Happy New Year!

How are those resolutions coming along? One week into January and most of us are still sticking to our healthy diet and exercise regimens. By the time March rolls around, of course, almost 80% of those well-intentioned plans will have been abandoned.

I think the problem is that we place far too much faith in our willpower — which, as research shows, probably won’t be enough to power you through the tough times.

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Willpower: A Limited Resource?

According to researchers Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, most of us have a relatively limited supply of willpower. When we call on our willpower to help us resist a temptation, we actually deplete our reserves, leaving us less able to resist the next temptation. Not only that, but the mental energy we spend exercising our willpower drains our capacity to perform other cognitive tasks!

Let’s say, for example, that you show up at your weekly staff meeting to find that Linda has brought a batch of her famous homemade chocolate chip cookies. The cookies smell delicious and you know from previous experience that they taste every bit as good as they look and smell. Nonetheless, you’re determined to stick to your resolution to avoid sweets. Ninety minutes later, the meeting is finally over and you’ve made it through without a single cookie! Good for you!

Unfortunately, the effort it took to NOT eat those cookies during the meeting made you less able to concentrate, problem-solve, and contribute at the meeting. And then, on your way out of the conference room, you walk by a bowl of chocolates that someone left on the counter. They’re not even particularly good chocolates–nowhere near as tempting as Linda’s cookies. But the fact that you have just spent 90 minutes resisting those cookies actually makes it more likely that you’ll succumb to those cheap chocolates.

Oh, the humanity!

Strength Training for Your Willpower

Some psychologists argue that willpower is a bit like a muscle. When it’s asked to do some heavy lifting, your willpower can become fatigued, just like your bicep gets tired after too many curls,

However, just as you can gradually build up your bicep with strength training, you can also increase your willpower by exercising it. Baumeister believes that you can strengthen your willpower by consciously doing things that are contrary your usual habits — such as brushing your teeth with the opposite hand or driving a different route to work.

Carol Dweck, from Stanford University, on the other hand, thinks that the idea of willpower as a limited commodity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When subjects are primed to think of willpower as a renewable, self-replenishing resource, they seem to have more of it.

Just as you can build up your bicep with strength training, you can also increase your willpower by exercising it.

Personally, I think that the truth lies somewhere in between. Some people seem to have greater reserves of willpower than others. This may be due to nature, nurture, or a bit of both. And I don’t doubt that willpower can be enhanced with the right kind of training — at least to a certain extent.

Nonetheless, instead of relying entirely or mostly on willpower, I think makes sense to supplement our resolve with other strategies to increase our chances of success.

3Tricks for the Willpower Challenged

Trick #1: Engineer your environment to remove temptation 

Don’t use up valuable willpower resisting those Oreos and potato chips in the cupboard. If you don’t want to eat it, don’t bring it into the house. If you must  have it in the house, put it in a cupboard or closet that is out of sight and difficult to reach. If, after all that, you decide to indulge, serve yourself a single portion into a small bowl and put the rest away. Most people think that they are far too smart for these sorts of simplistic things to make a difference. But study after study demonstrates that they work.

For more on engineering your environment for success, see my episode on Why We Overeat.

Trick #2: Use positive redirection

Anyone who has ever spent time with a 2-year-old knows the power of positive redirection.  Instead of telling a toddler to stop pulling the cat’s tail,  you distract him with a different toy or activity. And, let’s face it, when it comes to changing our eating habits, most of us are operating on the level of a 2-year-old.  So instead of obsessing about what you’re trying not to eat, focus on things you’d like to eat more of.

For more on positive redirection, see my article Shift Your Focus to Make Dieting Easier

Trick #3: Keep it simple

For some reason, when we make up our mind to lose weight or get in shape, we’re often attracted to complicated regimens that have lots of very specific rules and requirements. Subconsciously, we seem to believe that the more elaborate the program — and the bigger the departure from our current habits — the more likely it is to be the one that finally works.

This is a trap.

The more complicated the diet, the bigger the departure from our normal routine, the more rules and restrictions there are and the more decisions we’re required to make, the more likely we are to crash and burn.  If you want to make it stick, keep it simple.

Originally published at QuickandDirtytips.com

As the temperatures dip and the days get shorter, comfort foods may seem like just the thing. If you find yourself craving carbohydrates at this time of year, it may be due to a seasonal dip in serotonin levels. Eating carbohydrates tends to increase serotonin production, which can elevate your mood–but only temporarily. In a few hours, you need another fix. By the time winter is over, you may have packed on a lot of carbohydrate-fueled pounds.

