Yesterday I published a quiz that linked readers’ personalities with their approach to weight reduction. Some personality styles may make weight maintenance more challenging than others.

Here is a pie chart showing Red – people motivated by goals and Yellow – people motivating by fun represented the majority of the outcomes. That can help explain why weight maintenance is such a struggle.

Please note: The color key does not match the colors of the Quiz Outcome.

The “achiever” personality was assigned the color RED.

People who got RED as their result are likely to be very goal-oriented, very intent on achieving whatever they set out to do,  and extremely focused making them less likely to fall to temptation.

That’s good, right?

Yes, it’s good for reaching a goal, any goal, including a weight goal. It’s not as good for maintaining a lower weight. Once a goal has been reached, the challenge is gone. That’s not so good is it?

RED likes to be challenged. Red loves to win but after winning RED may love motivation.

Nope, not so good because without a goal there is no motivation to continue the behaviors. If the behaviors aren’t continued the weight loss will not be maintained, and there’s more bad news.

The behaviors may not be sustainable because the intent was never to make permanent behavioral challenges. The intent was to only to “reach the goal.”

People who are Red can improve their weight maintenance success by looking at what they’re doing to lose weight and asking themselves:

• Are my weight loss actions a good fit with my life?
• Are these behaviors sustainable for five or ten or more years?
• What are weekly or monthly goals I can set for myself that will keep me motivated to stay at goal now that I reached my goal weight?”

If you took the quiz and got Red, put some flexibility into your weight loss strategy and once you reach your goal, keep setting new goals to stay motivated to maintain your weight goal.

If you got YELLOW you like to have fun. If it isn’t fun you don’t want to do it. That’s a great attitude but sometimes fun trumps achievement. The reality is there are times when weight loss isn’t fun. Sometimes the fun thing is to eat and drink, but too much eating and drinking can stall your weight loss progress, or even reverse it.

YELLOW is motivated by fun, but too much fun can hold back weight goal progress. Having fun needs to be balanced with a little work.

If you’re motivated by fun, you may already be aware that sometimes you have to do a little work before you can have fun. Other times, you may have to put off what would be fun at the moment to wait to have a better time (more fun) later.

It’s great that your personality helps you find ways to make things fun, but remember that sometimes it takes a little discipline to reach goal and stay there. Getting and staying at goal and all the fun that comes with it is always big fun!