Is the lack of self control genetic?
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's topic is one of my favorites, and it's about kind of self control and something called cognitive load, which I'm gonna explain in a bit because this is a very important part of the puzzle when it comes to behavior change, and you're thinking, is it my fault? What can I do about it? Stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Okay? So the first thing to talk about is self control and a study on it, and can you actually build more self control. Because some people seem naturally disciplined. Okay? They just get it.
Speaker 1:They do it. It's easy. They get up early. They just eat, you know, the the what we would consider healthy foods. They go running.
Speaker 1:They basically sleep. Wake up, run, train, bum, and it's not it's not it's not a problem for them. And then we look up to these people, don't we? We compare ourselves to these people. Go, why don't why can't we do what they do?
Speaker 1:Why do I wanna stay in bed all day? Why do I wanna sleep when I go out or home? Why do I not want to do these things that I know are good for me? You know? Why can't I stick to my habits and and accomplish my goals?
Speaker 1:Okay. So what does science say about self control, and is it genetic? So there's a lot of research on this, and self control, essentially, in the research, when they look at is it, like, influenced by genes, goes from zero to 90%. So it's like some people are saying pretty much all down to your genes. Some are saying it's got nothing to with genes.
Speaker 1:But it was a brand new analysis, okay, on the evidence, and it was a meta analysis, which is like a no overlook of results of different studies, to have a look at what actually is the truth here. And what interesting about this is they looked at identical twins and then fraternal twins. So my sister me and my sister, I got a twin sister, but we're not the same egg, obviously. Right? So if you are an identical twin, you've got the same DNA because it's the same egg, that's enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a crude way of saying it, but, you know, that's what it is. So they're comparing these two groups of people because that this should show well, it should give us the answer really, shouldn't it? Because they've got the same DNA, and then the other ones don't, but they're still brought up in the same time period. Right?
Speaker 1:So the study found that 60% of the variation in self control between individuals comes from genetic influences. Okay? So self control isn't a 100% genetically determined, but 60%. You've So got the 60%. Some of you if you think of it as like a some of you might be 60% there, and you just need a bit more, and your self control is pretty solid.
Speaker 1:And some of you might like your genetics are like, hey. Listen. Your self control on, environmental factors. Things can come into your brain quickly and make you think about doing something else. You might you might have a harder task of doing things.
Speaker 1:So your genes can definitely predispose you to having an easier or harder time regulating your thoughts, your behaviors, and impulses. So that's why it's important to understand, like, where you are on a scale. Do you find it hard? Is it the mornings you find better? Is it the evenings?
Speaker 1:Like, what's happening? Are you, is it anything you are? I have got good self control over. And when it comes to food, what is it that your perceived level of self control is? Do you feel confident that between 9AM and and 4PM, you could do it, but then it's the evening?
Speaker 1:And that's probably then leading into something called cognitive load, which I'm gonna explain now, which is a very fascinating thing that happens in the brain. Okay. So don't beat yourself up, okay, if you feel like your self control isn't always good as someone else. Maybe you are genetically just not fixed in that sense to have self control come naturally. It doesn't mean you can't have it, just means you gotta understand what's going on.
Speaker 1:And, of course, you can develop self control. You just gotta understand what's happening. And one of the main problems we have it comes to nutrition and sticking to a calorie deficit, all this stuff is something called cognitive load. Okay? So my favorite scientist, Robert Sapolsky, who is a Stanford neuro, neuroscientist biologist and stuff like that, he's written many books.
Speaker 1:Okay? He looks at, first of all, was looking at why did the rich get richer and the poor stagnate in? What is different between the rich and the poor? Some people say that the rich just deal with problems better than the poor, okay, or the poor. Right?
Speaker 1:But he didn't believe this. He's like, this this this can't be true. So they would say that the reason why poor people are poor is because of the traits they already have, which is poor management of money. They can't they don't have a self control. They can't seem to get out of sticky situations.
