist, but because
they failed to expand their horizons."
____________________________________________________________________

Hth! ^_^ gl with your reading comprehension goals in 2013

~~~
xiaoma
> _Hth! ^_^ gl with your reading comprehension goals in 2013_

It isn't constructive to add this kind of barb to the end of your comment.
From the top of the HN commenting guidlines:

 _Be civil. Don 't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g.
"That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 +
1 is 2, not 3."_

~~~
dicktalens
Let's be honest. HN comments are the cesspool of the Internet, and really, if
someone isn't going to read the article IDGAF. :v

HTH! ^_^

p.s. I suspect you're mad about the cardio comment. Let's not try to sugar
coat the fact that science suggests your "feelings" are wrong, ty.

p.p.s – would say this all to anyone's face. good luck with your suggestion of
1 hr of cardio/day to people new to fitness... lmk how that pans out!

~~~
xiaoma
I'm not angry, but I have noticed you have a certain axe to grind and that you
have a tendency to cherry-pick citations to support it, make sweeping comments
that go against the bulk of current research and that you're extremely hostile
to those who disagree with you. I was only reminding you of the guidelines
since belligerence wins over nobody and makes HN a less pleasant place to be.

> _good luck with your suggestion of 1 hr of cardio /day to people new to
> fitness... lmk how that pans out!_

Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were asking in earnest... can
only assume you're referring to what I shared earlier on HN—pretty much
everyone who joined my high school swim team team made _tremendous_
improvements in their fitness levels. Ditto for sedentary students joining
cross-country. It already "panned out" years ago and it was a huge success!

------
lawn
In general there are three things you need to balance if you want to get fit,
loose weight or get good at a sport or similar: eating, resting and training.
Most make the mistake and think that the training is the most important thing,
but it's really not. You cannot eat bad and train good and think that it will
balance itself out, you really are what you eat.

Something I'm really annoyed at in today's society is the focus on calories.
Sure calories are all which matter... If all you want to do is warm water. But
then you're ignoring the effect on your hunger and your hormones which can
lead to yo-yo dieting.

In theory it can work, if you can live with constantly being hungry. But in a
war against hunger, you're bound to loose.

Aim for quality, not quantity, and let your built in weight control device -
the hunger - take care of the rest.

After that you can focus on your training regime. Here again I totally agree
with the article. Training should be fun and rewarding and if you can manage
get a good feedback loop you're golden.

~~~
dbrunsek
Can you define what "eating bad" means?

~~~
hanley
Eating a varied diet of real whole foods and staying away from processed,
packaged food is the general consensus for a "good" diet.

~~~
woofyman
Whole grains, legumes, olive oil, lean meat, fresh vegetables. Foods that are
nutritionally dense. Avoid saturated fats, fried food, starches.

~~~
kentor
why avoid saturated fats? because they cause heart disease?

------
xiaoma
And yet there's research just last year from Duke that shows that cardio is
the most effective tool for weight loss.

[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/dumc-
aet12121...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/dumc-
aet121212.php)

More important (to me if not the author) is overall health benefits. I don't
really tend to conflate bodybuilding types of aesthetics with health. I don't
want _terrible_ athletic performance, but athletic performance is pretty far
down my list of priorities. Also, I think it's very unlikely that the ideal
dietary and exercise regimen for bodybuilding is identical to the ideal
regimen for longevity or feeling healthy.

~~~
rdouble
Bodybuilders were traditionally very healthy. They are basically responsible
for "health food," gyms and diet and exercise awareness in general.

------
egypturnash
If you can find something that burns calories that you enjoy and keep doing,
the weight just kinda melts off. A couple years ago I got into burlesque
dance; two hours of class every week got me into amazing shape. That's stopped
for various reasons, and my weight's slowly crept up. I haven't found anything
that I delight in doing the same way, so I'm out of shape. I've been fighting
it but it's an uphill climb.

I mean, yeah, to a large degree it WAS "eat less, move more" \- but I wasn't
thinking of it in terms of losing weight or getting fit. I was thinking of it
in terms of "learning to move in frighteningly sexy ways".

