Your willpower is a muscle that can be trained. Here is a wealth of scientific information to help you understand your behavior and engineer a successful health and weight-loss plan. Tara's book is "The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You" (goo.gl/lxOklZ). Read more at BigThink.com: bigthink.com/videos/sylvia-tara-on-weight-loss-diet-and-exercise Follow Big Think here: YouTube: goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - I have a chapter in my book in which I talk about how to build a self-control muscle. It's really important to do because when they do, again, FMRI studies of some dieter's brain people who have lost 30 pounds and managed to keep it off for three years or more they have them hold a lemon lollipop in their mouth and the people who successfully lost weight their reward center lights up pretty brightly. They're pretty excited by this lemon lollipop, more so perhaps than people who are obese or normal weight but haven't lost the weight, haven't been successful dieters. The other part that lights up in their brain is that associated with restraint so it's self-control. And that lights up very brightly showing that they have control over this emotional response so at the same time they're getting excited they're also having a high self-control activity. The other people, normal or obese people are not having that self-control light up with the lemon lollipop. So it shows that one of the reasons we're able to stay on for three years or more on their diet is that they've gotten this really good control over what they eat every day and they've managed to keep weight off for years. Now any diet that you want to stay on or that you like it really does require willpower to stay on it. And I have to say that it might sound like it's something obvious but because a diet doesn't it just last for six months it last for years and years because the effect of our lower metabolism lasts for years you have to be able to stay on something for years. And one of the reasons that people come off quite a bit is they get tired of being on a diet. No one wants to stay on it for years. You have to kind of build these self-control muscles, these habits if you will make it part of your lifestyle so that it's automatic, it's not a big effort for you anymore. And so in the chapter I do wright about some techniques we can use because a diet it's like an eating regiment for the long haul. There's small things we can do and we can build it up into larger accomplishments later. Some of the small things are there's a study that shows that just managing your posture, keeping your back straight for two weeks, just stopping the swearing for two weeks, those people are able to manage more stressful tasks later, they're able to do more tasks that involve physical discomfort after that two week period. So in a way they kind of start exercising self-control in one dimension but it's leading into this other realm as well. And then there's another study were they pay people to use a gym eight times in one month and they pay another group to use it once a month and then they don't pay anyone at all the next month. And the people who have been using the gym for eight times, they were paid to go eight times they just start just using the gym without getting paid and so they've built up this habit. And so you can start small, start with small things, make them a habit and then build up to bigger things. There's also something called temptation bundling. And so we compare a want activity with a should activity. No one really wants to do a should activity all the time. But another study they had people listen to a really juicy audio novel and some people could only listen at the gym while they work out, other people they say take it you can take it home listen whenever you want. And the people where the novel is tied to the gym they go to the gym much more frequently than the people who get to listen to this novel all the time. Read Full Transcript Here: goo.gl/dflLzk.

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