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

There's a new game in town, folks, and it's pretty impressive. It's all the rage now to use some form of short-term intermittent fasting or to skip breakfasts to drop that excess weight. These fasting approaches are skyrocketing in popularity. We think that's great. We also think in the long run, there will be a great thudding disappointment as the weight returns, unless there is a major shift in one's thinking, goal setting, and lifestyle. That's where Willpwr+EE comes in—to help you permanently make lasting changes.

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. Most people know that almost every diet works in the short run, and most definitely all forms of intermittent fasting work, but 80% of us gain the weight back plus even more within 6-18 months. Why? Because we haven't been taught how to handle the daily temptations of our food environment, we haven't learned how to defeat conditioned eating and emotional eating, and we haven't developed new habits that replace our older style of eating. On the contrary, as traditional dieters, we cut way back on our food intake and think of it as a challenging but temporary strategy to lose weight. Then, we stop the diet, happy that we've become slimmer, and we slip back over the next month or so to the eating style that got us in trouble in the first place. So, basically, we "learn" that weight can come off with effort but that we are destined to remain fat. Not a very nice conclusion, eh?

There's another way, and intermittent fasting and its cousin, time-restricted eating might very well be part of the solution. But to keep the weight off, how in the world do we make these lifestyle changes feel normal and more or less effortless? Well, we've developed an app to coach you through that process. Using our Willpwr+ EE app, we believe you can develop the skills that will make it much more likely that the pounds will stay off and that you will have a healthier lifestyle:

1. Redefining your goal. Focus on a permanent way of healthier eating and exercising, not a temporary way of dropping weight. So instead of a specific weight goal, the goal you set is to alter your eating/exercise/stress management style. Not unlike "If you build it, they will come", your body will find its healthiest weight and set point.
2. Being aware. Be fully prepared to handle "food pitfalls" and stresses that are all over the place without becoming overwhelmed. Awareness and knowledge are the keys. For example, you need to recognize what is triggering those urges to eat when you don't need the calories. And to do that, you need to get very good at distinguishing between physical hunger versus the urges to eat when you are stressed, tired, anxious, angry, bored, etc. You also need to know that if you've been overweight long enough to develop insulin resistance, you are going to feel hungry more frequently than before that condition developed.  Finally, you need strategies that work for you for handling those emotional and stimulus-triggered urges when they happen.
3. Breaking negative habits.  Eating late in the evening is one of those negative habits. It's likely that you didn't even know that is a bad habit, but you'll learn all about why that's the case as you explore the mechanisms underlying intermittent fasting and/or time-restricted eating. If you continue with late evening eating/snacking these new no-eating periods won't work well enough to do their thing. Even if you aren't trying intermittent fasting, eating late in the evening is going to defeat or severely get in the way of any weight goal you might have. Ditto for the negative habit of consuming high amounts of refined carbs like white bread or white rice. But you knew that one already!
4. Discovering enjoyable ways of exercise. You need exercise for three purposes, namely to change your resting metabolism, to reduce mild-moderate urges to eat, and above all,  to use exercise instead of food as a way to cope with negative emotions.
5. Enhancing willpower skills. Learn how to reframe unhealthy food as unappealing food. That's kind of a Vulcan mind trick, but it's easy to learn.  You need several solid self-control strategies as transitional tools until new habits are in place and whenever those new habits are challenged by sudden emotional upsets or circumstances.
6. Celebrating your new lifestyle. If you don't come to like it, you aren't going to continue doing it. That's psych 101. It doesn't mean you'll never eat your favorite dessert or never get to eat a big breakfast again. It does mean that those experiences will be less frequent than currently because you won't want them and that you won't feel the least bit cheated or deprived for not eating the way you used to.
7. Calibrating exactly what works for you. Find just the right amount of these techniques to live comfortably from here on out. You don't need extreme fasts, and you don't need to always skip breakfast. You have to see how your body and your mind adjust to altered schedules of eating and find what is sustainable for you.

We believe these skills are essential if you'd like to permanently make lasting changes. We designed our Willpwr+ EE app to help you gain these skills before even introducing you to intermittent fasting or restricted-time eating. We think it's that important. Ready to hone the skills to make a real change in your life? check us out!