Is Your Personality Sabotaging Your Diet?

How you approach life can affect how you take care of your health.  It's important to be aware of how your coping patterns play into your eating and exercise habits.  For no matter what diet you follow, some behaviors can sabotage weight loss.

Are you a persistent procrastinator who always has an excuse for putting off losing weight? Are you a people pleaser that always says "yes" to other people without taking care of yourself? How about an overreaching achiever whose perfectionist tendencies make you feel you never lose weight fast enough and feel disappointed even when you make progress?

Personality and behavior play the main role according to obesity internist Robert Kushner and his wife, Nancy, a nurse practitioner, co-authors of Dr. Kushner's Personality Type Diet . In their book, they describe how different personality types affect eating habits and provide solutions to implement new healthy behaviors. 

Here's a list to help determine what type of eater you are with solutions to address the personality traits that get in the way of weight loss.

Unguided grazer

Eats anytime and anywhere — while driving, working, reading, watching TV or surfing the Internet. Usually chooses foods that are convenient and readily accessible. Frequently eats past the point of fullness.

Solution: Make a commitment to eat three meals a day. Midmorning and late-afternoon snacks may help ward off hunger. Don't do anything else while eating, and try to slow down and enjoy food.

Nighttime nibbler

Often goes all day without eating much — or anything. May consume far more calories than intended at night because of ravenous hunger. Dinner often blends into continual trips to the kitchen for snacks.

Solution: Plan to eat lunch and a midafternoon snack. Lunch might be a sandwich, yogurt or soup. The snack might be an apple and peanut butter or low-fat string cheese and crackers. Calorie-proof the house, getting rid of favorite nighttime munchies. Plan on one nightly snack that's satisfying. Eat it slowly and enjoy.

Convenient consumer

Eats mostly convenience, packaged, frozen and fast foods that are often high in fat and calories and low in fiber. Has few fresh foods or home-cooked meals.

Solution: Downsize fast-food meals and convenience foods. Buy single servings. Look for healthful alternatives whenever possible. Get baked chips instead of regular ones, broiled chicken instead of fried. Avoid creamy sauces. To add flavor to foods, experiment with spices such as fresh rosemary and tarragon and sauces such as teriyaki or spicy barbecue.

Fruitless feaster

Eats a plain meat-and-potatoes menu, except for an occasional glass of orange juice, a banana or apple. Consumes few fruits and vegetables, thus missing out on the vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients these foods contain.

Solution: Add blueberries, strawberries or bananas to cereal. Add mushrooms, spinach and green peppers to omelets. Put baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, apple and orange slices in lunch. Add baby spinach, arugula and tomatoes to sandwiches.

Mindless muncher

Snacks throughout the day and night whether hungry or not — sometimes out of boredom or to take a break in the middle of the day. Doesn't pass up a plate of food, vending machine or snack shop. The sight or smell of food triggers the compulsion to eat.

Solution: Keep a food diary for only two days, which will help convert mindless eating to conscious consumption. Read food labels to figure out quantities. Try healthful alternatives such as cherry tomatoes dipped in light ranch dressing, baked chips and vegetarian bean dip or whole-wheat pita with hummus dip.

Hearty portioner

Overindulges on unhealthful foods or even healthful ones. May consume three to five times the norm.

Solution: Picture a picnic plate with dividers, and portion your plate so that three-quarters is covered with fruits, vegetables and salad, and the meat and starch are in the smaller compartments. Overcome portion traps at restaurants by splitting entrees and ordering extra salad or vegetables. Scan food labels for calories per serving.

Deprived sneaker

May eat a strict diet of "good" foods one day, then overeat on "bad" foods on another. Instead of eating a small slice of chocolate cake, may choose fat-free cookies, but after eating eight of them, feels deprived.

Solution: Drop the dieting mind-set along with the long lists of forbidden foods. Choose flavorful foods that contain healthful oils and fiber. For instance, add nuts and avocado to salads, use olive oil in stir-frys. Follow the 80/20 rule — if 80% of your diet is healthful, the other 20% can be less so.

Eating healthfully requires more than just knowing what to do but being able to implement it.  It's important to seek support from a health professional such as a registered dietitian that can help you implement habits that can help you reach your goals.

