more on self-esteem

Jasmine asked me how I'm working on my self-esteem.  Well, given that it's only been a few days since my revelation that it's a serious problem, it may be premature to post about it.  But what the heck.  Here is what I'm doing:

• monitoring my thoughts to find out what my negative thoughts are.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Meditation is a good way to learn to do this.  It teaches you how to be aware of your thoughts. 
• reframing my thoughts.  This was easy and fun for me.  You just have to make sure you believe your reframing.  
• practice my reframing.  This takes remembering but is reasonably fun since it's positive.
• Regarding healthy eating and weight loss, I don't know if this will work but I'm going to try this:   be happy with myself when I do well, and to refuse to be unhappy with myself when I'm not perfect.  

The last one might need some explanation:   The brain likes to do the opposite of what we tell it.  You discover this in meditation too.  My teachers play these games telling us to meditate on this and that, and we we constantly find that our brain does the opposite of what we tell it, it does what we tell it to avoid.  In fact, we are told the best way to meditate is to "not meditate."  Same with mountain biking--when you focus on the obstacle, you will hit it.  Focus on the path you want to take.  When you worry you will ride off the bridge, you will.  Focus on the center line of the bridge (the bridges are sometimes narrow).    So this is all to say, it's not easy to lose weight--otherwise the vast majority of people would not be overweight.  So refuse to be hard on yourself when you stumble.  otherwise, you will probably stumble more.   You'll head towards the obstacles instead of the path you want to go.

My Revelation

I'm on vacation, not much time to post tonight, but I wanted to share my revelation, especially after last week's negativity.   First a little background:  1) This year's project is learning meditation, and 2) I have low self-esteem.  Item #2 is the cause of my problem that has revealed itself, and item #1 helped me find it.  So I've been practicing meditation following this curriculum, going to a weekly class, and a workshop last weekend.  The goal is pretty simple, to learn to be aware of your thoughts.   That's it.  So last night while doing my food prep, I paid attention to my thoughts.  This is what I heard coming from my mind:  "I'm so weird for making these salads in my hotel room.  I'm an extremist.  I have taken this too far. I probably have an eating disorder.  If anyone saw me doing this, they would think I'm crazy."   Holy cow, I thought, do we have any positive thoughts to share?  silence.   Then today I monitored some more and heard more self-critical thoughts related to healthy eating.  I then explored old favorites.  Here are a bunch I came up with:

• I am no better than anyone else
  • (therefore) I don't deserve to feel good about myself for eating healthy [what???]
• people must think I'm weird (work lunches, business travel in bars and restaurants)
• I wish I could join in in the fun (beer, popcorn, ice cream at terrace, popcorn at movies, etc)
• (when delicious SAD treats are available that I used to love):  I want some but I can't have any.  I'm in nutritarian prison.
• my foodie friends may not want to be friends with me anymore
• I wish I could eat that
• I'm a weirdo and extremist for preparing salads in my hotel room.  

Now to reframe these negative thoughts:

• considering all the negative messages I've given myself, I've done incredibly well at sticking to my guns
• I'm passionate
• I'm a trailblazer
• I have discovered the secret to health and long life
• I'm smart for figuring this out
• not only to do I know what to do, I am doing it
• I am successful at eating healthy in an unhealthy world
• I deserve credit for my success, I deserve to compliment myself occasionally
• I am proud of what I'm doing
• I have nothing to apologize for
• I enjoy preparing salads in my hotel room, and I enjoy even more eating the food I prepare
• (while traveling, parties, restaurants:)  I'm proud of how I eat; I have no reason to apologize, my food tastes better and is better for me.  It's a free country!  
• (when delicious SAD treats are available that I used to love): I want some but I can't have any.  well, I don't really want it because I'll feel like crap if I eat it.  it's a pretty minor thing to give up for feeling good every day.   what else do I want to do?  mountain bike and kayak. permission granted! 
• If I had to eat SAD food every day, THEN I would be in SAD prison
• what are people's most common new year's resolutions?  eat better and lose weight.  so why am I weird for doing that?
• my foodie friends appear to still enjoy my company
• thank goodness I don't have to eat that
• (regarding food prep in the hotel room):  I'm the world's greatest nutritarian road warrior!

