Is it easier to have a lot of choices on a diet, or only a few choices?

People are so different. Some women want lots of choices and feel too restricted if they don't have these choices to make. Others might feel frustrated and overwhelmed by many choices. It might even remind them of their out-of-control eating.

There is psychology research on this very subject. Here are some things you might like to know about choices and self-control.

First, we would all agree that your self-control comes into play when you are trying to diet. You use your self-control so that you can stick to your dieting behavior. This is the way to attain your weight-loss goal.

Now, self-control takes a good bit of mental and physical energy. The reason is because you need to override one response—for example, giving in to food temptation—and then substitute another response, which is restraint. It's not easy, as most of us know.

OK, so you need self-control to diet and self-control takes a lot out of you. You might even say it depletes your energy.

It is interesting that research about this shows how making decisions—choosing one thing over another—draws upon the same inner resource you use for self-control—which you might call energy, or strength. Furthermore, this kind of inner strength is limited, and apparently gets easily depleted.

To get more specific about self-control and dieting, let's say you are faced with some non-diet food, or even the thought of non-diet food—or, you may be faced with another kind of challenge having nothing to do with food, but you automatically think of eating as a way to help you meet the challenge. But in order to stay on your diet, you need to override your inclination to eat whatever it is, and then substitute a different response. You need to interrupt what is by now a natural tendency on your part, and initiate another kind of behavior, which is pretty much the opposite. Can you see how this is an energy-consuming process?

So, if you add to this a wide variety of food choices on your diet, you'll need even more energy—decision-making energy.

The research findings indicate that having to make many decisions leads to impairment of self-regulation. Experiments have shown that people who did not have to make too many choices persisted longer on the task they were given to do then people who did have to make choices. This inability to persist was shown to happen on a wide variety of tasks.

It's a paradox. We all want to have choices, the freedom to live life as we want to live it. But we also tire of making choices, and even get stressed out by decision-making.

Making choices can be difficult and effortful, and can result in worse self-regulation. We are wowed by any diet that says "Eat whatever you choose and still lose weight". But they usually don't work.

Think about these concepts, and see if anything here can help you on your quest to lose weight.

© Maria's Last Diet. Maria's Last Diet is an online weight loss support website for women. At Maria's Last Diet, you'll find the tools to fix the thoughts, feelings, and automatic habits that fight against you when you diet. Because it's never just about the food. Visit www.mariaslastdiet.com for more diet tips and weight loss motivation.

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