Personality Traits Sway Weight Loss
Reported September 29, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) – Experts say losing weight is mind over matter, but what if being too optimistic can hurt your odds for success?
Japanese researchers psychologically profiled 101 obese patients. All participants enrolled in counseling, nutrition and exercise therapy at the Kensai Medical University Hospital Obesity Clinic for six months. Researchers tested their psychosocial personality traits before and after the study through questionnaires.
In the study, patients who began with high optimism were less likely to lose more weight. Patients were more likely to lose weight when they raised their self-awareness in their counseling sessions. Researchers explain negative emotions can yield positive behavioral results because negative patients care more about their disease. However, a positive attitude helps patients keep up with their healthy lifestyle after their time at the clinic, maintaining their weight loss.
“It is important to enhance patient’s self-effectiveness and self-control in order to reduce psychological stress and to maintain the weight loss,” authors were quoted as saying. They note that weight loss was not due to the psychological care alone, but to the holistic medical care team.
SOURCE: BioMed Central’s open access journal, BioPhychoSocial Medicine, 2009