Weight Loss Mindset – 3P’s or Personality Layers for Easier Change

A weight Loss Mindset is first about understanding oneself. To understand the hidden aspects of our personality and how can we move towards making habit changes easier. Be successful in achieving goals easily and sustain a healthier lifestyle.

Human personality can affect weight loss in both positive and negative ways. For example, some personality traits such as determination, motivation, and self-discipline can help an individual stay on track with their weight loss plan. On the other hand, traits such as impulsivity and a lack of self-control can make it difficult for an individual to stick to their plan and reach their goals.

Hidden Personality Layers and Weight Loss Mindset

Our personality affects our behavior. The 3Ps constitute our human personality layers; Physical, Psychological, and Programmed Tendencies.

1. The main function of the physical layer is to drive our actions and provide energy for performing the actions.
2. The psychological layer constitutes our emotional being the one which “feels” our interaction with the outside world.
3. Lastly, Programmed Tendencies are our programmed or habitual responses to people and situations driven by the Thinker in us.

The table below depicts the 3Ps (personality layers) and their functions.

Weight Loss Mindset – Knowledge and Actions

We are not able to implement or “take action” based on the knowledge we have because we are mostly driven by physical and psychological layers. If the Thinker in us were to decide our behavior, then there would be no gap between knowledge and behavior.

1. The Physical Layer challenges to Weight Loss Mindset

For now, we can consider the body and energy aspects of our being as one, constituting the physical being. The sustenance of the physical body along with energy is the most important for us to experience our desires.

The signals of hunger and fatigue prompt us to eat and rest which is good. But are only eating for our need of sustenance of the physical body or is it psychological or habitual eating?

What we see on the outside is the individual’s projected behavior. Now let us make some effort to understand this behavior which varies. It is often automatic unconscious reactions and at other times conscious actions.

2. Programmed Tendencies Layer challenges to Weight Loss Mindset

What behavior do we see? and why?

“Habit Patterns” (Auto Driven by “Feeler I” or Sub Conscious Mind) OR “Responses”

(Directed by “Thinker I” or Conscious Mind) The Thinker “I”, needs to use effort to learn or do new things. Most of our work is done in automation out of our habits. These HABIT PATTERNS are the driving force for most of our actions and associated behaviors. Most of our habits are particularly useful for us as we can get many things done easily without applying much thought. 

For example, once we have learned to drive, we do not apply thought while driving, it comes automatically to us. Thinking can be tiring and thinking-driven action can exhaust us. Actions that come naturally to us are enjoyable and effortless.

Our environment both external and internal (mindset/thinking/thoughts) influence our psychological being. A stimulus in our environment invokes an automatic response unless the Thinker “I”, the lazy controller is alert, willing, and really wants to behave differently. If we have a habit pattern of eating more, we continue to do so. OVEREATING HABIT PATTERN is what we need to watch out for as far as weight loss is concerned.

3. The Psychological Layer challenges to Weight Loss Mindset

Some of the stimuli in our environment evoke strong emotions. These emotions can make us crave certain types of foods and eat when not hungry. These too are habitual patterns but triggered by certain emotions. Eating due to anxiety, stress, not eating in anger, or drinking/eating more when frustrated. At such times, our behavior is driven by the feeler “I”.  We need to become aware of our EMOTIONAL EATING PATTERNS driven by the Feeler “I”.

Weight Loss Mindset – 3Ps and Integrated Personality

The three, the Thinker, Feeler, and Physical put together form our integrated personality.  Our actions in descending order are automatic reactions including habitual and emotional reactions followed by conscious responses.

We see different shades of our personality because sometimes the will reigns, at other times the habits reign, and at times our emotions are in control.  It’s these programmed habits that have more control over our behaviors.  We default to our programmed habits in the absence of emotional, and personal mastery.

Even if we have clarity and conviction in our thinking of what is good for the body, there may be a gap in acting upon these thoughts.  Only propelled by strong desires, the Thinker “I” asserts itself and wields its power to move against natural tendencies. This is how we bring about short-term changes in our lives. If the new behavior is holistic, our subconscious accepts the new behavior with repetition. Ultimately this new behavior becomes our default behavior.

Let us understand our default behaviors which act as psychological barriers to weight loss and then learn to overcome and replace them with new behaviors to regain control.

One of the psychological challenges to weight loss is that our mind wants to avoid change. It can be because of fear and anxiety. with regards to changes in eating habits or lifestyle.

Friends and family members may be influencing the older habits and one may get tempted by unhealthy eating in social groups.

Weight Loss Mindset: 5 Psychological Challenges

Common Psychological barriers which might hamper weight loss or prevent one from keeping off the lost weight are.

Weight Loss Mindset Challenge #1: Seeking Quick Fix

Most people are looking for quick fixes. Do we need to look at the perspective that how much time did it take for us to put on those extra kilos? We need to give ourselves and our bodies enough time to shed those extra kilos without undue strain and in a way that the lost weight does not keep coming back.

Weight Loss Mindset Challenge #2: Habitual Eating

One might be in a habit of eating while reading or watching TV. Another aspect could be that we have trained ourselves for excessive eating. For example – finishing all that is there on the plate. Even though we might be full, we may finish off the extra food just out of habit. This might lead to adding extra calories unnecessarily.

Weight Loss Mindset Challenge #3: Emotional Eating

Some tend to eat when they experience a strong emotion. It can be whenever we are sad, angry, happy, anxious, stressed, etc.

Weight Loss Mindset Challenge #4: Lack of Motivation

The motivation to lose weight keeps going like a sine wave. If someone is motivated for a certain period, they will keep doing everything right: – eating the right kind of foods, exercising, etc. for that certain period. Then suddenly after some time lose interest and go back to their original habits. Again, wake up to the fact that they need to work on themselves. The motivation keeps oscillating. In most cases, people with low motivation to work on their health are the ones for whom things are going right…. their job, family, relationship, etc.

Weight Loss Mindset Challenge #5: Lack of Confidence

With each failure, one’s belief in failure keeps getting strengthened. Diets have failed and other things which we might have tried have failed. So, trusting in the success of any new approach may not be easy. If the Belief system is programmed for failure, small wins are necessary to boost confidence.

We can overcome psychological challenges by learning the 4-step effective plan to lose weight and help bring about the required behavioral change.