I'll probably edit this to make it more readable, just wanted to get it down.  You might ask why do I have such low self-esteem around this?  Well, I'm prone to it in all areas of my life, but in other areas I have external messages and rewards that make it more difficult to convince myself that I'm worthless.  For example, I'm pretty successful at work.  That doesn't stop me from thinking I'm all washed up and it's downhill from here and I'm a fraud.  But, there is ample evidence that I have been successful in the past and I can't argue with it.  With the healthy eating, I have evidence that my health is vastly improved and I'm at my ideal weight.  You'd think that would be enough to give me some confidence, huh?   Holy cow.  I just let the negative internal voice get out of hand.  I'm going to have to practice the appropriate responses to my negative voice.  

And in case you are wondering, I know why I have low self-esteem.  I won't go into it but the solution is to be aware of it and catch it in the act and recognize how irrational it is.

If you are like me at all, pay attention to your thoughts!    

Okay, time to plan tomorrow's fun!

Nutritarian prison

I was at a meditation workshop this weekend and heard the following story:   say you are looking forward to going to your favorite park to have a picnic all day long with your family and/or friends.  You are taking the day off from work.   You are really looking forward to this.  The day comes, you go to the park, then the police show up and say, you have to stay here all day long.  You cannot leave.  Then what happens?  You probably want to leave!  You do not want to be locked up against your will.  That is how the brain reacts to commands.  That is why willpower is probably not so effective.  It may not be willpower that makes people succeed, but other types of motivation.   I certainly did not use willpower when I became a nutritarian.  I just thought this was a fun new way to eat and cook, and it was producing amazing results so I wanted to keep on going.

Well, after several years of being a nutritarian, I sometimes feel like I am in a prison too.  I am so used to eating healthy that I can't tolerate the unhealthy stuff.   I find it easier to go 100% healthy than 90%.  But that means I eat differently from everyone else, all the time.  This is easily twisted into feeling that I'm not allowed to eat what everyone else eats, and feeling sad about that.  They are all provided snacks and catered meals from one of the best restaurants in town, and I am not!   They are raving about the food and I can't have any!   Rationally, I know I likely wouldn't like the oily, salty food, and the snacks are mostly junk.

Rationally I get positive messages all the time that I am doing what I want to do.  At one point today we were supposed to meditate on pain and I was one of the few people in the room with no pain to meditate on.  I'm probably one of the few who doesn't take medications.  My lunch and snacks were yummy.

So why am I still after all these years experiencing jealousy?   Maybe it's just a last step of dredging up some old feelings so I can shed them like a snake sheds skin.  Would that ever be a relief.

The workshop was great by the way.  This is definitely a fun new adventure for me.   Hard to believe I'm saying that about sitting around doing nothing.  haha.

Weekend recap, more psychology!

Here are some more observations from my weekend where I visited old friends.

1)  I have been concerned the last few years that my friendship with these people would be jeopardized by my eating style.  These friends are "foodies".  A lot of their free-time activities center around "good" food and drink.  What if we have nothing in common anymore?   In our favor, we have been friends for a long time and we are all pretty tolerant of odd behaviors.  We had great conversations this weekend and I had a blast working with Jon on a work project.  So I'm hopeful our friendship will survive after all.

2) The final test of the weekend's effect (saying no to all the food and drink I used to enjoy with them) on my behavior was after I returned home.  In the past, I have been known to misbehave when I get home from a trip where I behaved the whole time.  Then I had to release something or felt I had to get paid back for something, or who knows what.  So I got home today, and immediately went grocery shopping to beat rush hour.  I did behave.  I thought, I could go for some fruit and nuts and manna bread and cherries and and and, but it wouldn't solve anything or make me feel better.  I think I've done this enough in the past to know it just doesn't solve anything.   This worked for me today.  That's good.

