Knowing Your Personality Type is the Key to Achieving Diet Plan Success

Ever have a sister-in-law, co-worker, or friend who has dropped several pounds and eagerly tells you all about it? You buy into her enthusiasm, join the class, purchase the meals, and three weeks later you feel like an utter failure. You know what to do, you saw her do it—you just couldn’t do it yourself. You can’t figure out how to lose weight like she did.

In dieting, as in life, there is not a one-size-fits-all diet plan. To know how to lose weight, you must first identify your personality type and work from your own strengths.

Which personality type are you?

When my dear husband and I are planning a vacation, I like to dream about all the possibilities. We could see the mountains in the summer or have another winter ski vacation. Hmmm, come to think of it, wouldn’t skiing in the Alps be great? But swimming in the tropics might be better. You can see right away that my personality type is conducive to dreaming.

But to actually go on vacation, you have to start narrowing it down, and I do, but not without throwing in a couple more options and certainly not without some grief over all the places I’ve eliminated.

It makes me edgy to eliminate choices. When I order at a restaurant, I get anxious, fearing that I didn’t make the best choice and grieving over all the things I can’t have.

My husband is the complete opposite personality type. The more he can narrow the choice, the more comfortable he is. Likewise, he grooves on knowing exactly where everything in his life is. He likes to park on the same side in the garage every day. He likes setting his coffee cup in the same spot on the counter.

His mantra: “A place for everything and everything in it’s place.”

Apparently, I like knowing my keys are somewhere in the house, though I’m not always sure where.
I call myself creative. My mantra: “It’s hard to be me . . . but it’s worth it.”

So, how does all this address how to lose weight? First, answer these quick questions:

Do you . . .

a) Take the same route to work every day?
b) Like to take a different route to your usual destinations?


a) Think you would be happier if only you could make reservations a week in advance?
b) Prefer to make a choice about which restaurant to go to while you’re pulling out of the driveway?

If you answered “a,” then you’re a “straight-line” personality type; “b,” you’re of the “winding path” personality type.

Each personality type has it’s advantages and unique challenges, particularly when it comes to diet plans and how to lose weight. Neither is preferable to the other, although straight-liners would have you believe that their way is best. They may get the weight off more quickly on their diet plan, but as we know, losing weight fast is not any indication that it has left your hips for good. Learning how to lose weight while honoring your ingrained personality type is a much more surefire strategy for long-term success.

Personality Types that Call for a Straight-Line Diet Plan

How to lose weight in the most straightforward fashion: I’m looking for the shortest path between me and my goal.

Strengths:
You tend to be disciplined and so can follow a directed diet plan quite easily. You don’t complicate things, but instead find a method that works and stick with it.

Advantage:
Steady weight loss.

Challenge:
You may have a harder time sticking to your diet plan during temporary transitions such as change in schedules, seasons and vacations. What should be viewed as temporary setbacks may lead to an exaggerated sense of failure that becomes self-fulfilling. Transitioning from your diet plan to long-term weight maintenance can be more difficult.

Primary Strategy:
Work to eliminate all-or-nothing thinking with regard to your diet plan. Remember that getting to and maintaining a healthy weight is a series of decisions.

Choosing a Diet Plan:
There are many, many answers to the question of how to lose weight, but “Just tell me what I should eat!” is a common cry for the “straight line” personality type. If you are of this personality type, you’ll be more comfortable choosing (or devising) a meal-type diet plan where food choices are limited. The counting-type diet plans might feel overwhelming, with too many choices.

Personality Types that Call for a “Winding Road” Diet Plan

How to lose weight in the most pleasant fashion: There are myriad ways to get there, might as well enjoy the journey.

Strengths:
You tend to be creative with your diet plan and make it “your own,” which means you won’t get bored or feel deprived.

Advantage:
Easier adaptation from diet plan to maintenance plan because you are adjusting throughout the journey. 

Challenge:
You’ll probably lose more slowly and may feel like a failure because you can’t “follow” a diet plan.

Primary Strategy:
When considering how to lose weight, try looking at the many diet plans in existence and jumping from one to the next—choose a diet plan that interests you, but always be reading about and looking for new strategies.

Choosing a Diet Plan:
It’s best to have a counting-type diet plan, where any food is okay as long as it’s within a certain range. You may try “lifestyle change” dieting—simply rising to the challenge of eating with the intention of losing weight. Still, it is best to have the experience using a counting-type diet plan so that you have some structure to return to if you don’t see enough progress.

At www.reasonablediet.com/fivetips you can get a free download of my Dieting By Personality Type tip booklet.