Use Your Impulses to Lose Weight
We’ve long feared it and now research from the National Institute of Aging confirms it (drum roll, please): People with an impulsive personality pack on more weight–an average of 22 more pounds–than non-impulsive people. The good news is that the source of the problem is also the source of the solution.
The Problem
Impulsive people are much more likely than the average person to go on eating and drinking binges, which leads to weight gain over time. It is not because they care less about their health. It is because a strong blend of genetics and life experience have created an impulsive personality. Here’s the thing about a personality: Right or wrong, you can’t just turn it off. Telling an impulsive person to “stop being so impulsive” or to “just relax” is like telling a fish to stop swimming.
The Solution
As the study’s author’s point out (correctly, I think) approaches to weight loss need to take personality into account. For impulsive personalities, the solution must involve two things:
1. Substitution. Impulsive people will always be doing something impulsively. So trying to reduce or eliminate impulses is a fool’s errand. The key is to redirect those impulses. If you’re an impulsive Snickers-eater, try becoming an impulsive carrot-nibbler or water drinker. Granted, that isn’t as easy as reaching for your chocolate drenched bundle of joy. But just willing yourself to stop eating candy is hopeless. You have to find a substitute for that impulsive hand and that impulsive mouth.
Similarly, moderation is pretty much out of the question for impulsive people with binge-drinking problems. So you can’t just cut back, you have to find a replacement to fill the stimulation void left by binge-drinking. That could be anything, but it’s been my observation that what works best is the acquisition of some sort of physically stimulating hobby. It could be anything from bicycling to base-jumping. It also seems to work best when it is a hobby with a goal. Even if the end goal is just a fun race, the daily activity will be much more stimulating if your training for something rather than simply “exercising.”
2. Situation control. Every decision is made by a combination of the person and the situation. If you want to change your decisions, you have to change one of those two variables. Unfortunately, self-control waved bye-bye to impulsive people a long time ago. In the heat of the moment, your impulses will almost always win. So you have to set up the situation so that your impulses aren’t even in the race.
For example, if you know that every afternoon at 2 p.m. you ‘re going to crave a Snickers bar, then you need to remove all Snickers bars from your office, house or wherever you are during the day. Then at 1:30 before the craving hits, go grab the bag of carrots and start nibbling on them so you’re hands aren’t idle during the craving period.
Your impulses can be your best friend. Impulsive personalities have given us many of our most successful entrepreneurs, artists, humanitarians and some of the most fun people you know. So don’t curse your impulsive nature. Get to know it better, and then give it some direction.
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