Hi, always love your sane columns. Can't waitto see the anti-carb loons weigh in with their pseudo science!

I do have one question and I apologize ahead of time as I imagine it will be taken as academic hair splitting.

Quite a few of your guidelines involve use of volition. This is what we psychologists (and neurologists and, well, anyone who deals with the brain) call "executive functions." These functions include decision making, planning, self awareness, self regulation, attention, etc.

This is what used to be known simply as the "will."

You may know Kelly McGonigal's books on the 'willpower" instinct."

Ok, now to the question. You say there's no such thing as"willpower" - I've heard this, mostly used in relationship to eating, for years and to this day I'm not quite sure I know what people are talking about.

I'm guessing - don'tknowfor sure - it's referring to a kind of mindless, mechanical"driven" push to ignore natural instincts, promptings, emotions, etc based on some artificial mental idea about how behavior should be, and as you and most people correctly observe, is doomed to fail.

I just wish people would make a distinction between the pop conceptof "willpower" and the well researched capacity of human beings to develop their capacity for executive functioning (which used to be known as will and as I think Dr. McGonigal is referring to when she uses the word "wilpower."

Or am I misreading you and you're actually asserting that human beings have absolutely no capacity for free will?