A real willpower challenge isn’t a fleeting, “wouldn’t that be nice” thought that disappears as quickly as it came. It’s more like an all-consuming battle raging inside of you between good and evil, virtue and sin, and yin and yang, and you feel it physically.
There is a war that takes place within your brain. When you see a greasy cheeseburger, dopamine tells your mind to consume it now or to suffer the consequences. Your brain, at this point, is anticipating a spike in energy and insulin, so it lowers your blood sugar levels. This makes you crave the burger even more.
The role of dopamine isn’t to make you feel pleasure, but to spur you into action. But dopamine also releases stress that makes you feel anxious. That is why, the more you think about the reward, the more you want to get it now.
Your brain doesn’t care about the bigger picture, or the long run, or how you will feel in a month. It is interested in pursuing instances of pleasure and raising red flags.
Regular exercise reduces craving for both food and drugs, makes you more resistant to depression, and stress, increases heart rate variability, and optimizes brain function.
The moral of this section is that we can’t trust our feelings to guide our behavior. If we go around chasing “good feelings,” we’ll figure out many ways of not feeling bad about procrastinating, overeating, overspending, and other behaviors, and then we’ll wonder why we’re so broke, fat, lazy, and ignorant.
To stay committed to a training routine, and to get results, you need to learn how to observe cravings as they appear and wait for them to subside.
Nothing fails like success.
It is common to indulge when you feel you have eaten well or exercised. But be wary of this, as you may easily offset your progress, and will make your climb upwards much harder than it needs to be.
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