3) I'm thinking that willpower does not work so well with me.   There have been articles recently in the New York Times and other places about how we only have so much in will power reserves, and we can use it all up by the end of the day.  I think I don't have any willpower in reserves!  It is more like a loan.  It demands payback.  If I use willpower to be good, it seems to demand I be bad later on.  So I'm trying to avoid willpower altogether.   I'm just making choices.  I'm doing what I want.

4)  I am trying out the idea of not looking at food or food producers or advertisers as the enemy.   They could even be my friends.  The billboards I saw along the highway today seemed to promise comfort and enjoyment.  It's a good feeling.  It doesn't mean I have to eat it, but I can enjoy the feeling they are presenting.  In a way, I'm stealing from them:  they are trying to rope me in with their good feelings, and I'm just taking the good feelings and not the food.

Today's psychology

Still at my friends' house (see yesterday's post for more on this).  This morning I jogged 5 miles in the sunshine on a beautiful trail, arrived back at the house, showered, and ate a delicious florida orange and carrot while they ate their belgian waffles and bacon.  I basked in my exercise hormones and they basked in their sugar and coffee.  All of us were quite satisfied.  Then I made my salads for the day and ate one of those while we had a long conversation.   I could have had the waffles--it's okay to indulge on occasion. I just didn't want them today. and it didn't seem to ruin our friendship.  My partner got to indulge in the food and I thanked my guests for feeding my partner this delicious food.  So I still got to thank them.   Later on they had typical football game snacks and chili with the works.  I was fine eating my salads, soup, and carrots.  But the key was feeling I have a choice, for me anyway.  It's okay to go off plan once in a while.  It would have been okay to do that today.  Feeling like I had that choice worked for me.  Then I just didn't want the consequences.  It's hard to give advice on this issue because everyone is different, even I am different on a different day.  This worked for me today.

Yummy salad, and psychology

I took this picture in my car.  We're on a weekend road trip to go see friends:

I really liked this salad.  It has romaine lettuce, red cabbage, kale, broccolini, cauliflower, red bell pepper, grapefruit chunks, fennel, red onion, seed mixture, and vinegar.  Hard to believe such a healthy salad would taste good but it did.

We're visiting old friends.  The psychology part of the post is that yesterday I bought our favorite ice cream, beer, and bagels to bring to our friends.  I got jealous remembering enjoying these foods with them.  So I overate on fruit.  Could have been worse.  It gives me an appreciation for how hard it can be for people to follow this diet when you have many associations with good times with friends and family and eating.  It's a whole body and mind memory.  I just have to create new memories with these friends.    I'll get practice this weekend. My next moment this weekend was tonight watching them eat their cheesy bread and pizza and wishing I could join them.  Then I said to myself:  you can have it if you want.  then I thought:  oh, I'd feel awful if I ate that.  then the urge went away.  lesson learned:  it's a choice.   I'm sure there will be more moments as the weekend goes on.  They are having home-made belgian waffles for breakfast.  But I will wake up feeling great and hopefully go for a nice jog.  it's just a choice.  we are all happy with our choices and hopefully can live in harmony with each other.  :)

The Pleasure Trap

I've mentioned in a few past posts, I am a huge fan of Dr. Douglas Lisle, an evolutionary psychologist who helps us "nutritarians" understand why it's so hard to go against the grain.  He follows Dr. McDougall's plan, and works Dr. Alan Goldhammer at the True North Health Center.  These are all very similar to Dr. Fuhrman's plan:  a whole foods, plant based diet with no oils, very limited refined sugars, and very limited salt.   This makes us very different from everyone else!