A better way to stimulate serotonin is with regular exercise.  Exercise stimulates serotonin production with no carbohydrate hang-over. Instead of gaining winter weight, you might even trim down.  Overcoming your Fall fatigue and getting yourself moving may take some self-discipline at first. But the rewards, in the form of more energy and a brighter mood, come quickly.

Fertility medicine, which barely existed 50 or 60 years ago, is one of today’s fastest growing medical specialties. Many couples are waiting longer to start their families these days and as the age of wannabe parents increases, so do their fertility troubles. But are there other factors driving increased fertility problems? Could the modern diet or poor nutrition status be partly to blame?

This article also available as a podcast. Click to listen.

I recently attended an educational session with Jorge Chavarro, the Harvard doc who authored the best-selling book The Fertility Diet. Chavarro’s dietary recommendations are based on data from the Nurse’s Health study, which tracked the diet and health of 18,000 women over the course of several years. Some of those women had children during the years that data was being collected while others tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant.

It’s important to realize that Chavarro didn’t treat any of these women for infertility, nor did he make any nutritional recommendations to them. He simply compared the diets of women who got pregnant to those who couldn’t, to see if he could identify any trends. And he did, in fact, identify several factors that the women who got pregnant had in common.

The program outlined in The Fertility Diet is simply a summary of those factors. The hope is that if you mimic the diets of women who get pregnant, you too will get pregnant. I say the “hope” instead of the “promise” because this claim has never actually been tested in a systematic way. But, with that disclaimer in mind, let’s take a look at the factors associated with greater fertility.

Dietary Factors Linked to Fertility

Chavarro documented that women whose diets were highest in trans fats, refined carbohydrates, and animal protein were the most likely to suffer from infertility. Women who followed a more Mediterranean-style diet (higher in vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, olive oil, fish, and so on) were least likely to experience infertility.

Nothing earth-shaking here: The dietary pattern associated with increased fertility is a nutrient-dense diet that’s low in junk and processed food. When you take good care of yourself, all your systems will probably function better, including your reproductive system.

Does Butterfat Help You Get Pregnant?

There was, however, one finding that surprised researchers, because it doesn’t line up with widely held notions about “healthy” diets. Women who ate high fat dairy seemed to be more fertile than those who ate low fat dairy products. In his talk, Chavarro threw out a couple of hypotheses…..

First, low fat dairy products are higher in milk sugar, or lactose. During digestion, lactose is broken down into two simpler sugars: glucose and galactose. The second of these, galactose, has been shown to interfere with ovarian function. The idea is that women who drink low-fat dairy products will be exposed to more galactose and that this might inhibit conception. Interestingly, if you are lactose intolerant, your body is not able to break lactose down and you’d be protected from this effect. Then again, drinking milk would probably give you a tummy ache so you’d probably be avoiding it anyway.

The other theory Chavarro proposed was even more intriguing: Cow’s milk comes from pregnant cows and contains various bovine hormones associated with pregnancy and lactation. Because hormones are fat soluble, whole fat dairy products (even organic ones) would have higher levels of these hormones than low fat dairy. Although many people think of hormones in milk as something to avoid, Chavarro wonders whether the natural hormones in dairy fat might actually play a supportive role in human reproductive function. Mind-blowing, huh?

Exercise, Body Weight, and Fertility

If you’re overweight, you may want to work on losing the weight before working on getting pregnant.

Chavarro’s research suggests that switching to full-fat milk and yogurt might boost your odds of getting pregnant. But this is not a free pass to start pounding the Ben and Jerry’s. Being overweight or obese will dramatically lower your chances of getting pregnant. In fact, the rise in average body weight is a major factor in rising infertility rates. Chavarro’s analysis confirms that women who were at a healthy body weight and who exercise 30 minutes a day are much more likely to get pregnant.

But there is a bit of a catch-22 for overweight women who want to become pregnant. As clinical dietitian Judy Simon points out, fertility can be suppressed during active weight loss. When calories are sparse, she says, the body prioritizes its use of energy, and reproductive function takes a temporary hit. This affects both women who are underweight and women who are cutting calories in order to lose weight.

If you’re overweight, you may want to work on losing the weight before working on getting pregnant. Not only will you probably have an easier time getting pregnant once your weight is stable, but both you and your baby will be healthier if you start your pregnancy at a healthy body weight.

Will Following the Fertility Diet Help You Get Pregnant?

Obviously, improving your diet or nutritional status can’t hurt your chances of getting pregnant—and it may well help. There’s also a widespread belief (and a lot of anecdotal evidence) that stressing about getting pregnant is one of the biggest obstacles to conception. Fertility docs are always telling their patients to relax. It could be that following a so-called “fertility diet” also has a powerful placebo effect—helping couples feel more optimistic and giving them something to focus on while they wait for nature to take its course.

Originally published at QuickandDirtyTips.com