Back in January 2015, I wrote about the five personality traits that Dr, Doug Lisle believes are best suited to adopting a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet. Those traits include:
- Not being very open to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Introversion
- Disagreeableness
- Emotional Stability
This helped to explain why some people struggle less than others to maintain a WFPB diet.
If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Lisle’s rationale for why these traits make up the perfect personality for sticking with a WFPB diet, I strongly encourage you to watch the video presentation called “The Perfect Personality”.
I’ve recently taken three separate personality tests to see where I stood on the spectrum of the Big 5 Personality Traits. Each confirmed my conclusion that my quiet, boring, anti-social and stubborn personality is close to perfect for maintaining my WFPB lifestyle.
Fortunately for the world, not everyone scores similar to me in each of the Big Five Personality Traits. If you are interested in seeing where you stand on the spectrum of The Big Five Personality Traits, you can take one or all of these free personality tests.
Your results may help to explain your success, or lack thereof, in maintaining a WFPB lifestyle. If you are doing well, but wonder why a spouse, relative or friend struggles mightily to stay the course, the answer may lie in his/her personality.
According to Dr. Lisle, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence showing that these five dimensions of our personalities are encoded in our genes. There is very little we can do to change our place on the spectrum of each dimension. However, knowing the personality-caused reasons behind our struggles can help us figure out ways to manipulate our environments to give us our best chance of overcoming our individual natures.
Everyone who is transitioning from the Standard American Diet (SAD) to a WFPB diet has the Dietary Pleasure Trap with which to contend. It may be useful to know if one’s personality is an additional barrier to making the consequential dietary changes necessary for great health.
If you decide to take any of these tests, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the results. I’m quite intrigued about the possibility that these tests may be a useful tool in helping people figure out ways to make a WFPB lifestyle fit their own unique human nature. I’m thinking the results of such tests could help me determine the best counseling approach to take with someone attempting significant dietary change.
You can share your thoughts here in the comment section, or you can email me at plantasticlife@gmail.com . I would never share your individual results with anyone. I’d just like to hear about your impressions of the test(s).
Stay Healthy and Strong!
E Excerpt from Laurie Endicott Thomas’s amazing book Thin Diabetes – Fat Diabetes by clicking here!
I do not need to take the tests. It’s a five out of five for me, also. By the way, I do not consider you boring or anti-social. I think you are correct that one has to work with one’s personality to live this lifestyle. For example, I have a friend who likes this way of eating and follows it at home but eats whatever people serve her when she is out. She is extremely social and thinks it is not correct to tell people about her diet. I don’t think people have to accommodate us, so I am willing to bring my own food if that is acceptable.