I had read Dr. Lisle's "The Pleasure Trap" once or twice before, but I finally sat down to watch the DVD over the last few weeks.  It consists of 3 lectures.  They were probably given at one of Dr. McDougall's Advanced Study Weekends, which are awesome (I've never attended but I purchased the online lectures from the last one and they are really interesting).   Anyway, back to the Pleasure Trap, I think the DVD is much better than the book!   Normally I prefer reading books, but I didn't get nearly as much out of the book in this case.  There are three concepts he gets across in the DVD (and book probably) and I only got one of them out of the book (duh).  These concepts are part of his, I think he calls it, the motivational triad, where all animals, including humans:

1. seek pleasure

2.  conserving energy

3. pain avoidance

You can see how each one of these can get us into trouble in today's artificial food world.  

1.  We seek pleasure.  We evolved to get pleasure from sweet and high-caloric foods because it helps us 2, conserve energy.   Of course, now we have an overabundance of highly addictive sweet, high fat, and high salt food.   The Pleasure Trap is a consequence of this.  This is:  if we don't eat these sweet and processed foods, we get plenty of pleasure from fruits and whole foods, and we have our ups and downs and obstacles and just go along and are sometimes happy and sometimes not.   If we start eating highly processed foods and drugs (caffeine, chocolate, sweets, even white bread), we get great stimulation and surges, great pleasure hits.  But here is the kicker:  we get used to it and after a while, the pleasure from eating these things comes more from the cessation of pain when we are withdrawing from them (e.g., before we have our morning coffee).  So after a while, we just have our same ups and downs and aren't getting anymore pleasure than the guy eating fruit and squash and rice and beans.  While it might not be easy, we can break this pleasure trap, and eat the healthy diet and get just as much pleasure.  To help people break the cycle, you can go to these health immersions that Dr. McDougall and Dr. Fuhrman offer, or go fast for a week at True North, then eat their food for a week, and totally reset your taste buds.  

2.  Conserving energy.  It's good to recognize that this is an intuitive motivational drive.  Now we see the problem with fast food drive up windows.  Talk about an easy way to get 1000 calories quickly!  Our ancestors never had it so easy.  This is also why we crave high-calorie foods.  We intuitively seek them out.   The way to address this is to consciously fill up on low-calorie foods.  Fortunately these are usually nutrient-dense, even while being low-calories--things like vegetables of all kinds.  After a period of abstinence you can lose your taste for fat.  I even find sugar is too sweet for me now.  even dates.  I love the sweetness in carrots (but then our local carrots are really good!).  

3.  Pain avoidance.  Oddly enough, you would think this is the least related to food issues, but for me, at the stage I'm at where I like eating this way and knowing how to do it in my sleep, this is the issue I am working on, and it's nice to understand better that it's because I'm a normal human that I struggle with this.  and that is, social pain!  We have a very strong evolutionary motivation to be accepted by our peers and fit in with them.  Our egos are designed to tell us where we stand in the hierarchy and who are friends are (I'm paraphrasing and might not have got this right, but it sounded fascinating!).  For me, going off plan is never about the taste of the food.  I don't like the taste anymore!   But I still do it occasionally, and for the dumbest of reasons--because the person in line in front of me is doing it!   It's about being one of them.  I thought about this at my meditation class last week.  Sometimes I look at unhealthy people and I think, I don't want to be like them, and yet, I do.  So I embraced them in my mind and I said, I am you and you are me and we are all the same (you tend to have these new agey thoughts when you meditate, ha!).  And when I think that way, then I can avoid the food.  I realize, I'm not rejecting them when I reject the food.  And hopefully they aren't rejecting me, which is what really counts from an instinctive perspective.  I think men and women are different on this in some ways in that men are more prone to the hierarchy and have to learn how to do their healthy-eating thing in a non-threatening way to the alpha brother-in-law they are spending the weekend with; and women are more prone to wanting to be accepted and to not offend and we have to learn how to interact in a way that we still feel we are accepted and fitting in.  Dr. Lisle describes different ways to respond to other people depending on their attitude.  I need to stop writing now, so I'll leave that for you to find out when you watch the DVD.  

