Personality trait a factor in weight loss: Study
September 25th, 2009 - 1:34 pm ICT by IANSLondon, Sep 25 (IANS) Can personality trait be a factor in weight loss? A new study says yes.
Stating an example, the study says being too optimistic could derail weight loss efforts.
Hitomi Saito from Doshisha University, Japan, worked with a team of researchers to profile 101 obese patients undergoing combined counselling, nutrition and exercise therapy at the Kansai Medical University Hospital Obesity Clinic over a period of six months.
Patients who were able to improve their self-awareness through counselling were more likely to lose weight than those who were not.
Optimism and self-orientation characteristics improved for most patients after the six-month programme, although this was not related to weight loss.
In fact, patients who started the programme with high levels of self-orientation and optimistic characteristics were less likely to lose weight.
This result supports previous findings that some negative emotion has a positive effect on behaviour modification because patients care more about their disease, says a BioMed release.
“It is important to enhance patients’ self-effectiveness and self-control in order to reduce psychological stress and to maintain the weight loss,” state the study authors.
The study was published in open access journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine.
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Tags: behaviour modification, biopsychosocial, doshisha university, exercise therapy, kansai, kansai medical university, medical university hospital, negative emotion, obese patients, obesity clinic, open access, optimism, personality trait, psychological stress, saito, self awareness, self control, study authors, university japan, weight loss efforts