Keep pounds off with Automatic Awareness

We're looking at automatic awareness of food choices today as the second deep dive into our 7 principles of healthy eating that guided us in designing Willpwr+EE. We are talking about a special kind of awareness, one that works effortlessly, not compulsively.

Defeating negative habits

Why "Going on a Diet" is a Mindset for Failure

Goals reflect how you think about problems and how you think about yourself. If your goal is something along the lines of "I'll diet so that I can be thin", the implication of that goal implies that you start dieting, reach your goal, and then you stop dieting. We all know what happens after that.

apps to combat negative habits

The 7 Skills Willpwr+EE Will Help You Master for Lasting Change

We believe the only way to keep weight off, no matter how you lose it, is to develop healthier habits in spite of how tempting our food world has become.

cravings

Tiredness and Overeating

Without putting yourself down or anything like that, just watch yourself for a few days to see when you are most likely to overeat or snack on fattening foods. Many folks discover a connection between feeling tired and reaching for munchies.

Willpwr apps

Emotions and Addictions

A person with high emotional reactivity and low emotional regulation is in for a rough ride when it comes to dealing with behavioral or chemical addictions.

Negative habits

Urges, Triggers, and Relapses

Your brain won’t ever forget an old habit entirely, but it can build a new one, eventually a very strong one, in place of the old one, and the old habit can become weaker.

Willpwr+ EE

We Live in a Dangerous Food World

Not bringing awareness to our current food environment is like walking unawares in tall grass in Texas without wearing boots.

emotional eating

When Eating is Out of Control

Next to breathing and drinking water, the most important thing we do to stay alive is to eat. It’s no wonder, then, that our bodies and our brain are fine-tuned to help us use food as efficiently as possible. Hunger, satiety, feeling energetic, feeling tired, are all parts of

Willpwr+

How not to be a Harasser

We think sexual harassment needs to be addressed as an additional way our Willpwr+ se app can help you. Sexual harrassment is not the same thing as sexual excess, but it’s a close cousin. If you have a sexual excess problem, you are probably over-investing your time and attention

Sex Addict Or Scumbag?

Every week or two, it seems, there is a new scandal dealing with sexual misconduct. From allegations about the president, admissions by sports giants, billionaire businessmen, politicians, or heroes of stage and screen, we’re confronted by sexual conduct that is both abhorrent and frequently, but not always, signals the

Negative habits

Drag Queens and Confidence

Ever heard the phrase “Fake it till you make it”? That’s a 12-step concept, and we think it is a good one. Let’s look closely at that advice and see how it applies to anybody who has been battling a negative habit or addiction. Two important overlapping conditions

Ray Baumeister

Controversies Regarding Willpower and Sexual Addiction

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky are two of my scientist heroes. Together, they created the field of behavioral economics, because their subject matter was about how people make decisions, sometimes against their own best interests, and frequently irrationally, but predictably. Their work, for which Kahneman won the Nobel Prize (Tversky

12-step programs

A Note to 12-Step Members About WIllpwr Apps

We want to clarify that our apps do not follow 12-step traditions, but also in no way contradict them. To the contrary, we see our apps as ancillary to the excellent work and effectiveness of 12-step programs. We encourage users of our apps to seek out group membership in 12-step

sexual addiction

Betrayal and Recovery

The aftermath of having a sexual excess issue, a so-called "sexual addiction" of some form (serial affairs, visiting prostitutes, and sometimes repeated and dependent porn viewing are examples) affects your partner at least as much as you. This post assumes you still have a partner, that s/he

Love Addiction

What's Love Got to Do With It?

Have you heard Tina Turner belting out “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” That’s just one of thousands upon thousands of songs, poems, novels, movies or narratives coming from just about every society in the world, past and present, that addresses both the mystifying experience

addictions

Inventions and Addictions

I had a professor many years ago who claimed that the invention of distilled spirits kicked off an epidemic of alcoholism the world had never seen before. He said that almost all cultures centuries before that time had fermented drinks, especially low alcohol-content beer and wine. Drinking to excess was

self-control

Can Self-control Become Effortless?

If you are reading this blog, we can make two predictions. First, you’re probably interested in changing something about yourself. You want to be thinner or stop smoking, or eliminate using porn, end gambling or compulsive shopping, get control of your drinking… Secondly, while you haven’t given up

Willpwr apps

Hanging in There

Nobody said it was easy. Even with all the modern technology, professional guidance, medications, and help groups out there, ending a negative habit or addiction is hard, hard work. Most find that it gets tougher before it gets easier. We start missing our addiction. It starts screaming at us for

emotional eating

Beyond the Mood-Food Connection

It doesn’t take much convincing these days to underscore the importance of dealing with emotional eating if you are motivated to lose weight and to keep it lost. Freud recognized the connection over 100 years ago and thought it was an attempt to deal with unconscious needs. It wasn’

willpower

Yoda, Luke, The Force, and Willpower

Pretty catchy title for this piece, eh? Sometimes I get a little silly. Luke employing the Force in Starwars, and those of us using willpower here on earth, do not at first glance have much in common. The Force seems magical. It’s science fiction, after all. It affects other

Is It Your Genes?

Genes play a role in every aspect of our existence as biological creatures, so it is no wonder that studies are identifying genetic connections to negative habits. We’ve known for a long time from identical twin, family, and adoption studies, that the more closely related you are to an

Is Willpower All You Need?

What does it really take to defeat a negative habit? Toughing it out? Having a support group? Admitting helplessness? Trading in your personality? Well, let’s keep it simple and look just at the “toughing it out” component of ending negative habits in this piece. Let’s listen in to

Teachable moments

Teachable Moments.

Our apps are designed to intervene exactly when a user is tempted to act out. He or she is essentially in an “altered state” at that time. We all know what that feels like. We stop thinking about consequences or we minimize the cost of acting out. We rationalize, we

support groups

Willpwr and Support Groups

Research shows that social support is one of the most essential components of recovering from a negative habit or an addiction. It was a no-brainer to incorporate some kind of social user’s group into our apps, except, as we’ve already discussed in a previous blog entry, we wanted

science

The New Science of Willpower

The idea of helping people self-regulate their behavior has been a major focus of society for thousands of years. Think of how cultural norms, religious guidance, medical advice and legal prohibitions all encourage us to demonstrate self-control. There’s just no question that urges and desires are part of the