meetups and thoughts

My two nutritarian friends came into town on Friday and we had quite the feast:

I made sweet potatoes topped with black beans and greens etc and a dollop of soy yogurt (a recipe from the Fuhrman site).  We made salad from Holly's lettuce and pear, my red pepper and a yummy salad dressing from the Fuhrman site.  Holly made delicious stuffed mushrooms.   Suz brought curried squash on brown rice.   I got full eating all this great food.   After our feast, we went on a walk at Olbrich community gardens, and then went, where else, to the co-op.  That was interesting as we shared many food tips about all our favorite foods, as well as the ones we have to avoid (the cowgirl cookies are sometimes a challenge for me).  I got a lot of new ideas from our discussions as we strolled through the store.

Some quotable quotes were "I'm an unethical vegan" and "I'm a vegan on weekdays."

Today I heard a great quote:  "The best way to bring someone over to your cause is to have more fun than them."   For me, the biggest difficulty about eating healthy is sometimes thinking that I'm missing out on what everyone else is eating.  It's all in how you look at it.  I just need to think of it as I'm the lucky one, having the most fun eating the best food.   Along those lines, last weekend I was out on a walk at a conservancy and a group was roasting marshmallows over a fire and making s'mores.  Well, you know how those nostalgic feelings can make you wish you were joining them.   Today I was meditating in front of my fireplace (wow, is that ever easy to meditate in front of a fire!) and I was thinking about our ancestors roasting winter squash in their fire.  Then I realized, our difficulties in eating healthy usually arise from nostalgia for eating the things we used to eat and drink with our family and friends.   Maybe we just need to go back further in time.  The last 50 years are a blip on the history of our people.  Go back further, and we are talking sweets only on very special occasions.   So just let your nostalgia go a little further back in time and you can imagine roasting squash instead of marshmallows, and relishing a good fruit instead of ice cream.

The 100% club

We often discuss on the Fuhrman forums whether it's better for us to go 90% or 100% nutritarian.  Dr. Fuhrman's life plan allows for 10% excursions once you attain health and appropriate weight.   I don't think he intends for that 10% to be the worst foods like cheese and ice cream, but even those are allowed rarely.   I really think this is an individual choice.  For some people, making foods forbidden makes them more desirable, and increases the cravings.  For others, eating just a little bit opens the floodgates.  It probably depends a lot on how you look at it.   For me, both those feelings can occur.   Overall though, for me, it seems 100% is much easier than 90%.  There is much less deciding involved, and studies have shown that having too much choice and making too many decisions is exhausting and weakens your willpower.  Now 90% might make life easier for other people I interact with and might make me more sociable and less of a standout.  But I don't think I can handle it.  It is easier for me to go 100%.  Plus, I've found people don't care as much as you think when you do funny things like not eat, or top a plate of lettuce with your own fixings, or bring your own food.  Also, if I'm 100% most of the time, on a daily basis, then if something really unusual comes up, it's no big deal if I decide to partake.  I just have to remember that these unusual events need to be limited to only a few times a year (and that remembering is kind of a hassle so again, it's easier to just stay on plan and have fewer decisions and fewer things to remember!).  Like I said, this is a very individual choice.  My main point is that even though it might seem counterintuitive, 100% is easier for me than 90% and I'm kind of surprised by that as much as anyone else.  Emily discusses something like this in her latest Diseaseproof post.

PeerTrainer

Someone I respect told me that they use PeerTrainer to help them with their eating/fitness program, so I got on their email list to find out more.  It is led by Jackie Wicks, who promotes a relatively healthy eating program, similar to Dr. Fuhrman.   Her emails sometimes include some interesting articles, like this one about 7 steps to overcoming emotional eating.  If you want further support, they have a emotional eating mini course.  I have no idea if this is good or not, I'm just pointing it out since it was in the email I received yesterday.  She also linked to another program they do called Point of No Return, for dealing with the psychological barriers of dieting.  If any of you have ever tried these programs, I'd be interested to hear what you thought of them.

