. . . if you want to stick to diet’s and keep New Year resolutions.

This psychological gem comes from Professor Richard Wiseman he studied over 3,000 peoples new year resolutions and found that 88% of them fail. A psychological explanantion is the prefrontal cortex part of the brain controls which controls willpower, short-term memory, focus and problem solving gets overloaded. Like a muscle it only has so much ‘capacity’ and once the limit is reached it’s your willpower that goes out of the window!

In another study Professor Baba Shiv at Stanford University split students into two groups, one group had to remember a 2 digit number and the other a 7 digit number. They were told to walk down a hall and presented with two snack options – chocolate cake or a healthy snack option. The 7 digit students were twice as likely to take the cake as the 2 digit students, the cognitive load of trying to remember 7 digits overwhelmed the prefrontal cortex making it harder to resist the cake.

So if you want to stick to the diet – don’t try and do too many other things at once, be aware that the pre-frontal cortex can get overloaded – willpower is not just strength of character, and if cravings do come on use a diversionary tactic to filter to temptation from your mind.

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