Why Self-Control Fails When Your Brain is Busy (or snacking)

Wake-Up Call #44

Feb 16, 2025

Is it just me, or does anyone else lose any semblance of self-control when it comes to food cravings and phone calls?

I’m talking to my friend,

. For the better part of a hike in the mountains. Doing this glorious thing. Outside, in the snow, moving my body. Jamming about life, work, business, positioning, strategy for maybe an hour. Healthy stuff. Fun stuff.

We’re still talking when I arrive home.

I head to the kitchen, because, well, #habit.

As we’re talking, within a window of five-minutes, I grab a hunk of chocolate with hazlenuts, a handful of almonds, a spoon of peanutbutter, a dollop of chocolate-avodaco mouse (translation - fat bomb!), and yet another handful of white chocolate chips. Okay, so all of the chocolate is Lily’s, it’s sugar-free. But, still.

Minutes later, I’m back in my office.

The call wraps, and I’m like…

What in the actual F did I just eat?! And, why?!!!

Just me?

Please tell me it’s not!

This is not a new pattern. I’ve noticed it many times before.

And, yet I keep tripping myself up.

Something in my brain chemistry changes when I’m on a call that basically craters my self-control.

It’s the weirdest thing.

So, I get curious…

Well, first, I make a new rule. I am not allowed in the kitchen when I’m on a call. Especially a thinky call.

Then, I decide to do a bit of digging.

It’s not just me. Hello science!

I actually start with a conversation I had on the Good Life Project podcast with one of the top researchers on self-control right now. Professor Michael Inzlicht, he runs the Work and Play Lab at the University of Toronto.

First, we needed to talk about what’s become known as the “ego depletion” model.

It’s this idea that you start the day with a full tank of willpower and every time you exert self-control, you deplete a little bit until your tank is empty. At that point, if someone offers you a cookie or a piece of cake, you’re toast. You have nothing left to resist. End of story.

Now, I’d been hiking after I already put in a solid 4 hours of work and calls and meetings and writing. Brainy stuff, some of which I didn’t want to do, so it was gobbling up bunches of self-control. Then, hiking, I actually love, but again, it uses energy and when you’re in technical terrain in winter, it takes cognitive effort, too.

So, maybe my willpower tank was just on low by the time I hit the kitchen?

Nah.

First, it was still only 1pm.

Second, it turns out, the whole ego depletion theory has been mostly debunked (Michael and I dive into this in detail in the above conversation).

It is still true—if you’re offered that cookie or cake late in a day where you had to regulate your behavior and use your brain a bunch, you probably are toast. Or, cookie.

But, it’s not because your willpower tank is empty, meaning you literally could not exert the willpower to resist even if you wanted, because you just didn’t have it. We know this is wrong because later research shows, if someone offered you $100 to not eat the cookie at the end of the day, you’d be like, cool, gimme the Benjamins, and walk away.

It’s not that we lose the ability to exert self-control, it just gets harder to motivate or muster the will to exert the effort needed to control ourselves after a whole lot of thinking and self-regulating throughout the day. We just get tired, and maybe a little cranky. But, if we really needed or wanted, or if it was culturally appropriate, we still could make the better, healthier choice.

So, was I just not motivated to make a healthier choice, grab a handful of almonds and a glass of water and leave by the time my micro-journey into kitchen hedonism unfolded?

Maybe, but then, more science says, maybe not…

Turns out, there are other likely reasons I find it nearly impossible to make good food choices when my brain is engaged in conversation on a long call, especially a work call where I’ve really gotta noodle on things.

Executive Function & Working Memory Bonkage.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “executive function” recently. It’s a social science hipster term for keeping things in order and making good calls. More officially, it involves things like working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. Executive functions serve as the brain’s “control center” for planning, monitoring, and regulating behavior.

Here’s where it gets interesting…

Research has shown that when cognitive load is high (for example, when you’re juggling multiple tasks, processing complex information, or…wait for it…deep into a call or conversation where your brain is engaged with lots of smarticle particle types of things), these executive functions can become overloaded.

That overload makes it more difficult for the brain to maintain focus and resist distractions or desires, which in turn impairs self-regulation and decision‐making.

In essence, if your brain is burdened with too much cognitive load, task-switching, working-memory burden, or information, you’re more likely to choose chocolate over celery (though, lets be honest, chocolate is God’s elixer, and it IS a plant!).

