Do something Friday

I've been reading a lot of research lately about how decision making is a limited power.  There's only so many decisions you can make in a day and when you wear out this decision making muscle, we start making easy decisions  -- which are generally the "do nothing right now" decisions.

The good news is that we can exercise this "decision making muscle" and learn to have more stamina when it comes to choices.  But it takes conscious effort and practice.  And planning.....

Planning because if you just don't have the power to make positive choices about your eating behaviors in the evening (when you've used all your decision making muscle up for the day) then you should at least consider staying as far away from the buffet and you can.  Planning because if you house is full of trigger eating foods (the sweet, salty or crunchy that you can polish off in one sitting), you probably shouldn't be relying on willpower to keep you out of the kitchen during evening TV time.

This weekend spend some time noticing how you feel as you make decisions throughout the day.  Do you feel tired?  Are you more likely to run on auto-pilot?  It pays to understand your strengths and weaknesses -- and then plan accordingly.

For more information on decisional fatigue, click here for the NYTimes article.