The “Defender” (7% of the population)
Like General Custer and Rosa Parks, one of your strongest personal values is loyalty. If your loved ones need support, you are first to show up. If they need defending, you will fight for them until the end. You are often known as the “glue” that holds friends and families together. Because of your strong affinity for close relationships, enjoying healthy meals with friends and family while discussing the concepts in this program would be very motivating for you.
You have one of the better weight management brain types, so it’s easier for you to contemplate the benefits and consequences of the foods you eat than most of the other brain types. You are also better at detecting when you are full, so overeating isn’t a common problem for your brain type, as long as your emotions are kept in check.
Once you adopt a code of ethics or set of values, they become unshakable. This makes you more likely than most other brain types to stick to your goals, once they are set.
Because your passion for your cause can be contagious to others, you may find yourself as a leader without even trying. Don’t fight this. Go with it because you will find that you become protective of these people and you will be a powerful force in helping them succeed. They will also reciprocate out of gratitude and loyalty back to you and then everybody wins as you are all helping each other.
You can be skeptical of new information, which might keep you from fully believing new developments as they come out, like the fact that artificial sweeteners and artificial ingredients are toxic and that they make you gain fat instead of losing fat.
Since you tend to seek food as a quick fix to get your brain out of a funk, you are attracted to like sweets but not calories because you associate calories with weight gain (which you must learn is a flawed and outdated concept), so diet foods tend to appeal to you.
Since you tend to care about your weight before health, you may value the weight loss message of diet foods and minimize the harmful effects of the artificial ingredients in those foods. Shift your focus more to a health-conscious perspective and the weight will take care of itself.
Since you can become addicted to sweet foods more easily than other brain types and because diet foods contain highly addictive ingredients in addition to sweetness, you may find them hard to give up. The EFT tapping technique would be very useful for you to get off foods with artificial sweeteners.
Your brain type tends to use a bodyweight scale more than other brain types. This is actually fine for your brain wiring, because it will give you the frequent feedback you need, but keep in mind that your weight will fluctuate from day to day and that is normal (but you probably already knew that if you are indeed a “weigher”). Remember that the scale for you is only one of many vague indicators of your progress and current status. Focus on making health your first priority over scale weight, so your decisions (like whether to drink diet soda or not) are based on health instead of weight.
Your ideal weight is a result of ideal health, so if you are the type who obsesses over your weight, especially at the expense of your health (i.e., anorexia, bulimia, poor dieting choices, etc.), you need to stop weighing yourself immediately and stay off the scale until you can rewire your brain to obsess over health instead.
Visualize what it would feel like to be healthy, strong and powerful, with a metabolism that protects and preserves the body you desire, well into old age.
Supporting someone who is in the limelight gives you personal satisfaction as that person gets attention for their success. Because of this, it will help you to find a partner who is more public with their successes. This will help you in two ways: first, because you are supporting another person, which is a motivator for you in itself, and second, because you get to enjoy their public success and attention without having to deal with that yourself, as a more private person.
Whether you can find someone public to take this journey with or not, it would increase the ease with which you make progress if you do have a partner. You can do this alone too though, and you might be tempted to try since you are an introvert, but having a partner will increase your chances.
Teaming up with one of your close friends will benefit you both. You will want to help them and assist them but don’t become discouraged if they don’t reciprocate 100%. You are wired to help, and they might not be as dialed in with that type of brain wiring. Helping a close friend with their diet will motivate you to stay on track with yours, so full reciprocation from them – while it can be nice – will not be necessary for you, because you will benefit from increased motivation, just from the act of helping them.
You are better than most brain types at following handbooks and rules (once they are fully understood), but because you have a tendency to do everything yourself, you can also easily become overworked without the help and support of at least one other person.
You are very thorough, even to the point of being tedious. You prefer practical assignments with clear steps along the way. You enjoy knowing the rules and what’s expected of you, and you do best in a systematic, step-by-step process, not wanting to be rushed and not particularly enjoying surprises. You appreciate specific guidelines and clear boundaries over general, broad concepts. These qualities will certainly help you follow your own program once it is designed in this way.
You tend to feel unsettled until a decision is made, but you like to think things through completely before making a decision. You would rather look before you leap, but that can delay your start if the leap looks too daunting. Small, easy steps will help you move forward and keep you on track, over big leaps or pushing yourself too fast.
You are typically skeptical of new concepts, but if you are convinced about the authority of the source, you are more likely to try something new. The research behind the concepts in this program will help validate things for you and will make you more comfortable with that “leap” once you are ready. The What If technique will be very helpful to rewire your brain to more easily accept new ideas.
You enjoy checklists and crossing things off those lists as you get them done. Making a daily “to do” list will be very helpful for you. You get satisfaction merely from the accomplishment of checking off all the things on your list, so that repeated process will feed your brain with the consistent rewards it needs for continued motivation.
You are best at attaining goals when a time period is set. Picking a date on the calendar for the achievement of a certain goal and pacing yourself along the way can be very motivating. Since you tend to be an overachiever, you will often achieve that goal ahead of time (if it is realistic enough), which gives you extra satisfaction.