In the research, investigators use tests like the Stroop test (watch below and try it out, guaranteed to frazzle your noggin) to tweak your cognitive load, then challenge your self-control.

A seminal review by Diamond (2013) discusses how executive functions interact and how their limited capacity can lead to poorer self-regulatory outcomes when overloaded if you really want to nerd out.

A similar phenomenon was also reported in a 2005 study conducted by Baba Shiv at the University of Iowa. In this experiment, when asked to remember a seven-digit number while being offered chocolate cake or fruit salad, the memory task consumed participants’ cognitive resources, leaving them less able to self-regulate. They chose cake over fruit salad when offered.

Okay, so now we have a partial explanation. An a partial excuse!

But, there’s another potential contributor to my hyper-caloric, kitchen calamity call…

Neural and Physiological Bonkage.

I love me a good fMRI study!

Turns out, fMRI neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies yield more “inside the brain” level insight into how cognitive load (making your brain do complex stuff) affects self-control.

One study looked at how being mentally busy (or overloaded) changes the way our brain handles food choices. Normally, different parts of the brain work together to help us decide whether to choose a tastier food or a healthier one. One area (the anterior insula) helps us feel internal signals—like how a food tastes—while another area (the ventral striatum) is linked to the pleasure we get from tasting something.

What the researchers found is that when people had to hold a lot of information in their mind at the same time (a high mental load), these two brain areas didn’t “talk” to each other as well as when the mental load was low. Being mentally taxed seems to “mute” or weaken the connection that normally reinforces the pleasure of taste. This might explain why, when our brain is busy, our ability to balance taste with health benefits is disrupted.

For me, this all adds up. Especially when you consider, I wasn’t just talking for close to an hour, I was also hiking in technical, snowy terrain for nearly 90-minutes. Even though this seems like a largely physical task, it’s actually intensely cognitive, but in a less than conscious way.

My brain is constantly scanning the terrain and the environment for everything from threats (hello, bear who woke early from hibernation), to rapid-fire physicalized problem-solving (craggy rocks, roots, snow on steep decline with hidden rocks underneath). Without realizing it, my brain was on turbo. Add a conversation that sometimes meandered into businessy and strategy elements, and you’ve got the perfect storm of conscious and less-than-conscious cognitive load.

So, by the time I got home, my self-control was momentarily juiced, especially because the conversation was still going full-tilt, so my brain was still being taxed and my self-regulation was rebelling. Without me even noticing. Until the call was over, I was all “what. just. happened?!”

So, where does this leave us?

And, me?!

Well, first, as you might’ve guessed, this isn’t really just about eating and talking.

It’s about how the act of taxing your brain impacts your self-control, in all parts of life. It’s about becoming aware of how the way you allocate your actions and attention often, and unconsciously, impacts your behavior in ways that can potentially derail a commitment to everything from health to connection to performance.

Willpower or self-control, as we now know, is not a depletable asset, it’s something we can choose to access if given enough incentive. But, our brains are still wired in a way that can make keep commitments to ourselves and others a dicey endeavor.

So, if you find your desired behaviors getting derailed on a regular basis, maybe look at how you’re using your body and brain in the moments leading up to it. And, explore making changes to you activities, environment, or support structures. Or, just make gentle guidelines to help nudge you away from these moments.

Like for me, a new rule is no kitchen time while on calls.

If I have that as a guardrail, I create an upstream solution, stopping the circumstances for the problem from being able to happen…until I forget or decide I’m just frickin’ famished, and tear into some cookies!

With a whole lotta love & gratitude,

Jonathan

Wake-Up Call #44 | Self-Control Check-Up

So, what about you?

Have you found yourself sometimes doing things that, in the moment, you’re not really even aware you’re doing, but after the fact, you wonder what just came over you?

You’re not alone. It’s called being human.

If it becomes a repeated pattern, maybe explore what types of things you might be asking your brain to do, both before and during the thing you’d rather not be doing.

First, just notice, then ask yourself if there are any gentle guardrails or pre-decisions you might be able to put in place that acknowledge the potential for cognitive overload and simultaneous temptation, then pre-emptively remove even the opportunity for the undesired behavior.

Unless, of course, I’m the one one who does this!

Think on it, walk with it, talk with friends about it (but not all at the same time, when there’s cookies around). And share your thoughts, stories and fun self-control hacks in the comments, if you’re inclined.

And, if we’ve got any behavioral psychologists or scientists in the community who can add to our understanding of why things like this happen, share away in the comments, too!