Small Steps to Health

Personality and Fitness Plan

February 26th, 2008 by asithi · 1 Comment

Tagged Fitness, Motivation

When I am busy, I loose weight. My weight starts to creep up when I have plenty of free time unless I am consciously monitoring it. My sister, on the other hand, gains weight when she is busy. She forgets to eat and grabs whatever is available at the vending machine. And when she comes home, she crashes in front of the computer screen and mindlessly eats until it is time for bed.

How does your personality affect your goal of living a healthier life? Analyzing your personality honestly and balance out your weakness may give you the key to staying healthy. I am starting to realize that planning to compensate for the weakness in my personality is helping me slowly achieve my goal of a healthier life style.

Are you an extrovert or an introvert?
If you are an extrovert, your diet and exercise are influence by your peers, friends, and family. My sister is an extrovert. When her workout buddy cancels, she skips the gym as well. When her friends are ordering an appetizer and a desert she does the same thing.

An extrovert should minimize the impact of their unduly behaviors towards health by broadening their base of social support by:

• Getting involve in friendly competitions, thus instantly having a whole team cheering for you.

• Attending classes regularly at the gym, thus getting to know the regulars.

• Learning to eat healthy in a social situation or when dining out. Remember to enjoy the company, not mindlessly add to the inches on your waist.

By broaden your base of social support and spending more time with people that have the same healthy lifestyle goal, you would minimize the impacts of friends with unhealthy habits.

Introverts, on the other hand, are more goals oriented with a tendency to forgo the motivation, support, and companionship of others in order to do it alone. Though people might think I am an extrovert, I know I am introvert. To compensate for their tendency to be alone, introverts should:

• Make reading and learning about eating and exercising a motivational tool. Since starting this blog, I always make an effort to check out at least one book from the library about exercise or dieting each time I visit instead of just my fiction. This is no hardship for me since I always believe that you can learn something from a good book.

• Balance out your solitary exercise with some social exercise. I take walks with my husband on the weekends and go bowling occasionally with my friends.

• Look for ways to get support on the internet by posting on message boards or responding to blogs. I am a lurker on the internet. I interact on message boards or comment on blogs occasionally, but I rather read them. They provide me with the motivation to continue towards a healthier lifestyle.

• Set goals or milestone for your goals. Capitalize on your goal oriented personality by tracking your accomplishments. For example, my goal this year is to work on all three components of fitness: strength, cardio, and stretching. I assigned a colored dot sticker to represent each type of exercise to stick on my planner (blue for strength, green for cardio, and yellow for stretching/yoga). Whenever I look at the previous months with all these colored dots on it, I feel so proud of my effort to exercise.

Check out these two fitness personality quiz at CBS News and About.com and let me know if you think it might be helpful in developing your healthy lifestyle plan.

Until next time and thanks for stopping by.

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