How to Get More Willpower to Lose Weight (Hint: Use Psychology, Not Diets!)

You’ve probably heard it before: willpower is a finite resource, and it also gets stronger with practice, much like a muscle. What most diet campaigns fail to share, however, is that using your willpower towards restrictive dieting does not help with weigh loss — at all. Clinical evidence demonstrates this.

I dug through twenty one clinical studies to create a compelling case for redirecting your willpower away from dieting and, instead, focusing it on eating psychology. Restrictive diets don’t work, and they are a waste of willpower. When you redirect your willpower towards your psychology, that’s where you’ll find momentum.

First, let’s dig into the science of willpower, where it comes from, and how to get more of it. If you’re interested in mastering your mindset, you’re in the right place as my blog was recently named one of the top 5 eating psychology blogs, likely due to how much research I pour into these posts.

Why Dieting Is a Waste of Your Willpower to Lose Weight

At first glance, weight loss seems to follow a straightforward equation: use your willpower to consume fewer calories than the body expends. Make sure there are more calories out than calories in. However, when put into practice through restrictive dieting, this approach proves to be counterproductive and ineffective.

The body’s primary directive is survival, which means calorie restriction is interpreted as a sign of scarcity. In response, the body activates a biological rebellion against what it perceives to be a threat to its survival.

One of the primary actors in this rebellion is ghrelin, often referred to as the “hunger hormone.” When we restrict our food intake, ghrelin levels rise, leading to intense food cravings.¹ This makes it even more tempting to eat “naughty” or “forbidden foods” and break your diet.

This biological reaction is often misinterpreted as a psychological problem – a lack of willpower – but it’s not. It’s simply your body’s reaction to restriction.

Additionally, restriction slows your metabolism, prompting the body to conserve energy — sometimes in the form of fat — the next time it receives food.² This not only makes weight loss more difficult but also primes the body for weight gain.

In fact, studies have shown that dieting is linked with long-term weight gain, not weight loss.³ Some studies even show that people are more likely to regain even more weight than originally lost.⁴

If this isn’t a compelling enough reason to give up dieting right now, let’s look at some of the psychological ramifications as well. Restrictive eating is strongly correlated with depression and preoccupation with food.^{5, 6} Constant self-denial can result in feelings of guilt and shame when we “succumb our cravings” and “break our diet” – even though it’s just a biological response to restriction.

What can we do if dieting doesn’t help with weight loss? Is it an empty chase, searching for ways to get more willpower to lose weight? We will get to these question soon, but first it’s important to understand how willpower works because there are many myths around that, too.

The Science of Willpower & Why We Should Redirect It

Clinical evidence shows that willpower is a depletable or finite resource.⁷ Once you use it up, it’s gone until replenished, which can take time if you’re tired, stressed, or sleep-deprived. However, new research debunks these findings. Newer studies suggest that willpower’s perceived limitations might be more psychological than physiological.^{8, 9}

In other words, instead of willpower being a finite resource, new evidence show that believing that willpower is depletable might actually lead to its depletion. Still, even with these new findings, it’s important to acknowledge that the collective evidence points to willpower as a limited resource that can be drained through overextension, especially in the realm of dieting.^{7, 10, 11, 12}

Fortunately, willpower can be strengthened through consistent practice — just not the practice of dieting. While willpower does increase the more we use it, using willpower to lose weight through dieting only triggers the restrict-binge cycle and leads to weight regain.^{3, 4}

Instead of using willpower to lose weight through dieting, we need to redirect it towards eating psychology. For me personally, this is when I finally gained traction in what felt like an endless pursuit of weight loss.

How to Redirect Your Willpower to Lose Weight

The topic of willpower is one of my favorites because I firmly believe that most compulsive eaters already have an abundance of willpower — it just needs to be redirected. Here is my YouTube video where I explain this concept: