Why Willpower Isn’t a Myth — and Why Habits Really Matter in the AI Era

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In this episode of the Habit Mechanic Podcast, Dr. Jon Finn is joined by Andrew Foster, Tougher Minds’ Head of Coaching (and a long-time member of the team), for a practical conversation about why so many mainstream explanations of behaviour change — including weight loss — miss the point.

Using a popular article on “the myth of willpower” as the jumping-off point, Jon and Andrew unpack what’s outdated about the usual nature-vs-nurture framing, why habits should be at the centre of any serious discussion about change, and why willpower isn’t a myth — it’s the conduit that allows you to interrupt old patterns and build new ones.

They explore how environment, sleep, stress, and daily routines interact to shape what you eat, how you move, and how you feel — and why many coaching clients “accidentally” lose weight as a side effect of becoming more Brain State intelligent and more deliberate in their habit design.

The conversation also connects this to the AI era: as work changes and demand for high-charge thinking increases, the ability to build better Brain State habits will become more important than ever.

A practical, science-led episode about taking back control — one habit at a time.

Transcript

Meet Andrew Foster And His Coaching

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hello, Habit Mechanics, Dr. John Finn here. I hope you're having a great week so far. So today we're doing something a little bit different. I'm excited to have a guest, and we're joined by our head of coaching, tougher minds head of coaching, Andrew Foster. Now I've known Andrew for a very long time, and we've worked together for going on 15 years now. Um Andrew is our head of coaching, and I'll let him say a few lines about what he actually does at Tougher Minds in case you've never met him before or heard from him.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Thanks, John. Great to be on the podcast. Yeah, so I'm Andrew Foster. Uh the book of my works with fantastic people in all sorts of different sectors, uh, all sorts of different stages of their careers. They they tend to be super ambitious, really, really exciting people who can see that gap between what they intend to do and what actually ends up happening. Um what I help them do is is close that close that gap. Um, so uh it's it's it's brilliant work to do, it's really rewarding, and it's great to be here on the podcast to discuss uh our work together.

Why High Performers Seek Ongoing Coaching

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah, one of the things I find really interesting about your work, Andrew, is how many people renew with you. So they normally sign up for like a two-month program, don't they? Four one-to-ones over two months, but then they they continue working with you. And it's what's often not just surprising but delightful about that is lots of these people you're working with, they're not slouches in the sense of they're actually quite exceptional people in what they've achieved. And that doesn't mean that you need to be an outstanding top of your professional person to work with you, but the people who everyone else looks at and thinks, well, they've got it, they've got this sorted out, they don't need any support, but they're actually they're often the ones who are most minded to get the support because they understand the value of um just having an expert to keep touching base with to help them overcome the challenges that we all have, that just sometimes it seems like some people don't have those challenges because they're they're doing super well.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Absolutely. I think a lot of the time um the challenges we can we can reframe them as actually getting after opportunities in the in the best way that we can. So when someone has some success with us uh working working together in that first two months, then very often that then leads to right, what's next? I've now because I did X, I've now got this opportunity to do Y, and I understand that I will be more likely to hit my straps and really hit my potential on achieving why if I'm doing um taking the same approach and developing it and getting even better at using uh tougher mind strategies and tougher mind tools to manage how I'm working towards that new goal.

