Self-discipline it is not 14 eating behavior. Until her true reasons for over-eating became known to her she remained confused and felt powerless. If you have a story similar to Suzie’ s, then I urge you to find a good therapist with whom you can work through these issues. Sadly, one in four women has experienced some form of sexual assault by early adulthood. If your goal is to be fat to protect yourself in some way, then no amount of dieting, even if it is accompanied by buckets of iron-willed self-discipline, is going to work. People who have the goal of being fat, like Suzie, are in quite a different category from those who over-eat but deep down have no desire to be fat. In short, some people are attached to their food and others, like Suzie are attached to their fat. For the Suzie’ s of the world, therapy of some sort is usually necessary. She will not be able to lose weight until the goal of being fat can be abandoned. Whatever the particular reasons for particular behaviors, over the years I have learned that it is much easier to change the behavior to match the person than to change the person, and their reasons, to match the behavior. So with our two salesmen I would work with Bill to get him to study architecture, rather than work to help him become a better salesman. For exactly these reasons, good managers know that they are better off altering a valued employee’ s job description to suit their personality than trying to try to change the employee’ s personality to fit their job description. In the same way, I do not try to get people to give up the food they love. In fact, except where people eat expressly to achieve the goal of being fat, I don’ t think we need to work out every person’ s reasons for over-eating. Instead, we need to respect the fact that everyone has their reasons for over-eating and the blunt tool of self-discipline is powerless against them. To be honest, I’ m not sure that self-discipline really exists! I think people do certain things because their desire to do them exceeds their reasons, at both conscious and unconscious levels, for not doing them.