Speaker 1:Blah blah blah. Okay. That's what they they think that's the reason. But those economists and collaborators from Harvard, Princeton, and University of British Columbia, they explore explore this concept called cognitive load, and they're looking at the most evolved and fanciest part of the human brain, okay, which is the frontal cortex. This is the region that basically does executive function, decision making, emotional regulation, long term planning.
Speaker 1:Okay? This this is the key role in many things that rich people tend to do better than poor people. Okay? So do the rich people have a better functioning cognitive part of the brain, which is the frontal cortex, than poor people? Right?
Speaker 1:And, naturally, the frontal cortex has finite capacity. So the frontal function is impaired in people who increase their cognitive load with things such as tasks, stress, sleep deprivation, pain, or even resistant temptation. Okay? That causes some cognitive load. When you ask someone to do something again afterwards, they tend to not be able to stick to it.
Speaker 1:So you can say, do you want chocolate? No. Do you want chocolate? No. Do you want chocolate?
Speaker 1:No. Do want No. Do you wanna yeah. Okay. We've all experienced that.
Speaker 1:Okay? Or you could be having a stressful day, done a lot of thinking all day, trying to problem solve, end of the day comes. Who wants a pizza? Yes. You know, like, it's the cognitive load is there, and decision making is, not as great as it once was or start of the day.
Speaker 1:Right? So what the researchers found was that poor people have a greater cognitive load than rich people. Okay? This is why poor people make worse decisions in general than rich people. And it makes sense.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it's very stressful to be poor, in terms of financial stress all the time, but they wanted to prove this. Okay? They wanted to see, okay. Well, let's have a look at if this is true. So they basically got a bunch of people, American volunteers, a bunch of them below average income, and then those with above average income.
Speaker 1:They did a lot of tests on cognitive function. Right? So just before the tests, they were asked to think about how they would deal with a car that was having problems. They would have to pay for it to be fixed, take out a loan to pay for it, ignore the problems, so so so. And half of them were told it was a small issue with the car.
Speaker 1:It would take a small amount of money, and the other half were told it was a major expensive problem. Okay? So when they were asked about the minor repair, the rich and the poor performed the same on the cognitive tests because the poor people were like, okay. I can handle it. No problem.
Speaker 1:Okay? So they weren't impaired by the cognitive load. And when they weren't impaired by the cognitive load, same as the rich group, the tasks were done the same. Okay? But when the repair was described as costly, performance crashed dramatically in the poor, but not in the rich.
Speaker 1:So in other words, having to reflect on that tight financial problem increased the cognitive load so much that that basically tests decision making tests, all that stuff came crashing down. Okay? That's what happened before. So when they were intrigued by these results, cognitive load for poor people in the real world is a thing. Right?
Speaker 1:So they were looking at people's incomes who fluctuated radically, and they decided to focus on sugarcane farmers in India. They were paid once a year. They would have to sell a harvest of sugar mills. They'd have to make that money last until the next harvest, you know, very stressful. And the researchers measured the farmer's cognitive function before the harvest when money was tight and again then after the harvest when they had fewer money problems.
Speaker 1:Okay? So they controlled a few things, including the nutrition and amount of physical labor were the pre and post harvest, and the farmers who hadn't yet harvest and been paid for, their crops got dramatically worse than the post harvest farmers. So both a careful lag lab experiment, basically, and a naturalistic field study suggests that being poor brings with it cognitive challenges. Your brain has to work very, very, very hard if you're constantly trying to figure out how to keep your head above water. Okay?
Speaker 1:And that then contributes to poor decision making and it's counterproductive to behavior. Now you might be thinking, what are you on about? What's this got to do with health and fitness? It's got everything to do with health and fitness. Okay?
Speaker 1:Because if you join up and you go on social media, someone tells you that eating a Mars bar is gonna cause you to have all these problems. You're going on these apps that are telling you that this food's got this additive, and this food's got that additive. Now you're thinking about the additives. Now you're thinking about this huge problem. Now you're thinking about the food is poisoning you.