Another great DVD by Douglas Lisle

I think Douglas Lisle is my new hero.  There are several heroes in the healthy eating community:  Drs. Fuhrman, McDougall, Esselstyn, Campbell, Ornish, and Barnard.  I have to add Dr. Douglas Lisle to this list.  He's a psychotherapist who works at the True North Health Center.   You can read some of his articles here.  He has lectured at a few McDougall conferences and I think the DVDs are taped from these events.  This one I just watched is called "Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind."   He talks about 3 major obstacles to losing weight:  1) the pleasure trap, 2) the ego trap, and 3)  the pull of other's demands.

1)  He's talked about the pleasure trap in a few other lectures, DVDs and a book.  I highly recommend the book or DVD.  Very briefly (and hopefully somewhat correct), the pleasure trap is about how it is perfectly normal to prefer chocolate candy to an apple. We evolved in an environment of scarcity of high-caloric food and we are hard-wired to prefer it.  If you can abstain from the artificial food for a while, for example, with a fast, your taste buds re-adapt and you can enjoy the healthy food just as much.  But it aint always easy to say not to that high calorie-dense food.

2) The ego trap.  I loved this because he described me.  The ego trap is where you or others have high expectations of you, perhaps because of a previous success, and you know deep down you can't live up to those expectations so you quit before you fail.  In your mind, quitting is preferable to failing.   This is what sometimes happens to me with healthy eating.  I achieved success sort of accidentally, just experimenting with this.  Then I joined the Fuhrman forums and started a blog and became something of a role model.   I didn't feel comfortable being a role model and started doubting myself and suddenly eating healthy became harder than it was before, and the temptations, which were almost non-existent before, became greater.  Dr. Lisle says the solution to this is to lower your expectations.  Pick a goal that is better than where you are, and achievable, something you are pretty confident you can do.  You can even pick a goal that is insulting to you so you say, of course I can do that, in fact I can do better than that, I'll show you.  He described working with kids and saying, do you think you can get B/C grades?  and the kid says, yes, I can do even better than that!

3)  other people's demands.  He described how we evolved in an environment of 30 people where everyone knew what everyone else was doing so they couldn't demand too much because they already saw everything you are doing.  Nowadays, our spheres are so separated, your boss doesn't know what you home/community demands are; your spouse and kids don't know your work/community/friend responsibilities, etc.  So everyone wants the most out of you and this situation benefits naturally pushy people and hurts naturally nice people.  You have to learn to say no and you don't have to say why.  You say, "I've got something else I have to do."  "I made a promise and have to take care of something else."  And you don't say what and it becomes clear that it's none of their business and they don't have a right to know.  You have to be able to say no so you can make priorities for yourself.  If you are going to change your diet and develop and exercise program you need time to commit to this.  It IS high priority.

I'd be curious to know what other people think of this lecture.

more on the Douglas Lisle DVD

I was thinking more about the first talk on the Douglas Lisle DVD called "The Continuum of Evil." (see yesterday's post for a recap). So the first talk was about not trying to be perfect, but aiming for eating A+ foods most of the time and letting yourself have some A, B, and C foods here and there, and averaging an A overall. This is a lot like Dr. Fuhrman's 10% plan. Dr. Lisle emphasized that the most important thing is getting right back on track when you eat the C (sugar,oil), D (dairy), and F (meat) foods. He follows the McDougall program which is a little more relaxed about salt and sugar than Dr. Fuhrman's program. Having followed Dr. Fuhrman's program for a while, I do prefer going without salt and sugar because the salt makes my fingers swell up, and it's even worse after breaking my elbow; and your taste buds get much more sensitive without salt and sugar, and then fruit and vegetables taste really good.