The Surprising Side Effect: Weight Loss

Debunking The Willpower Myth

SPEAKER_01 3:45

And one of the, and this brings us on to what we're going to talk about in this podcast, one of the side effects of um, and I've seen this in my own work, and Andrew tells me about this all the time. One of the side effects of putting the tougher minds uh program into practice that is becoming a habit mechanic working on your brain states is that people lose weight, and it's very rarely something that we are primarily focusing on. But Andrew and I were just talking about this before Christmas that um people that he's doing one-to-one coaching with, one of the things that they keep talking about is that they're losing weight. I actually had an incident um in the last 12 months where someone had booked some coaching with me, but they'd sort of deliberately done it into the future. So I hadn't seen this person for say six months. And when I saw them on the call, I didn't recognise them. I was thinking, as I'd only ever met them once before online, I was thinking, is this the same person? And then the person disclosed that they'd been using the diet, exercise, sleep, swap plant, and they'd lost a couple of stone or something. But we've we're in January, and often people are resetting what they want to be working on, they're renewing their goals, and one of the obvious things that people talk about is weight loss, and we came across an article in a very prominent prominent media outlet that you will know. Um, and we thought that it was uh outdated in how it was thinking about weight loss, and we thought it was a good um good thing to talk about. And the the the title of this article is The Myth of Willpower and Why Some People Struggle to Lose Weight More Than Others, and uh this really is a story about uh why some people struggle to change to change their behavior because that's what weight loss is really all about, but it's uh saying you know, willpower is pretty useless, really, and we keep hearing that message, but what I know after 25 years of studying these things in great detail is that it's not, and willpower is getting a massively bad rap, and it's getting a misinformed rap. So today we want to sort of demystify how we actually change our behaviour, including the things that we might need to do to lose weight, um, and come at this with a with a robust strategic scientific lens. Because understanding how to lose weight, just like understanding how to stop beating yourself up as much as you currently are, it is you can think we we now have the same level of understanding that we would need if we wanted to fix a car engine, hence the habit mechanic, and it's about habits ultimately. So, when you read this article, Andrew, what were the main kind of jarring points for you? Or you might want to, as a as someone who set out from Cambridge University wanting to have a career in journalism, you might want to even step back further and uh frame the article for us.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Well, there's like I'm I'm just looking, just double checking for myself again. There's one this is a very long article. There's a single mention of the word habit in the whole in the whole um article where that should be a central central point of it. You know, I I what's good about the article is that um clearly it's quite a lot of legwork being put into it. They they've gone out the journalist has gone out and talked to a lot of different people and seems genuinely interested and try to provide some good detail, but that if you're not putting habits at the core or you know at the centre of the piece, then you are not going to be able to inform the people who read it uh as to what you're setting out to do uh at the start. Um so so yeah, that would be my that would be my main my main observation uh in the in the first um instance.

