It all sounds sort of fatalistic for the person who is trying to lose weight or just eat right.

Our brains are so hard-wired to pursue pleasure that resisting temptations like junk food can be exhausting. Willpower — the self-control it would take to resist that pleasure — is like a muscle. When it gets tired it doesn’t work so well. And, to keep one’s willpower energized, you need to eat.

But don’t give up. Experts say losing weight is feasible. You might just need to consider a different approach.

The reward circuit

Recent brain research suggests that one’s reward circuit — a powerful neurological pathway in the brain that regulates human behavior based on achieving sensations of pleasure — is so much more powerful than one’s so-called willpower that dieting based on self-control might be an exercise in futility.

Our brains are wired to enjoy behaviors that are essential to our survival.

In relation to food, that means we’ve evolved to eat in excess of what we need as a protective device against starvation, said Brad Appelhans, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“Throughout evolutionary history it made sense to err on the side of overeating,” Appelhans said. “We’re now in this environment where food is everywhere you look, and you still have the same biology and nervous system. Our system tells us to eat as much as possible.”

The food industry designs and markets foods to trigger our brains to want them, buy them, eat a lot and come back for more, he said.

The reward circuit is also responsible for human appetites for drugs, sex, gambling, and many other things we find pleasurable or rewarding, he said. Everyone’s circuit works differently, based on an individual’s genes and upbringing, so people’s responses to triggers vary.

For those whose reward circuits light up dramatically in response to tasty, fatty, caloric foods, watch out.

The reward circuit is extremely strong, and can override one’s normal satiety mechanisms or good intentions, Appelhans said.

A person can try to refocus or retrain his or her pleasure sensations toward healthy rewards — sports and social interactions, for example — but Appelhans doesn’t sound very optimistic about that idea. “I’m not sure it’s going to be, frankly, that good of a substitute. So what we really talk about is how to avoid activating your reward circuit.”

“With most people, overeating is completely incidental. They’re not thinking, ‘I really want a big doughnut,’ but if that’s sitting on their countertop they’ll grab it because it has activated the reward circuit, which activated the hand to pop it into the mouth,” he said.

Living in areas with greater access to fast-food restaurants has been linked, albeit inconsistently, with higher body mass, according to a commentary Appelhans wrote last year in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. High reward-sensitivity, coupled with access to palatable, energy-dense foods, makes a person vulnerable to overeating, even in the absence of true hunger, he wrote.

People need to recognize what triggers their overpowering reward circuit. Cookies? Potato chips? Ice cream? With some planning and forethought, people can avoid exposure to those food cues. They will have more success if they avoid those triggers than if they try to override the powerful urge that the food cue activates (See, “Tips that may help you lose or maintain weight”). Suppressing urges is possible, Appelhans said, “but we don’t think that’s a sustainable approach to weight loss.”

Willpower

Many diets are based around the idea of willpower.

“I don’t think it’s a useful idea,” Appelhans said. “As we understand reward and inhibiting reward processes, we can step back and say all that stuff about willpower is kind of primitive.”

For example, just because someone has a weight problem — a problem Appelhans says applies to two-thirds of Americans — doesn’t mean he or she is impulsive in all areas of his or her life, Appelhans suggested. Something must be different when it comes to food and dieting.

Having self-control seems to work better in other areas related to quality of life — success in work and school, maintaining good relationships, staying out of trouble — than in dieting and losing weight, said Roy Baumeister, a researcher and professor of psychology at Florida State University in an email.

“The trouble with dieting is something that we call the catch-22 of dieting in our book ‘Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.’ It can be put this way: In order to resist food, you need willpower. But in order to have willpower, you need to eat,” Baumeister said. “Willpower uses the body’s basic energy supply. It is the same energy that you use for physical work, for making decisions, and for fighting off a cold.”

In their book, Baumeister and co-author John Tierney, a New York Times science writer, use a body of scientific research to suggest that willpower is finite and requires a supply of glucose to work. When glucose — the body’s and brain’s energy supply that comes from food — gets depleted, willpower falls weak to temptations like impulse shopping, drugs or alcohol, extramarital affairs or extra cookies.

Baumeister said most foods provide helpful nutrients to revive glucose levels and strengthen one’s self-control. Foods with high-sugar content, including fruits, provide a quick burst of energy that quickly fades, versus proteins, which are processed more slowly, “so it takes longer to get the benefits, but they also last longer.”

Baumeister discourages dieting, since most people gain back what they lose. “Only a small proportion of people manage to lose weight and keep it off for five years,” he said.

“Instead, try to make permanent changes in how you eat. Find foods that you like to eat but that will not make you fat, and eat them in amounts you can sustain. Exercise regularly, even just going for a walk every day,” he said. “If you must diet, avoid the kind that leaves you hungry all the time, because that will also leave you lacking willpower. Instead, eat protein and other healthy foods so that your willpower will have some fuel to work with.”

When willpower feels depleted it’s the body’s way of conserving a diminished resource, not a sign that the resource is gone, Baumeister said.

“It’s like with a muscle. When you exert it, it gets tired, and it will not perform as well, but it can actually still produce plenty of strong work,” he said.

A study published last year in the journal Psychological Science suggested that whether one’s willpower gets depleted is largely moderated by that person’s belief about whether willpower is a limited resource or is unlimited. In other words, if a person believes that willpower can build upon itself — you exercised it once, therefore you can do it better next time — it might just work.

Making a lifestyle change

Harvard researchers found certain food and lifestyle factors associated with weight changes, according to a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Weight gain among participants over four years was most strongly associated with the intake of potato chips, potatoes, sugar-sweetened beverages, unprocessed red meats and processed meats. Lifestyle factors associated with weight gain were consuming alcohol, smoking and television watching.

Weight loss was associated with the consumption of vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts and yogurt and physical activity.

Tips that may help you lose or maintain weight

• Avoid food cues that trigger the reward circuit and overpower your ability to resist. Keep unhealthy foods that can overpower your ability to resist them out of the house. Avoid certain aisles in the grocery store where you might be tempted to grab unhealthy foods. Shop with a grocery list. Plan restaurant menu selections in advance. Avoid the buffet.

• Minimize stress or learn how to manage its effect on your eating. Stress can sensitize the reward system. There is some evidence that when a person is under stress, his or her reward circuit is more responsive to things like food, drugs, alcohol. Stress also disrupts a person’s ability to control his or her behavior, to resist the urge to eat the food or drink the alcohol.

It’s not realistic to eliminate stress from one’s life, so have a backup plan for times of stress to keep yourself from eating: go for a walk, call a friend, breathe deep.

• Keep goals and rewards short-term to better sustain motivation. The reward circuit is more responsive to immediate or short-term rewards than delayed gratification. Short-term rewards might be how many days you exercise or eat a healthy lunch in one week. Long-term rewards might be trying to lose 30 pounds in six months.

• Self monitor behaviors, such as keeping detailed records of your food intake. That gives you more control over it.

Source: Brad Appelhans, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago