This is bullshit. There are lots of simple tricks you can employ to improve yourself. For example:
>If you want to stop eating sugar
If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products.
This gets recommended a lot, but because it is good - Atomic Habits by James Clear.
So much easier when you live alone. My spouse buys sugary crap for my kids and then I have to resist all the time. Which I can't. Thus I am overweight.
If your spouse doesn't want to collaborate with you on your goals and things related to your health, then you have some serious discussions to have.
I really don't get your defeatist attitude:
1. You don't have the willpower to stop eating sugary stuff
2. You don't have the willpower to have a conversation with your spouse to stop buying sugary crap
3. Barring 1 or 2, you aren't talking to your kids to convince them to stop demanding less sugary stuff or aren't presenting them with tasty alternatives.
I'm sure in response to this I'll get a lot of angry replies to the tune of "it's not so simple" or "I don't have enough time for that" or "willpower theory is a myth".
Also, suggest lower-calorie snacks.
C’mon, just say no
It's really simple and intuitive once you actually think about it. If you found yourself in a situation in which eating sugar was more effort you would be less prone to doing it. Not doing something makes it easier to not doing it afterwards too.
Treatment of any addiction steers right away from the "just don't". It's silly, humans just don't work by simply willing things into place harder and harder, they can either just do things or not, in the former case it's not a problem and in the latter there are things that work and can transition into the former.
This is simply not true. There are tons of tricks and strategies. For me, the best strategy is to replace a bad habit with a good one. For example, replace going to the bar after work with going for a run after work.
I’m now 5 years from any sucrose or fructose and I’m getting pretty close to totally zero carbohydrate. I’ve tried dozens of times over decades to “eat less sugar”. Until I learned about how eating fat will help satiate me (not saying it’ll work for everyone but it worked for me), I was unable to successfully eat less or no sugar.
As for social media, I'm not aware of as many, and I'm guessing the OP isn't either, which prompted his post.
I kept the social media apps on my old phone only, so that one became my 'social media phone's instead of my main phone.
Please do.
One that I've found is effective to me is to replace the habit with some other habit. One that's beneficial. Example, every time you feel the need to go on social media replace social media with reading. Be sure to have a book at hand. Or a quick 1 minute or so workout. I heard of a guy that curled dumbbells, 10 reps. He got huge biceps. I don't know if it helped his habit but he sure got results. Think of something beneficial to you that you want to improve. You might fail at first but keep at it you'll succeed.
I do agree that simply stop doing the thing is great, but that doesn't seem to work for many people. It can sound ridiculous if you have the will power, but if it were that simple we would have few overweight people, no addicts in the world, etc.
I agree that I've seen many fall into the trap of thinking they have done something when they haven't done anything at all, but that's completely a separate discussion than using behavior psychology to your advantage.
You didn't dig yourself into a metaphorical hole with a single bite of a shovel, so expecting to step out of it in one go doesn't work. Steps in and steps out.
There are and many have been invented very long ago.
Arguably, the concept of "sin" in its original meaning was not a crime but a miss, like when you get disturbed by something and shoot a wrong way rather than straight your target. St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the religious order of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits) never meant his followers to be punished for every sin they commit, he in fact wisely expected them to commit numerous sins every day and train themselves to commit less of them gradually. As taught in his "Spiritual Exercises" scripture (which is the fundamental book of a Jesuit training) one should select one particular sin (eating sugar when not actually starving qualifies by all definitions) they want to fight at the time, do their best observing themselves, draw dots for every time they commit it, connect the dots with a line, recall the cases and observe the daily progress they make. Doing just this can be very effective for many. I encourage to study this text even if you are an atheist, for sake of extracting applicable psycho-technology and some philosophy to think about perhaps. If you consider yourself a Christian I would recommend that particularly strongly as it teaches exactly what to do to progress on your way to Salvation.
> If you want to stop eating sugar then stop eating it.
The problem is there is no single solid "you".
The first lie we tell ourselves is when we say 'I'. It is a lie because in saying 'I' we presume certain things: we presume a certain unity and a certain power. And if I say 'I' today and say 'I' to-morrow, it is supposed to be the same 'I', when in reality there is no connection between them. We are in this present state because of certain obstacles or certain facts in ourselves, and the most important fact that we do not understand is that we have no right to say 'I', for it will be a lie. When you begin to observe yourself you will see that it is really so: there are 'I's in you which do not know one another and never come into contact. For instance, begin to study your likes and dislikes and you will see that you can like one thing one moment and like another thing another moment, and the two are so opposed to one another that you will realize at once that those 'I's never meet. If you observe your decisions you will see that one 'I' decides and another has to carry out the decision, and this one is either unwilling to do it or never heard about it. (Peter D. Ouspensky, "The fourth way".)
The Jesuits' technique can hack this system by teaching the 'I' which makes the decision to persist awake.
Note that both the sources I cited have been written centuries ago :-) (both available on libgen nowadays)
Needless to say, in many cases there also are simple psychological and/or chemical solutions. Many can greatly decrease their craving to specific foods (or foods at all) by adjusting their diet to contain more of specific substances (i.e. specific vitamins, fiber, fatty acids, proteins) or by just healing some specific stress-inducing psychological trauma with assistance of a good psychotherapist.