Nature, Nurture, And Epigenetics

Energy In Versus Out And Habits

Willpower As The Conduit For Change

SPEAKER_01 8:37

So essentially the article is very much leaning towards the nature side of the nature-nurture argument, that is we are a result, we as human beings are a result of this used to be the debate, either our genetics, which is nature, or we are a result of our environments, which is nurture. Fast forward to 2026 and even you know, fast forward to the early 2000s, we know that that argument is hogswash and it's way is you know, it's lit, it's it's at least 20 years out of date. And this article, therefore, is at least 20 years out of date in terms of what science actually tells us about why people end up in the situation they're in, whether that's overweight or worrying too much, or being the exact weight they want to be, and and thinking in a really helpful, healthy way. So if we just go to the basics, what science has shown us, compelling science has shown us over the last I'd say 25 years or so is that nurture, what we practice has a much bigger and uh uh I would say significant role in what we actually get good at what we actually end up looking like and feeling like, and one of the uh core insights that we've evolved in that period is by understanding what we call epigenetics, so the understanding that even our even our genetics are not set in stone, they are they have a certain amount of malleability to them depending on what you practice. So this even happens whilst we're in the womb. If our um mother is carrying, you know, if our mother is depressed and she's she's stressed out, well some of those um some of those behaviors and uh carried by um you know physical biological material is gonna impact our own brain function. So we're probably gonna be more likely to be depressed ourselves or have a tendency towards practicing those things that make us depressed. And if we're gonna think about why we get good at things, why we are overweight or underweight, why we are healthy, why we are not healthy, why we're happy, why we're not happy, why we're a high performer, why we're a low performer, we have to start with that understanding of we get good at what we practice. And yeah, our genetics play a role. So if you want to be an NBA basketball player, then having the genetic material that make you grow to six foot five is going to be helpful. But if you're malnutrition, if you're malnourished as a child, you're probably not gonna grow to six foot five, you know. So these things are very complex in how they play out, um, but equally they're very simple. We have genetic material and we practice things every second of every day, we're exposed to things. So that has to be the starting point, and then where does willpower come into this? Well, let's just say that I have genetic material that makes me more prone to being overweight, and when I say overweight, I suppose you have to start with an understanding that we all have a we all have a natural weight, not what Hollywood says we should be, not what X Magazine says we should be. We have a natural weight, a natural healthy weight is maybe a good way to think about it, and everybody's going to be different. But whether you end up being at your natural healthy weight or not, whether you're above it or below it, the main effect variables on that, and in science, what main effect variable means is the most important thing, the significant factors. So in science, significance has a very specific meaning. It's about um it goes above a statistical threshold in terms of the impact it has on um on behavior in this case. And more recently, we've learned about what you eat as well. So how much you eat and what what kind of stuff you're eating versus energy output. So it's energy input versus energy output. Now you might think that's oversimplistic, but I would argue that it's not, it's the starting point. And energy output and energy input is driven by habits ultimately. So some people are in the habit of exercising to different levels every day, whether it's doing your 10,000 steps or whatever it is, and also what you eat is about habit as well. So you've got these great intentions about to go on a diet, but you're just in the habit of doing what you do. And the way to break those habits is willpower. So willpower is the conduit for all change. So this idea of the willpower myth and milk willpower is overrated, in my mind, isn't is just a nonsensical misunderstanding. Because if you want to change something, you've got to pause, you've got to stop, resist the old behaviour, and practice doing something new. So that might be when you feel really hungry, instead of going for the chocolate biscuits or the sandwich or whatever it is, then what you might do instead is resist that, and you might have a glass of water instead, or a cup of tea, or you might have a power nap, or you might walk around the block. And I'm not trying to give dietary advice here, but I'm just trying to demonstrate that willpower are the breaks that it lives in the prefrontal cortex, it's really glucose, and it allows us to stop what we were currently doing and then do something different, but it's a limited resource, so it is limited, so we can't just willpower our way to um a different way of behaving, a different way of thinking and doing. We need to use that limited amount of willpower to reprogram our behavior, and that's where uh our trait habit loop and our and the nine action factors uh come in. So I want that to be a positive message in that wherever you are with your life, with your health, your happiness, your performance, and your weight might be part of how you view yourself there. You're not fixed by your genetics, our behavior and our ability to change it is malleable. We have more control over what we get good at, what weight we are at, than we've ever understood before. Um, and part of why Andrew's clients almost accidentally lose weight is because they're just getting more aware of their behavior, and they're able to use their willpower more strategically to do what we call intelligent self-watching and intelligent planning. So that's just a high-level, I suppose, scientific reflection of where we're coming out when we're thinking about helping people to change their behavior and what people actually need to do. We have to start with the science, we have to start with that first principle analysis, which I don't think this article does. And again, it's I'm not we're not being critical of any journalists here. I think we're just being critical of the popular understanding of these core ideas, and they're woefully lacking compared to what we actually know from a you know from a scientific uh perspective.

