Willpower: A Muscle To Flex, Or Spoons To Conserve?

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Willpower: A Muscle To Flex, Or Spoons To Conserve?

We have previously written about motivation; this one’s not about that.

Rather, it’s about willpower itself, and especially, the maintenance of such. Which prompts the question…

Is willpower something that can be built up through practice, or something that is a finite resource that can be expended?

That depends on you—and your experiences.

  • Some people believe willpower is a metaphorical “muscle” that must be exercised to be built up
  • Some people believe willpower is a matter of metaphorical “spoons” that can be used up

A quick note on spoon theory: this traces its roots to Christine Miserandino’s 2003 essay about chronic illness and the management of limited energy. She details how she explained this to a friend in a practical fashion, she gave her a bunch of spoons from her kitchen, as an arbitrary unit of energy currency. These spoons would then need to be used to “pay” for tasks done; soon her friend realised that if she wanted to make it through the day, she was going to have to give more forethought to how she would “spend” her spoons, or she’d run out and be helpless (and perhaps hungry and far from home) before the day’s end. So, the kind of forethought and planning that a lot of people with chronic illnesses have to give to every day’s activities.

You can read it here: But You Don’t Look Sick? The Spoon Theory

So, why do some people believe one way, and some believe the other? It comes down to our experiences of our own willpower being built or expended. Researchers (Dr. Vanda Siber et al.) studied this, and concluded:

❝The studies support the idea that what people believe about willpower depends, at least in part, on recent experiences with tasks as being energizing or draining.❞

Source: Autonomous Goal Striving Promotes a Nonlimited Theory About Willpower

In other words, there’s a difference between going out running each morning while healthy, and doing so with (for example) lupus.

On a practical level, this translates to practicable advice:

  • If something requires willpower but is energizing, this is the muscle kind! Build it.
  • If something requires willpower and is draining, this is the spoons kind! Conserve it.

Read the above two bullet-points as many times as necessary to cement them into your hippocampus, because they are the most important message of today’s newsletter.

Do you tend towards the “nonlimited” belief, despite getting tired? If so, here’s why…

There is something that can continue to empower us even when we get physically fatigued, and that’s the extent to which we truly get a choice about what we’re doing. In other words, that “Autonomous” at the front of the title of the previous study, isn’t just word salad.

  • If we perceive ourselves as choosing to do what we are doing, with free will and autonomy (i.e., no externally created punitive consequences), we will feel much more empowered, and that goes for our willpower too.
  • If we perceive ourselves as doing what we have to (or suffer the consequences), we’ll probably do it, but we’ll find it draining, and that goes for our willpower too.

Until such a time as age-related physical and mental decline truly take us, we as humans tend to gradually accumulate autonomy in our lives. We start as literal babies, then are children with all important decisions made for us, then adolescents building our own identity and ways of doing things, then young adults launching ourselves into the world of adulthood (with mixed results), to a usually more settled middle-age that still has a lot of external stressors and responsibilities, to old age, where we’ve often most things in order, and just ourselves and perhaps our partner to consider.

Consequently…

Age differences in implicit theories about willpower: why older people endorse a nonlimited theory

…which explains why the 30-year-old middle-manager might break down and burn out and stop going to work, while an octogenarian is busy training for a marathon daily before getting back to their daily book-writing session, without fail.

One final thing…

If you need a willpower boost, have a snack*. If you need to willpower boost to avoid snacking, then plan for this in advance by finding a way to keep your blood sugars stable. Because…

The physiology of willpower: linking blood glucose to self-control

*Something that will keep your blood sugars stable, not spike them. Nuts are a great example, unless you’re allergic to such, because they have a nice balance of carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats.

Want more on that? Read: 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars

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  • High Histamine Foods To Avoid (And Low Histamine Foods To Eat Instead)

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Nour Zibdeh is an Integrative and Functional Dietician, and she helps people overcome food intolerances. Today, it’s about getting rid of the underdiagnosed condition that is histamine intolerance, by first eliminating the triggers, and then not getting stuck on the low-histamine diet

    The recommendations

    High histamine foods to avoid include:

    • Alcohol (all types)
    • Fermented foods—normally great for the gut, but bad in this case
    • That includes most cheeses and yogurts
    • Aged, cured, or otherwise preserved meat
    • Some plants, e.g. tomato, spinach, eggplant, banana, avocado. Again, normally all great, but not in this case.

