By Shankar Ramani, Instructor, Sahaja Online

These days some herbal supplements and alternative medicine experts are on a rampage to create fancy solutions for pretty much every health and wellness need or problem. Recently I happened to read about a supplement that is a carb blocker. These are supplements you can take that help block out carbohydrates once you consume them and hence come with the benefits of allowing you to eat carbs but not take the hit of calories from eating them. You trick the body into avoiding carbs even when you are eating them.

It sounded like magic to me. Indulge as much as you want, but block out the consequences?

As a person close to self-improvement, I find this somewhat amusing. After all, shouldn’t the best form of carb blocker be our discretion in controlling what we eat? Why put carbs into your mouth and then again pay for and consume supplements that block carbs?

Ah, the elusive self-discipline and self-control paradigms, of course. Very few of us can fight the temptation of carbs, day in and day out for years on end. Ultimately, they overpower us. That’s why someone came up with this brilliant invention of carb blockers, setting aside the topic of how well these really work, for a moment.

Anyways, there’s a broader aspect here of how relying on self-discipline and self-control are alone are inadequate for one’s self-improvement. So what else can done do?