Choose To Lose Weight: Does Your Personality Make You Fat?

Take this test to determine how hard or easy it will be for you to lose weight and keep it off. Rate yourself from 1-5 according to the following scale on each of the items listed:

5 = Frequently
4 = Often
3 = Sometimes

2 = Rarely
1 = Never
· I am impulsive
· I am antagonistic
· I am neurotic
· I am depressed
· I am conscientious
· I am self disciplined

And here are the results as they appeared in an article called "Weighing Personalities" in the December, 2011 issue of Psychology Today:

1. Impulsive people take on challenges quickly and are, therefore, likely to stay on a diet because they don't obsess about which diet is the right one for them. They quickly choose a diet and stick to it.

2. Antagonistic people generally lose weight and keep it off because their antagonism causes them to have an attitude of "I'll show you" and they generally do "show" others by sticking to their plan.

3. Neurotic people worry a lot and that worry forces them to focus on their diet obsessively, causing them to lose weight and keep it off.

4. Conscientious people and self disciplined people are the least likely to keep weight off. These kinds of people tend to "seesaw," losing weight and putting it back on repeatedly. This happens to conscientious people because they become so tense trying to stick to a diet that they often quit. Self disciplined people beat themselves up if they gain even a pound. The self criticism becomes so painful that they eventually give up their diet.

These results are based on work done by a team at the National Institute of Aging.

Are you surprised by the results? You should be since I made them up. But before sharing the "real" results with you, let's pause for a moment.

Suppose those had been the real results. Would you have immediately stopped being conscientious and self disciplined and tried to be more neurotic and depressed?

Or, if you were already neurotic and depressed, would you have congratulated yourself and stopped trying to be happier?

This is the problem with all personality tests that attempt to correlate personality with behavior. Knowing the results makes little difference. I know depressed people who are as skinny as a rail and I know self disciplined people who work all day at their computers and have gained enormous weight because they consume sugary foods and drinks as they sit and work.

I am reminded of a friend who has a PH.D. in industrial psychology. When he was in school, one of his instructors gave the students a test to determine their personality type and how that type might react to stressful situations. At the next class session, the instructor handed back the results. Most students were amazed by how accurately the test described their personalities. Even those who weren't entirely in agreement with the results commented that the test was not far off from their self assessment.

After listening to the students marvel about the results, the instructor told them that the test results were a sham. Each student had received the exact same results.

Stop believing that it's hard for you to lose weight because you have an "addictive personality." Or because "I'm the type of person who just can't stop eating sweets." Or, "I lack self discipline."

In case you're interested, here are the real results as reported in the Psychology Today article:

1. Impulsive people have trouble planning ahead and resisting temptation.
2. Antagonistic people have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol which contributes to weight gain.
3. Neurotic people are often those whose weight "yoyos."
4. Depressed people frequently experience changes in appetite which may lead to that same "yo-yoing" effect.
5. Conscientious people and self disciplined people have the easiest time losing weight.

You're not surprised by any of these results, are you? They just make no difference. You still have to choose to lose weight.

How many diets have you been on in your life? How many have worked? The answer is: all of them. They have all worked and the proof is that you've lost weight on every diet you've been on. But you haven't kept the weight off. Why?

You know that losing weight and keeping it off is a choice, yet you fail to maintain the choice you have made because of blind spots you don't even know you have. You must transform your thinking before you can transform your body. Let me show you how to do that.

Go to my website http://www.choosetoloseweight.net for more information and to order my book for only $4.99.

What have you got to lose? Oh wait. You already know the answer to that question.


 

at
Labels: ,