Environment Triggers And Real Control

SPEAKER_00 17:29

I think it's interesting, John. Um, so for example, at one point in the article, one of the one of the people interviewed refers to the fact that, well, suggests that if if you're seeing takeaways, if you're seeing coffee shops, if you're seeing bakeries, then that makes you more likely to um go in and buy the food and and eat the food. And we'd understand that. We we would say that one of the nine action factors um uh is your physical and digital environment. And if there are triggers there that um that help to build a habit of buying a coffee and maybe a pastry um every day on the way to work, then then you're gonna build that habit that's gonna impact on um your your regular diet. However, the way that it's presented in the article, uh the the next comment is on how um in that in that area there's been no planning permission granted for new hot food takeaways for um for over 10 years, and so it's it's it's implying that this is all outside of any individual's control, that it's something that um needs to be dealt with by the authorities, whilst actually, yeah, of course, governments can have um potential impact, but the person who's gonna have the most impact on um any one person's uh diet or or any other aspects of their lives is gonna be that person, and there are things straightforward things that people can do, even if they do happen to have a um a way to work where it's unavoidable, uh going past uh food shops, etc. There are things that you can do to um mitigate that problem and build a habit of not going into the shop, build a habit of having something that you prefer that's healthier, that that fits more with the diet that you want, um, as opposed to um having the habit formed for you by um by the trigger of seeing that shop, that um that takeaway, or whatever else it is uh that you might you might have on your your daily commute.

Replacement Habits And Planning Ahead

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah, and I think that really hits the nail on the head. It's not about and I think where this sort of popular understanding gets this wrong is that well, willpower it can't work because I can't resist. I can't. I give in at some point. I'll give in and I'll end up going into the coffee shop and having it getting a chocolate croissant and a double latte or whatever. And this is where by understanding brain states and that you need to become a habit mechanic is different because it doesn't just say you need to resist the old habit. What we're saying is you need to build a replacement habit. And that willpower is the conduit for building the replacement habit. And that you know, we're not going to start building that habit outside the coffee shop. We're going to have deployed our willpower earlier in the day, earlier in the week to work out exactly what we want to do, exactly why we want to do it. I mean, make sure that when we get in that position outside the coffee shop, we're not as hungry as we may have otherwise been, etc. And that's what the nine action factors are there for. But ultimately, yeah, we have we have personal, we have more control over our own behaviour than anybody else or or any other thing does. And yeah, part of the article isn't it, is talking about this junk food ban. So junk food had to be banned after nine o'clock, um, or sorry, before nine o'clock, um, which you know makes makes an awful lot of sense and it and it could go much further. Um I remember once, Andrew, you may forget, but um a small uh national retailer had an outlet now where you used to live in London, which is by a school, and you um once complained, I think, to the outlet directly that they shouldn't be promoting buy one get one free uh Chris and chocolate bars to the school children as they walk in the shop. Um because if you go around the supermarkets, you know they're getting away with with a lot, really, in terms of they know how to position the high calorific foods. And again, we go back to the basic principles. Why is high calorific foods, fat, sugar, salt, so intrinsically attractive to us? It's because our brains designed to conserve energy. That means that if you eat an apple versus a donut, you get more energy bite for bite from the donut than you do from the apple. So your brain is implicitly understanding that getting this fat, sugary, um, high calorific food on board is good for survival. And supermarkets place the products where they do because they sell more of them. Um and I think, yeah, the world of food manufacturing, etc., has changed dramatically. But I also think that yeah, let's let's get a grip on what we give people, you know, uh what we give people access to in terms of not spamming them every day with junk food ads, especially younger people, but we also need to educate people as well in a robust way, and that's the disappointing thing is that this article is trying to do that, but it's failing woefully.

Food Marketing, Brain Energy, And Choice

SPEAKER_00 23:59

An interesting thing that that occurs. I know that with so that would be the um from the article's perspective, um, that that approach of well, they uh let's let's close the shop down, let's let's let's be draconian in terms of um how how those those shops are operating. One solution that I know a school pupil found for themselves, so this is a a child, uh, is that they decided they would they would walk home a different way that didn't go past that shop, and they would take the money that they had in their pocket and put it to one side at the end of the day and see how much they could get together. And very quickly, because it's it it was a daily process, it didn't take long before they had for a child very substantial amount of money, they were able to then go and spend on something they really wanted, and they didn't miss the fizzy drinks, they didn't miss the you know what whatever else, you know, the the crisps or the chocolate they were buying, and they were really gratified by um the the big thing that they're able to to to buy with with the money that they saved. So if you if very young people can do this, then it's not surprising that that older people, adults can have even more sophisticated routines and obviously um potentially be uh not only improving their health but also getting other great outcomes, whether it's at work, whether it's in their personal lives, uh by developing these habits that pay off day after day and the benefit accrues.