------
kephra
> Maybe that’s why 85-90 percent of participants regain their original weight,

Weight is party fixed by epigenetic by end of puberty. It depends on how you
mother did eat before and when she was pregnant (e.g. Dutch hunter winter
children), and how you diet was when you was young. The highest likelyhood of
being fat is if you are from a foreign family that lived healthy but on low
calories, and moved to a country where lots of cheap fast food is available.
Women have a good chance to change weight everytime they are pregnant, and at
the menopause. Unfortunately most women will gain weight at that point. Men do
not have those easy opportunities at times of hormonal changes. So if one
loses weight by hunger, the body will bounce back to its epigenetic fixed
weight again, once you stop being hungry.

So lets accept weight, and focus on fitness for fun itself.

Imho, the best sport for fat people is sailing. Every crew needs fat sailors
as self loading ballast at the rail. Sailing is sport that is fun, even for
the heavy weight.Its a sport that does not give you the painful feeling of
being a loser, but its fun to be an important member of a crew. You think you
just sit there, and move your ass once every tack or jibe, but in fact you
move all the time constantly balancing against the rolling of the boat. You
burn a lot of calories that way. You get a positive feedback, and time by time
you become fit, even if you only lose a few pounds fat and gain a few pounds
muscles.

I do not have a overweight problem myself, even vice versa. I'm 5'10"/178cm
with 120lbs/54kg in summer, and 128lbs/58kg in winter. But I have a neighbor,
who did lose 15kg/30lbs just by sailing, and by getting in a positive fitness
loop. She moves more now, e.g. shopping by walking instead of shopping by car,
as she is able to move without burden. She still weights 30kg/60lbs more then
me, but thats ok. She is fit, even if she is still a bit round, because the
rounds are now at the right places. She does no longer look like an ugly fat
women mid 40s, but like a chubby smiling woman who is happy with her body.

PS: You do not need to own a boat to become a sailor. Most boat owners are
searching for crew. Owning a boat is an other can of worms, its a commitment
to maintenance and club work.

------
enraged_camel
I, too, am obsessed with fitness. In my experience, most people can't lose
weight because they don't know how habits work and cannot use that knowledge
to form the right ones.

Every habit consists of three components: cue, routine, reward. Something
triggers the behavior, you perform the behavior, and you reap some reward.
Rinse, repeat.

For example, a lot of people eat food - especially sweet food - to deal with
stress. The cue that triggers the behavior is stress, the behavior itself is
eating food, and the reward is the taste of that food. Repeating this enough
times causes the person to get fat.

Knowing this, it is also possible to engineer new habits. The way you do this
is by starting from the end of the loop - the reward - and work your way
backwards. For example, the reward (your motivation) for working out may be to
become more attractive. From there, you may decide that going to the gym would
help you lose weight, gain muscle and become more attractive, so that would be
your routine. And the last part would be to figure out a cue, something that
would trigger the routine. This works best as something that will remind you
of the reward, such as looking at pictures of hot women.

After you engineer the habit, you can also engineer your life around each
component. For example, you can put up posters of hot women on your bedroom
wall so that even if you come home tired, the pictures would remind you of
your motivation and trigger the gym routine of "put on clothes, go to the gym,
work out." You can choose to live within a few blocks of said gym (or build a
home gym) so that executing the routine after it is triggered by the cue is as
easy as possible. Basically the formula for making sure you continue the habit
is: maximize cues + minimize the effort for the routine = maximize rewards.
(Side note: this also works the other way around. If you're trying to quit
smoking, keeping your cigarettes as far away as possible, such as on one of
the top shelves in the kitchen, helps quite a bit.)

The part that takes willpower is executing the routine. That's why willpower
is so important, especially at the beginning. The further away you live from
the gym, the more willpower it will require to actually go. In contrast, the
stronger your motivation, the less willpower the routine will take to execute.

Of course, there's quite a bit more to be said about the topic. But that's the
psychological aspect of it.

~~~
elliott34
What is the name of that book that goes into this? If so do you know if any of
them are worth reading? Power of habit or somesuch? Thank you.

