Expand Your Personality, Shrink Your Waistline

There can hardly be a simpler equation for maintaining a healthy weight. Burn up more calories than you consume, right? But if it’s that simple we have to question why we in the Western world are in the midst of a huge obesity crisis.

Years ago I had the most startling revelation of my academic career:

I discovered that a person’s weight is also related to their behavioural traits.

Yes, the calories in-calories out equation holds true. But it’s not that simple. A few years ago we unearthed something about people’s behaviour that is also critical to whether or not they are overweight. When doing research in my lab that involved measuring a person’s behavioural flexibility we found it correlated negatively with their body mass index (BMI).

That’s right.

People with higher behavioural flexibility had a lower BMI.

So what is behavioural flexibility?

People with low behavioural flexibility

• tend to stick more to routines

• go to the same places

• have strict schedules

• hang around with the same people repeatedly.

On the other hand behaviourally flexible people

• can act differently in different situations

• are willing to try new things

• readily buck routines

• don’t fall back on habits.

And greater flexibility means lower BMI.

Having discovered this we went on to ask the next logical question:

Can a person lose weight by raising their behavioural flexibility?

We investigated this question empirically in a study published recently and the results were staggering. Fifty-five people did something different every day for a month. They broke their normal routines in simple ways. Or went a little out of their way to experiment with something new. Things like going to a live sports game, or writing something for 15 minutes, or not watching the TV for a day. They also experimented with behaving in a way that wasn’t their usual character. So, extroverts tried out a bit of introverted behaviour. Lively characters undertook to be a little more laid back for a day. And so on. Everyone on the trials found it fun. And, although no one had told them what to eat or what to avoid, they all lost weight. And their weight loss was at a healthy level you don’t get with fad diets. And, what’s more, they kept it off for months after the trial had finished.

The power of this approach was that it tackled the habits that had led to people over-eating. It also loaded up their character repertoire with lots of new behaviours, so life got easier. They all ended up less stressed and also less likely to ‘comfort eat’ or turn to the biscuit tin out of habit. Their weight loss was closely linked to their behavioural flexibility, in that the more a person increased their flexibility, the more weight they lost – a classic dose relationship that underlined the power of this method.

We know that when people go on a diet they subject themselves to a period of deprivation and misery. Their willpower eventually becomes exhausted and the weight they lose often goes straight back on after they stop dieting. Yet with the Do Something Different method people told us they didn’t feel deprived at all. On the contrary, they were leading happier and healthier lives. The method targeted their broader habits, not just eating and exercise. But because of the domino effect they zapped their unhealthy habits effortlessly. That’s because our habits are all interconnected. They exist in chains. Sitting on the sofa and watching TV and snacking all go together. Trying NOT to snack while sitting on the sofa and watching TV is extremely difficult. The brain has been conditioned to expect a snack as soon as you grab the remote and your seat hits the sofa. But change the situation (phone an old friend, sit somewhere different, turn off the TV and play a board game) and the need for a snack disappears. We called these proximal habits (the ones you want to change, like over-eating or not exercising) and distal habits (the other daily routines and general behaviours), and found that shifting the distal habits is far more effective than trying to zap the proximal ones. It not only helps people lose weight, it reduces their stress and anxiety too.

You can see more about the programme in one of my books The No Diet Diet- Do Something Different. (The on-line version of the No Diet Diet is also now available).

Most encouragingly, the weight stays off once people have lost weight with Do Something Different. In one of our ongoing community projects for weight loss that takes place outside the lab and away from the prying eyes of researchers, groups of people achieved impressive rates of weight loss with Do Something Different. Over six weeks weight decreased by a healthy average of 5.4lbs and the pounds kept dropping of for six months after the program had finished. In addition people increased how often they exercised, from 1.5 to 4.1 days per week, and increased their healthy eating patterns. People felt they have regained control of their eating habits and have the knowledge and tools to sustain these changes.

So, if you are struggling with a weight problem, focus less on your food and exercise habits. Take a step back and look at all your daily habits and ask yourself, what can I do differently today?

* Fletcher, B. (C), Hanson, J., Page, N. C., & Pine, K.J. (2011) Increasing behavioural flexibility leads to sustained weight loss. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 70 (1), 2011, 25–34.