According to the article, glucose is (pretty much) directly responsible to our level of willpower. This surprised me because the less sugar (in any form) I take, the more willpower I seem to have (and the generally better I feel).

Does anyone have willpower 'mind-hacks' they're willing to share? I find the hardest thing is to just get started, after that everything's easy.

> Does this mean we should be giving ourselves sugar every time we want to exert some self-control? Clearly, that would be a short-sighted strategy.

Maybe if you're only concerned with use of willpower to limit caloric intake. Otherwise, it sounds like an awesome strategy.

And where's the evidence that willpower is trainable as promised in the intro? I already knew that making choices at all (let alone difficult ones) depletes resources in my body and temporarily dulls my physical and mental capacities. I'd like some science that suggests how, and how much, I can expand my battery or lower the rate at which making decisions depletes it.

There has been a lot of this recently:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661984 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848839

...and some others, one of which sited the same papers (but i cant remember post title.)

I also learned that willpower was a limited resource. The article also states this fact.

However, the article suggests training WP by using it all up. I don't see the point of an article which could have been summed up easily in a paragraph.

So if your weakness is not being able to cut on sugar intake you're pretty much screwed...

I am not impressed. The creation of glucose by the liver, gluconeogenesis, is strongly controlled by epinephrine (adrenaline), the same hormone that cranks up the heart rate. Thus it is not surprising to find heart rate variability changes simultaneously with glucose changes.