Small Wins: A Child’s Route Change

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Yeah, and I think the understanding that again we're not educating people about is that what you eat and how you exercise doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's massively impacted, for example, by how you sleep, by who you hang around with. You know, this article is is there to inform, it's supposed to be educating people, it's not mentioning any of those other factors, it's not mentioning the combination of the factors, and you know, for a long time, that's why we group together sleep, diet, and exercise, and we have our diet exercise, sleep, swap plan, self-watch, make an aim, make a plan really, really simple. Um, if you don't know what that is, you can um learn about it in chapter 19 of the habit mechanic where we unpack that. But how we um what we eat, how we exercise, you know, it it's interconnected with every element of our life. So this over simplistic idea that willpower doesn't work and it's about your genes and your environment, it's just you know, it's it's not a true reflection. And for me, it's just a little bit depressing that we're educating people about this um in in this way because I think it's just just disempowering people. Um I suppose what we're really saying here is that there's lots of uh information out there that's positioned as authoritative, as cutting edge, and it just isn't. And that if we really want to help ourselves and those that we care about to be at our best, we've always got to go back to those the basic scientific and go as far as facts, the things that have emerged from big compelling sets of data that make perfect sense, the science that we've used in our programs over years and years and years, and we and it works. Um and whatever you want to get better at in 2026, you can do it if you practice the right things, and if you practice things in a way that turns them into habits, and you know, willpower is going to be the conduit for how you do that ultimately, for how you unlock those those nine factors.

Sleep, Diet, Exercise: One System

SPEAKER_00 28:42

The other thing that occurs to me, John, is that the only thing worse than the article not mentioning habits is to only mention it once, so it's there, like the there you've got the you know the sort of solution, and and it's and it and yeah, it's it's past the author by as uh you know that they they see it as this um element on the outside when it's it's got to be at the core. That that ability to use your willpower to deliberately design habits where you need them um is is what's being missed.

Habits For The AI Era

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yeah, and if we move this forwards into the AI era, then what's really emerging is that the habits that we've all used in our professional and personal lives to achieve what we've achieved so far in our life aren't going to be the habits that allow us to be at our best in the AI era because the AI era is going to demand more high charge, more high impact brain states, so us operating in our high charge, high impact brain states more regularly than we have been before, because we've we've been okay just in our medium charge brain states. So this understanding of how to change your habits, of how to build better brain state habits is going to become more important than ever before. So if you're thinking, I don't know enough about this yet, well, that's why we wrote Train Your Brain for Their Evolution and the Habit Mechanic. But even if you're just thinking in this way, you're ahead of you're ahead of the game. Um I was discussing this with Andrew, and I think I've mentioned it on recent podcasts. Even I've been surprised in the last few weeks, the first the first few weeks of the year, how much I've been hearing about AI. Um it's just everywhere, and it's going to become part and parcel of our world, it's not going away. So we need to get our heads around it. But it's not about the key to being successful, healthy, happy, and at your best in the air revolution is not about the tech, it's about your brain, it's about building the habits that allow your brain to work really well. Um, and I know that you've been helping over the last probably 18 months now, Andrew, helping people to use their willpower to build better habits so they can actually thrive alongside AI.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Absolutely. Uh so using that brain state intelligence, being aware of high charge, medium charge, and recharge, and trying to habitualize using um medium charge time to work on things in conjunction with the with with AI tools that were previously have been too cognitively demanding for um for that brain state, but with with the support the AI uh people I'm working with are getting things done uh and and getting more value out of out of out of their day. Uh it's yeah, it's evolving all the time. I think I I think that's one of the one of the great things about working with the people that I'm working with is that they recognise that this is not just a challenge but an opportunity. And that the fact of the pace of change means that you just got to get comfortable with um with with being ready to um look at you know keeping what we talk about as being the success cycle and and and and keep going round the loop of measuring, of then um setting out our sort of plan of what to do, um, optimizing, and then and then automating, and then round we go again. It's never going to make things perfect, but it can make things it can make things better, and it's the absolute you know most valuable way to to to direct our willpower and direct direct ourselves towards making our days, weeks, and months um more productive for what what's important to us.