You do better with deadlines and living by the rules. Once you have met those deadlines and set of rules, you feel like you are free to play. This is great for getting things done, but it will be helpful for you to seek balance and loosen up to experience greater freedom and more frequent play time.
You tend to pick and choose your friends carefully. The relationships you do have are very important to you, so you commit deeply to those people. You value tradition and loyalty, so your friendships usually last a long time. These people can be vital to your success as they encourage and motivate you, but you must share your goals with them and ask for their help and support.
You need verbal appreciation and gentle encouragement from others – especially those who you look up to. You thrive on recognition for your consistency and diligence. Be sure to ask the friend you team up with for feedback on how you are doing. If you are doing this alone, noticing your own results and journaling about them on a weekly basis will help you appreciate your progress.
You have less of a tendency to grumble and complain about a process that you believe in, so once your brain commits to this program and as you start to see results, you will tend to look for the positives more than the negatives. This will make journaling more fun and therapeutic for your brain.
Mother Teresa shares your brain type and like her, you have a strong desire to be of service and minister to individual needs of others. You will find great motivation in visualizing being able to help people after you achieve your goals, through mastering this process.
Once you have turned yourself into a success story and understand how this program works, the prospect of helping others along that same journey appeals to your brain type more than the other brain types.
You prefer to plan ahead and you are good at that, so use this gift to devise a strategy on how best to handle pressure situations and emotional states before they arise, to keep you away from emotional or socially triggered eating. Your plan would look something like this: “When ____ happens, I will do ____, then I will feel ____.”
For example, When you feel stressed, it is helpful for your brain type to reach out and confide in others instead of holding those feelings inside, so in that case, you could devise a plan like this: “When I feel stress coming on, I will call a friend and confide in them. Then I will feel calmer and more relaxed.”
You tend to be more susceptible to injury due to inflexibility, both in your internal world as well as your external world, which makes safer exercise methods and activities more appropriate for you. You may have fear associated with exercise if you have been injured in the past, so getting past that will, of course, be necessary for you. The EFT technique will help you with this if needed.
You typically want to master a skill before you show it to others, so in the case of this program, you would prefer to perfect a recipe before even admitting to anyone else that you can do it.
You are neat, orderly, thrifty, and practical, with a high sense of duty. Because you are so conscientious, you are apt to be judgmental towards nonconformists or “rule breakers.” You are known to be attracted to these “rebels” however because you want to take on the project of reforming them. This can be dangerous though because unless that person is also focused on health, they can drag you down and make it harder for you to achieve your health and fitness goals.
Since you are a “finisher,” you tend to overwork yourself when you feel a project is left undone. You need to make sure to take time off and have fun in order to unwind and blow off stress. Just be sure to stay within the parameters of this program when you do, and you will be able to make an association in your brain between fun and this diet.
Feelings are your greatest stumbling block, which may prompt you to look to food for comfort – even to the extent of becoming emotionally attached to it. Since you are acutely in touch with your five senses, taste and smell play large roles in your eating patterns. Food is far more than just feeling satisfied to you. It stimulates your senses and can be quite addicting when certain senses are turned on from certain foods.
Your brain type is more prone to craving sweets, and when you don’t have them, you can feel deprived. This program should be perfect for you since it will certainly satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth! For breaking other sweet tooth cravings and food addictions outside this program, the EFT tapping technique will be very useful for you.
You typically prefer a structured diet most of the time, but your brain type also needs some occasional freedom. It’s okay to eat on the spur of the moment sometimes, provided those times fall within the eating parameters included in this program.
You will prefer to closely follow the steps in this program, but allowing yourself some latitude while staying within the guidelines will be good for your brain as well. An example of this might be eating at friend’s house where you have no control over what is served and then choosing for yourself what you can eat to stay within the guidelines of this program.
Be careful that you are not hampered in sticking with this program by trying to please others. When invited to eat out, or offered a special dish at someone’s home, you might not pass up the chance for fear of offending that person. To counter this, just explain to them that you are trying out a new health program and the parameters are very specific.
Summary and Recap
Goal setting: Use your calendar to set achievement dates. Focus on health goals first and how those goals will help you stay thin, strong and active, well into old age. Set small goals for each step. Keep a food log to track your changes and improvements. Ask this question to yourself often, “Is what I am doing now contributing to my goals?”
Best Workout: Personal training or training with a close, supportive friend in a relatively quiet and private setting. Outdoor exercise will also appeal to you, as long as the weather is nice.
Motivated by: Helping others in their journey to health – especially if you are taking that journey with them. Make daily or weekly checklists to complete.
Supported by: A close friend to experience this journey with, who you can support and be supported by. Encouraging family members.
Areas to strengthen: Focus on health over your weight, and especially on healthy foods over diet foods. Try new things and enjoy the innovative recipes in this program. Remember that perfection is never possible, so practice extending grace to yourself and others.
Strengths to use: Your gift of support to others will make it easy for them to achieve success. You will, in turn, enjoy their success – especially if other people notice their success. You are a great planner, so be sure to plan ahead for your meals and exercise.
Brain training techniques: EFT, Visualization (especially of your healthiest self), What If, Mission, Transform Your Cravings, Journaling about your successes, but also about your results, progress, and feelings.