What Does 300 Calories Look Like? At Home vs Eating Out

We talk about calories all the time but it's often hard to translate an abstract number into what that looks like in terms of food. Here is a great article from the website Sparkpeople that not only demonstrates what 300 calories looks like on the plate but compares how much food you get when eating at home versus eating out. Not surprisingly you get a much bigger portion of food for the same amount of calories when you make it yourself versus at a restaurant. This is especially important if you're trying to manage your weight. You would typically have to eat a lot more calories at a restaurant to get that same feeling of fullness if you prepared it yourself. I've added some of the images here but check out the article for more great comparison pictures.

Need help deciphering how many calories you should be eating? Contact me to schedule an appointment.

You Can't Out-Exercise A Bad Diet

Many people think exercise is a cure-all to weight loss issues. People beginning a new exercise program will often see good results as it's a shock to their system. They start seeing the pounds melt away and they become convinced that they are one of the "special ones" that don't need to worry about their diet. Then they "hit the wall." The continual progress they were seeing comes to a screeching halt. They may get frustrated, unfairly blame their trainers for getting stuck, and stop exercising altogether. Today I'm going to let you in on a little secret:

You can't out-exercise a bad diet.

Let's take an example to illustrate the point. Say you go to the gym and run on the treadmill for 45 minutes. Next let's assume you burned about 450 calories during your workout. Okay, now that your workout is complete you're feeling virtuous - you're a workout stud muffin. Hey don't you deserve a treat for your hard work? So you stop off at the local smoothie shop - hey smoothies are healthy aren't they? You order a medium (24 oz) smoothie and you effectively wiped out the calorie deficit you just got from exercising. Most medium smoothies run anywhere from 400 calories to over 700 depending on what you put in them.

Here's an entertaining video that also illustrates the point of the impact of diet versus exercise. It's very easy to undo the results of exercise in a few minutes of eating.

While this is over-simplifying the complex issue of weight management, the point I'm trying to get across is how nutrition plays a crucial role. While we often exercise anywhere from 30-60 minutes a day, if you want to continue seeing progress, you need to ask yourself what you're putting in your mouth the rest of the time.

Simple Is Not The Same As Easy!

Now that we're well into January, we're being overwhelmed with TV commercials for diets and infomericals for exercise gadgets that promise us the body of our dreams. One of the latest commericals is the Drive-Thru Diet by Taco Bell, featuring Christine who lost 54 pounds over 2 years by choosing items off their lower calorie Fresco menu and reducing her overall calorie intake. Keep flipping TV channels and you might see commericals for the Special K diet, Subway's poster boy for weight loss Jared, or one of the many companies that offer pre-packaged meals. So if losing weight is just a matter of eating healthier foods and smaller portions, why is losing weight and keeping it off so hard?

Because simple is not the same as easy.

Diets - especially strict ones - are so popular because many of them have simple, straight-forward but rigid eating rules. Often they limit all choice. As long as you're following the rules you're "on track" and guaranteed quick success. Strict diets are so appealing because in our busy and stressful lives we are often happy to "check our brain at the door" and just be told exactly what to do. No thinking required. Many of these type of diets are successful in the short term - you lose weight and think "Yes, I've accomplished my goal."

Then life happens.

You might start to go back to you previous eating habits and the weight starts to creep back on. Or you've been so strict with your eating that you feel deprived and start eating all your "forbidden" foods and can't stop. Or you find that trying to stick to the diet is "consuming" your life and only making you feel frustrated and deprived. Next comes the "shame spiral" in which we mistakenly beat ourselves up for being so "weak" when in reality it is our diet that has failed us.

I have many clients that come to me after trying to stick to these popular diets. In the beginning they often get quick results but often these results quickly diminish and they soon realize that it's not feasible for them to continue these habits for the long-term.

Don't just diet. Change your life.

This year I challenge you to not just diet but to develop a lasting, healthy partnership with your body. One way to do that is through an informed and supportive environment. I'm offering a 9-week weight loss class starting Jan 26. Check out the following link for more details:

http://www.dynamicnutritionservices.com/RevItUpWeightLossClass.html

Will this be the year that you create a healthy new life? Only you have the power to decide.