But the problem is that makes me an extremist or darn close to a perfectionist. It means any food prepared by a restaurant or grocery store is off limits, unless it's just plain raw or steamed veggies special ordered. There's a good side to this: it's easy in some ways, because the boundaries are really simple--no to salt, sugar, oil, or processed food, yes to everything in the produce section and whole grains and nuts and seeds. It's easy to remember, and it really is possible to eat on the go even with these restrictions.

Dr. Lisle says we want to average an A. Well, then you have to keep track. Today the co-op had some samples of this treat that is peanut butter, sesame seeds, cashews, honey and salt. Well, I thought, I don't have to be perfect, and this has no added oils! (somehow my brain ignored the salt and honey). So I had two pieces. Is that okay? Well, it had more salt than I would like. My hand was already swollen and now it will get worse. I think it's easier for me to have boundaries, like no salt. Then I just say no to the samples.

I do understand how these boundaries can lead to the perfection problem. When you go off-plan, you can end up in a binge and a promise to come back to perfection some day. I guess you have to remind yourself it's always a choice: "Yes, I can eat those samples. But I don't want them right now because I prefer not to eat salt and sugar. I think I'll try to make something like this at home without the salt and with dates instead of honey." And when you go offplan, you just dust yourself off and jump right back on. because you want to.

Darn it all, I don't understand this any better than when I started. I think I'll just get back to living my life.

Douglas Lisle DVD

I just watched a very good DVD by Douglas Lisle. He wrote the Pleasure Trap. He applies psychology to eating healthy. The first lecture was about the continuum of evil. He's referring to good foods and bad foods here. Grading food, he gives meat an F, dairy a D, processed grains and sugar C, tofu, whole-wheat bread, veggie burgers a B, and whole unprocessed produce an A+. He then says, we're not perfect, but it's good to eat as many of the A foods as you can and only occasionally eating the B and C foods. He spent much of his career counseling on addiction. He says failure is fine, it's part of the process. Don't aim for perfection 100% of the time. If you aim for perfection and then you fail, that sets up weird behaviors, like going on a binge and promising you'll be perfect tomorrow or next week. You want to average a very good score (A on the grading scale) but know that it is a process getting there and that you will dip and know to get back on track when you do--that is the most important part, not aiming for perfection. I'm paraphrasing and surely not distilling this as accurately as he presented.

The second talk is on how personality characteristics determine how easy it is for someone to adopt this healthy eating plan. There are 5 personality characteristics: 1) openness to experience, 2) conscientiousness, 3) extraversion & introversion, 4) agreeableness, and 5) stability. The personality best suited to adopting this healthy eating is 1) not very open , 2) conscientious, 3) introverted, 4) not agreeable, and 5) stable. So for example, those of us who are open to trying new things, well, we might not be satisfied with brown rice and broccoli every day. Conscientiousness is of course helpful in sticking to the plan. Extraverts like to socialize and go out to eat, and it's hard to find healthy food in restaurants. Agreeable people I guess are more easily influenced by our friends and family members prodding us to eat their food and be like them. And stable people are less likely to want to celebrate by eating and drinking, or drown their sorrows by eating and drinking. We can't change these personality characteristics so we just have to be aware of what the vulnerabilities and strengths are when applied to the case of eating healthy.

In my case, I'm 1) open to new experiences, so that is a vulnerability. I am feeling this right now. It was a good thing when I started this because I was open to changing my eating habits and learning a whole new way of cooking. But now I'm ready for something new. So I have to figure out some other area of my life to try out new things in. 2) I'm pretty conscientious so that's an advantage. 3) I'm probably in the middle. I need to socialize and have friends, and I used to struggle with this, but I've modified my social life and don't center it around bars and restaurants. 4) I'm pretty agreeable and I guess that's a disadvantage. But I've learned to deal with that one too, it just took a little longer to stand up to people, in a polite way of course. 5) I think I'm pretty stable, though I do sometimes want to celebrate with food and drown my sorrows with food. I think my biggest vulnerability right now is #1: After embracing this whole-heartedly and learning everything I could, now I've gotten bored with it. I want to try something new.