What is your diet personality? What is it about your personality that helps you achieve your weight loss goals or inhibits you from the same? Before you answer that being fat is a part of your personality, it’s important to understand that ‘fat’ is not a personality trait.
Personality traits include optimism, cheerfulness, laziness and even self-doubt. Our personalities are unique and quirky. We are a sum of these individual components so let’s talk about our possible diet personalities. I think they can be broken down into four separate, yet equally important ideals.
The Can Do
People can or they can’t and in large part this is determined by personality. The can do diet personality looks at life like a series of challenges to be engaged and overcome. They are not defeated by time, energy or effort. The can do personality is willing to tackle even the most difficult of obstacles and they do so with the attitude of it doesn’t matter how often they slip and fall, they will make it to where they need to be. They look at their failures and flaws as a positive experience because they are given the opportunity to learn from it. The can do is willing to try a reasonable dietary or weight loss plan – and they are more than willing to give it a fair amount of time to accomplish their goals.
The Must Do
The must do personality is different from the can do in that they are not sure they can do it, they just know they have to do it. They are willing to starve themselves. They are willing to exercise until they fall down. They will try any diet pill, powder or regimen that comes down the pike. They are willing to take dangerous risks with their own health in order to achieve their weight loss goals. The must do personality is willing to take any chance, any risk and any expense to make their weight loss happen.
The Saboteur
The saboteur personality has a few of the can do and must do personality traits, but they are inherently flawed in that they profess their belief that they can make it happen – but they will sabotage their own efforts. The saboteur will count calories, carbohydrates and fat grams for their audience, but they will secret away their stash of bad foods and bad choices to be done in private. They will tell others they walked for 90 minutes, when they barely completed 20. They will discuss their weight training at length, while only making a passing effort at it. While you may be thinking this is dishonest, the problem is not the dishonesty the saboteur tells to others, but that they believe their own efforts. They talk about it enough that even though they are aware of the sabotage, they believe they are performing their best and ultimately they cannot understand why their efforts are failing.
The Follower
The follower is not a weak personality, but they do have weak decision making capabilities. The follower will jump on the bandwagon of any positive weight loss guru or teacher that comes along. They watch infomercials and see the merit in every investment. A follower might be terribly successful depending upon which weight loss or diet program they dive into and if they choose positive role models to emulate. Unfortunately, the follower lacks the judgement necessary to eliminate the chuff from the cream when it comes to weight loss programs.
These weight loss personalities are pretty generic, I know. But all of us fall into one category or another. At different points in time, I’ve been a follower, a saboteur and now I am a can do. I’ve learned from each experience and I’ve used that experience to alter my perceptions, my viewpoints and my attitude. What diet personality trait best describes you?