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Understanding your willpower

IN PRACTICE

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

December 21, 2011|By Dr. Suzanne Koven

(DAN PAGE )

Every other Tuesday, the doctors and nurses in my practice meet over lunch to hear a specialist speak about recent developments in medicine. The subjects vary — recently we’ve learned about eye diseases, domestic violence, and new anticoagulant medications — but the menu never does. There are always three platters: sandwiches, fresh fruit, and cookies. Speaking just for myself, though I don’t think I’m alone in this, the cookies are a problem.

Here’s what happens: I rush to the conference room after seeing patients for four hours straight without a break. I’m tired and I’m hungry. I start off with a sandwich — something sensible, like turkey on whole wheat or a veggie wrap. Then, for the next 50 minutes I alternate between listening to the speaker and thinking about whether to have some fruit or dig in to the cookies: chocolate-chocolate chunk, oatmeal raisin, macadamia . . . oh, they’re good; sweet and salty and buttery, and big, probably 300 calories apiece — 300 calories that I don’t need.

Sometimes I succumb and have one of the cookies. Occasionally I have (gasp) two. But often I have none, and then I go back to work feeling light and virtuous, having conquered the demon.

I wish I knew what allows me to resist those cookies when I do. I’d bottle it and offer it to my patients (and keep a little for myself). I provide patients with information about nutrition, exercise, and other aspects of a healthy lifestyle routinely but, the truth is, it’s usually not information they lack. It’s the ability to choose, consistently, the healthier option over the tempting but less healthy option — the gym over the couch, or the fruit over the cookies. In other words, as they so often tell me, what my patients need is more willpower.

Take Martha, a patient of mine in her 40s. She’s a smart, accomplished woman who juggles a family and a demanding job. The one thing she can’t seem to accomplish, though, is losing weight. Martha admits that she finds it nearly impossible to resist the fattening foods that prevent her from shedding excess pounds. “I have no willpower,’’ she says.

Yet every weekday for the past several years, Martha has woken up before her husband and kids and gone to an outdoor “boot camp’’ exercise class. Would you say that a woman who’s raising a family and succeeding in her career, not to mention one who routinely drags herself out of a warm bed on dark, cold mornings to do squats and lunges, has no willpower?