    Low histamine foods to eat include:

    • Fruits and vegetables not mentioned above
    • Minimally processed meat and fish, either fresh from the butcher/fishmonger, or frozen (not from the chilled food section of the supermarket), and eaten the same day they were purchased or defrosted, because otherwise histamine builds up over time (and quite quickly)
    • Grains, but she recommends skipping gluten, given the high likelihood of a comorbid gluten intolerance. So instead she recommends for example quinoa, oats, rice, buckwheat, millet, etc.

    For more about these (and more examples), as well as how to then phase safely off the low histamine diet, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Further reading

    Food intolerances often gang up on a person (i.e., comorbidity is high), so you might also like to read about:

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  • Eat Real Food and Love It – by Kari McCloskey

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Half the battle of healthy eating is enjoying it—because once you do, it’s no longer a battle!

    So that’s what this book focuses on. The author, a Registered Nutritionist, does indeed dispense nutritional advice, as you might expect, but also bids us pay attention to what nature’s foods do for us, and notice what less healthy foods take from us. She goes through these category by category, quite comprehensively, before moving on to the more “active” parts of the book.

    There’s a lot about training our senses, and about taking a holistic approach to eating, as well as renewing not just our relationship with food, but also various other parts of our life that are inextricably linked to it (from sleep and exercise, to social considerations, and medical issues that healthier eating will help us to avoid or at least tame).

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  • 7 Essential Devices For Hand Arthritis: Regain Control of Your Life

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    Dr. Diana Girnita is a double board-certified physician in rheumatology and internal medicine. With a PhD in immunology (on top of her MD), and training at Harvard and top universities, she founded Rheumatologist OnCall, offering integrative medicine to broaden rheumatology access. Here’s what she has to say about things that make life easier:

    Get your hands on these…

    The seven devices that Dr. Girnita recommends are:

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    • Finger exerciser: different device; similar principle: it strengthens hand and finger muscles using resistance, enhancing hand function.
    • Moisturizing paraffin bath: a heated paraffin wax bath that soothes hands, providing heat therapy and moisturizing the skin.
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    • Foam tubing grips: foam covers to make kitchen tools, toothbrushes, and hairbrushes easier to grip.
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    • Compression gloves: provide gentle compression to reduce swelling and pain, improving hand flexibility and circulation.
    • Door knob cover grips: make it easier to turn doorknobs by providing a larger surface to grip.
    • Wider-grip pens: ergonomically designed pens with a larger diameter and softer grip reduce hand strain while writing.

    This writer, who does not have arthritis but also does not have anything like the grip strength she used to, also recommends a jar opener like this one.

    As a bonus, if you spend a lot of time writing at a computer, an ergonomic split keyboard like this one goes a long way to avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome, and logically must be better for arthritis than a regular keyboard; another excellent thing to have (that again this writer uses and swears by) is an ergonomic vertical mouse like this one (aligns the wrist bones correctly; the “normal” horizontal version is woeful for the carpal bones). These things are both also excellent to help avoid worsening peripheral neuropathy (something that troubles this writer’s wrists if she’s not careful, due to old injuries there).

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    Want to learn more?

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    Click here to check out Strong Bones Forever, and have strong bones forever!

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing guava to pineapple, we picked the guava.

    Why?

    Pineapple is great, but guava just beats it in most ways:

    In terms of macros, guava has nearly 4x the fiber and nearly 5x the protein, for the same carbs, giving it the notably lower glycemic index. An easy win for guava in this category.

    In the category of vitamins, guava has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pineapple has marginally more vitamin B1. Another clear win for guava.

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    *actually a combination of enzymes, but most often referred to collectively in the singular. But when you do see it referred to as “they”, that’s what that means.

    However cool that is, we think it unfair to weight it against guava winning in every other category, so we still say guava gets the overall win.

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    Enjoy!

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