Is Your Personality Making You Fat?

Do you often forget you have plans with a friend...until she calls you from outside the movie theater?

This won't come as a surprise to the frazzled among us: The NIA researchers agreed with other study authors that orderly neatniks tend to be leaner than other people—in their analysis, by about 10 pounds. These are usually the same folks who embrace the structure of diets and are obsessed with counting calories. Then there are the disorganized masses. Gans has many overcommitted clients who tell her they're so busy that they barely eat a thing all day—and they can't understand why they're gaining weight. She helps them recognize unhealthy patterns, like skipping lunch, drinking a beer in a post-meeting debrief and then snacking indiscriminately on whatever's in the fridge at home. That's 150 calories for the beer, 350 for some hummus and crackers, 250 for frozen yogurt, 150 for a cereal bar...and none of it adds up to real satisfaction, Gans says.
Change your behavior: Gans says that the trick for these personality types is getting them to eat even when they think they don't have time. She recommends that they stock their homes and offices with portable, nutritious, filling snacks, so they always have something on hand to prevent them from getting too hungry and making bad choices. Her tried-and-true favorites: 23 almonds or 49 pistachios in individual-serving-size bags, six-packs of yogurt and low-fat string cheese.