Speaker 1:Then you speak to someone else, say you gotta train six times a week, then it's three times a week, then it's two times a week. Okay? And then you're thinking I should be tracking everything, my fiber, my carbs, my fat, my salt intake, saturated fat, and you're stressing about that you don't do it. And then you've got the tracking itself, and for most people and other apps, it's very, very hard to track. It takes a lot of time, another stress.
Speaker 1:Right? By the time you've been bombarded by this every morning, when you go on social media or the night before, and you're thinking about how you can track and it's taking you ages, right, your cognitive load is massive. And then when it comes to actually the main thing, okay, so you can read up all you want, you can listen to anyone you want, you can do all of those things. But the main thing, and one of the reasons the podcast called one day at a time is actually what you're gonna do between now and bedtime is really what's gonna make the difference in your life. And if you've already loaded yourself up with all this nonsense, okay, and it comes to the decision the the actual actions you take each day, that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1:You're stressed out, cognitive load, this, this, this. You stress yourself out so much that you make worse choices. You you even if you contract with a voice note or whatever, you don't. You think it was the point, and you question everything, and you spend an hour or two hours looking at Google and all these websites, stresses about texting people, this and that, going around in circles, when it gets to the evening, okay, you just go bugger it, you know, and you start thinking what's wrong with me? Why can't I do these things?
Speaker 1:Well, you're loading yourself up with all this nonsense. Okay? That's one of the reasons the philosophy I have is so simple. The cognitive load is minimal. Hit your calories, hit your protein, hit your step count, Get on with your life.
Speaker 1:Stop worrying about anything else. Your cognitive load must go in your behaviors each day, your actions you have to take. It's all good saying I got these three targets and it's simplified, but I'm actually doing the behaviors and doing the actions can be more difficult, right, than what you think. Even though it's simple, doesn't mean it's gonna be super easy. And if you can actually do the fundamentals every day, you can have huge impact in your life.
Speaker 1:And if you do the fundamentals every day and nothing more, you are saving cognitive load for other things, maybe your job, maybe you're a new parent, maybe you need it to speak to people. I don't know. Like, you know what mean? You you you you have a finite amount of cognitive load each day. And if you're going to bed late at night and you're thinking about these things and they're stressing you out and you wanna lose weight super quacket, and then you're stressed out at night and your sleep is impaired, then your cognitive load's gonna be impaired because your sleep is something that kinda resets it every day.
Speaker 1:Your sleep can your your sleep lets you yourself kind of I don't say the word heal, but, like, replenish, so you need to have that good sleep. So when you have fewer targets to hit, but the fundamentals and a simple, but it's actually the important stuff, and you can do it actually from now until bedtime is something you can do and it's possible to fit into your life, you can go to bed, the head hits the pillow, you've done what you can for the day, happy days. Not I didn't do the 999 other things that I should have done for my health, which really none of them have a bigger impact than the big the big three. But we worry about the small things. Okay?
Speaker 1:Famously, Jim Rohn, one of these personal development legends said, don't major in minor things. It's an American way of saying, don't have a degree, don't go to university, okay, over the stuff that doesn't matter, because that's what most people are doing. They're spending years and years qualification. What do call qualification a minute? Yeah.
Speaker 1:The shit that doesn't matter. Oh, brilliant. Brilliant, buddy. Did you spend all your years doing that? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why don't you focus on the things that do matter? It's not fancy. It's not new. I think someone told me in TikTok that I should be doing all this. Come on.
Speaker 1:We need to grow up. We need to focus on the fundamentals and leave it at that so our cognitive load is protected. And then our self control actually has a chance, because this all links back. Self control, decision making, cognitive load is high, your self control is gonna be low. Just simple as that.
Speaker 1:So when you start thinking is self control, start thinking is my cognitive load high? What am I doing to cause it to be high, and how can I re reduce it? And one real great way to do it is to get off social media for a week. Hard, maybe your job relies on there, whatever, but maybe give it a go off social media, focus on yourself, day to day behaviors, from now till bedtime, rinse, repeat, and see what happens when you have more cognitive load and more self control. You'll start realizing maybe there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 1:It's what you're putting in your brain every day that's actually the cause of this issue. That's it for today. Have a good day. See you tomorrow.