The Success Cycle: Measure To Automate

Building High‑Charge Brain States

Coaching As A Force Multiplier

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yeah, and it gives us, I think the term which which we use it doesn't quite give the full picture, is willpower is a limited resource, and it is, but it isn't capped in the sense of everybody wakes up every day with the same amount of willpower. The amount of willpower you have, and really when we're talking about willpower, we're talking about operating in high-charge brain states, is is driven by how well you sleep, how well you exercise, and what nutrition you put into your body. That's what it's driven by. And that's habit uh connected to habit two of the of the six habits, six habits of AI era prof high-performing AI professionals. We've got to get our brain working really well. So if we the more willpower we have, the more willpower we have, the more it becomes like a self-fulfilling cycle because the more we can get into our high-charge brain states, the more we can plan intelligently, self-watch intelligently, which is what the kind of the success cycle in branding your brain for the air evolution is showing you how to do, the more we're gonna feel better tomorrow, then the more we'll feel better the next day, etc. And then it becomes easier to resist that the temptation of thinking in the old way or doing the old thing because we've got more kind of brain energy to resist and then to reprogram the next habit. So if we can understand that, then that goes a long way to actually helping us to do and automate whatever the things that we need to automate to be healthy, happy, and at our best. So yeah, it's um I think it's really interesting to speak to Andrew and hear about the work that he's doing one-to-one with his clients because you can read a book, you can do a course, but actually when you when you're working with someone who's not only an expert in this area, but who who can be there for you um on demand to support and field questions and to make it easier for you to stay on track, then it's it's transformative and I think it's uh helpful for people to know that they may be thinking, Well, you know, I've tried this and I can't do it. When you get to work with an expert coach, it's an absolute game changer. Um so for anyone who hasn't already thought about one-to-one coaching, tough of mine, sabber mechanic one-to-one coaching. And Andrew's always happy to give you 10-20 minutes of his time to speak more about how he's uh helping and working with people, and just that in itself, I think, is people find very, very helpful. So I hope that's got you thinking about January, and you'll find this um this episode in the mix of uh above and below this episode will be uh a series that we've been doing on improving motivation in January. So I hope this is a good uh a good break from that series, but uh it's it's along the same theme. We're just being a bit more scientific here. Don't believe everything you read, also don't believe everything you think. Um we can change our behavior one tiny neuron at a time, and the conduit is willpower. So willpower isn't a myth, it's real, you've got it. It's uh we like to call it me power. We can do amazing things when we put our mind to it, and that might not be making a million pounds or a hundred billion, might just be losing half a stone in the next uh in the next uh uh two months. That's you know well within everybody's power if they understand the science of behavior change, if they understand brain states. So you can do it if you understand, not just put your mind to it, but if you want if you actually understand what drives your behaviour. I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that, Andrew.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

No, I think you covered it off pretty well, John. Um, that it is, you know, that that offer is it's great to talk to people about what they're doing, what are the challenges they're seeing, what are the opportunities that they they are seeing, and so really happy to have that conversation. Uh, you know, and um I'm sure we'll be providing uh means for people to be able to get in touch and uh get the ball rolling.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah, we'll put a link beneath the podcast so people can um look at your the cal your calendar for those uh conversations. So we'll do that and then we'll be we we'll be back with further episodes. But thanks for listening. And remember, you're only ever one brain state habit away.