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Get Healthy

Techniques > Willpower > Get Healthy

Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description

One of the most common new year promises is to go on a diet, take more exercise or otherwise become more healthy. Few stick to this. A good way of building your willpower is to take on the health challenge.

Some of the things you can do are:

• Join a gym, set a schedule and stick to it, even when you are tired or busy.
• Go on a short-term detox diet to flush out the toxins in your body.
• Go on a longer diet to lose weight. Then keep the weight off.
• Cut down on salt and saturated fats.
• Go jogging for at least 20 minutes every day.
• Give up sugar in your coffee or tea.
• Switch to diet cola.

Example

A person who has tried and failed with a number of diets joins a slimming group. By making commitments to others and being publicly weighed, they summon up the determination to stick to the regimen and so succeed.

A teenager wants to get on the football team but is considered not fit enough. So they get help from the family to each healthily and get up early each morning to exercise. Eventually they get fit and make the team.

Discussion

Diets fail often because when you are hungry your willpower is at its weakest, as hunger happens when your glucose level is low (and low glucose also weakens the will). So you have an urge to consume sugary (and fattening) foods or drinks, just at the time when you are less able to resist the urge.

This does not mean you cannot diet -- in fact it makes it a great way of practicing willpower. If you can resist food when you are hungry you will be able to use your will in all kinds of other situations.

This can be a useful time to employ other methods, such as making public commitments to others, using smaller plates and so on. Anything that will help you stick to your decision and show you that you can succeed at this difficult task.

See also

Willpower as Muscle