The deeper problem, say from childhood food insecurity or poor self image, or whatever the root or real problem, is a detail. For me the root of the problem is "I love pizza" so the solution is not to change my relationship with pizza but to stop eating more than I burn. The outward physical change of behavior, however approached, is the solution.
And you are wrong about the detail thing. Maybe you should stop looking for simplistic explanations that stroke your ego? But that advice is tough to follow, isn't it?
How do you know the condition of my ego? This is an internal thought which you cannot possibly know.
Let's go down the rabbit hole of causes and reasons - now what? What is the solution to the pizza problem if it is a long past childhood memory I want to re-create? What now? I suppose I could think differently about the past? Suppress that emotional drive? Finally accept that the past is a memory and not some repeatable event forever locked behind the mind of a once happy pizza eater?
In programming terms an analogy would be to misdiagnose the root cause of a bug and paper over it with a hack.
The solution to just use willpower is fragile, given that willpower is a finite resource. But I suppose it is expedient, much like a hack of the software variety.
