Of course you're right, FooZe. I just haven't had to do this much before, so it's new territory for me. One thing I do along your line of thinking is the twenty minute rule. If I can, I only eat what I think I should eat, with the bargain being that if I'm hungry again twenty minutes after finishing what I think I should eat, then I can get some more. And, of course, at the end of twenty minutes I'm not hungry any more. So the twenty minute rule works well for me. I'd suppose that your suggestions are along that line.

What actually happens, what I describe as being steamrollered, goes like this: I'm doing whatever I have to do, not feeling hungry. Then hunger begins and, with it, a fight. This happens as I'm driving around, doing errands. It doesn't happen at home. Part of me wants to go eat at place X, where I'm sure to eat too much. Part of me wants to do what I should. This "fight" gets more and more intense. I feel uncomfortable. I push the whole thing out of my mind. Then I start to have ideas about why, just this time, I HAVE to eat more than I should. Or in a place I shouldn't go to. Or compromise by not going to Place X but going to Place Y where, it's true, I'll eat less but still more than I should.

And so ultimately, "me," the person having these ideas, is persuaded that it's really in my best interests to go wherever it is I choose but wind up eating more than the correct amount or variety. The opposing ideas have long since been left far away. I have a feeling of "rightness," of "correctness" in my final decision (which is the wrong decision), of "doing what I have to do." And it's all, all wrong.

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  Are any of these anything like what happens for you?I've never found "willpower" very useful myself. I'm not even sure that there is such a thing. What seems to work best for me is to just do what I do, watch myself do it, and choose to do what I'm doing. I think if I found myself being steamrollered I'd be looking to climb on the steamroller and share the driving.

It would be wrong for me to say that this happens to me literally "all the time." It doesn't. At least half the week I'm at home and we simply never have bad food in the house. Not having kids, it's not all that difficult. No snack foods of any kind. No desserts. No convenience foods. We've lived that way for years. So if I want to eat a hot lunch I have to actually cook something. The only cold lunch would be a peanut butter sandwich. So it's much easier at home to keep myself under control.

As to "choosing what I'm doing," I think I've tried to explain above how I always wind up "choosing what I'm doing." And I am driving the steamroller. It's just pre-programmed. I'm always the boss. My assistants just put the wrong speech in the teleprompter. I would think that anyone doing anything compulsively operates like that. They wind up thinking that what they're doing is the right thing to do.

I guess everyone deals with "competing impulses." In all kinds of different situations. And I'd suppose that what you usually have is a kind of political competition among the impulses, each one coming up with as good an argument as they can in favor of their proposed course of action. And the sole and only voter (me) has to figure out how to compromise among these different parties to form a government. And I don't know about you, but I've spent a lifetime doing this on a large number of issues (at least those that my unconscious lets me have some control over.) So when it comes to food and eating, I don't know how to "privilege" (as the French say) the "healthy" choice over all the others automatically from the beginning. Take care.