@Gingerlily said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
(I'm jesting and not, I've been working on cutting out sugar all summer and have added wheat too and it's just -torture-. But I have failed utterly and done the thing where I behave all day and then 'crack' at 8pm or so, going downstairs and scrounging for whatever contains the most sugar in our kitchen. It's /hard/)
An article I read a while ago said we can treat willpower as a muscle. So you know how you can grab a light weight (say, a cookie jar ) and hold it up at shoulder height, then at first it's easy to keep there but over time it gets harder and harder as our muscles get tired? Willpower is the same way.
So the takeaway from that is to not need to exercise it so much. If every time I walk by the kitchen table I need to resist picking up something delicious but covered in processed sugar then the first time I'll ignore it, the second time it'll be a little bit harder... then it'll find me at a weak point at 11:30pm when I just grab one... or two, on the way to the TV. It's far easier if the delicious stuff isn't there at all to begin with.
I mean that's what worked for me. Other people's takes may vary.