Personality-Based Weight Loss: An Interview with Dr. Scott Harrington, Part 2

Here is the conclusion of my interview with family physician Scott Mark Harrington about his Enneagram-based weight loss programs. If you missed the Part 1, you can read it here.

Do you have a success story or two you can share?

The story that I know the best is my own story. I am an Enneagram Type 9 (Peacemaker) with a Type 1 wing (the Dreamer). I have a big problem with mindless and emotional eating. This ranges from habits of cleaning my plate to eating when I feel conflict stress, or eating to escape or feel numb. Oftentimes, I do not feel satisfied unless I completely gorge myself and feel uncomfortably full. Since I was also relatively health-conscious, it took many years to become overweight. I found that I had slowly gained 20 pounds over several years. I had a myriad of minor medical problems that weren’t bad enough to take medication for, such as mild elevated blood pressure, mild elevated cholesterol, constipation and mild heartburn.

As a family physician, I knew I needed to lose weight, and I assumed that I would be able to do it because I had instructed many patients on how to do it. I recommended that patients simply decrease their portion size and start to counting their calories. When I tried dieting, I realized I couldn’t eat small enough portions (of meat and cheese) to lose weight without being very hungry and without busting my daily calorie allotment. I quickly became unmotivated and overwhelmed. I felt the change would be impossible.

It wasn’t until a friend recommended the movie “Forks Over Knives” that my life changed for the better. Directly after watching that movie, I stopped eating meat, dairy and eggs. I started to feel better fairly rapidly. The first thing I noticed was that the constipation and heartburn resolved immediately. Later, as my weight started to come off, I started to look forward to checking the scale. Meanwhile, I was able to gorge on huge meals of starches and veggies. After several weeks, I checked my blood pressure and cholesterol numbers. I saw dramatic improvements, and I then became a complete believer.

As for the personality aspects of the weight loss, the biggest problem for me as a Peacemaker was that my change would affect others. I soon learned how I could eat the “side dishes” as the main meal so that my spouse didn’t have to change. It’s true, I still gorge myself with food, but as long as I do not eat animal products or add oils, then I can eat large quantities of low-calorie/bulky foods and feel satisfied. How I (Type 9) was able to make this change was that once I became convinced that very simple changes in my diet could have a huge impact on my health, it didn’t sound so overwhelming. I used my own advice, and when I felt conflict or feelings of overwhelm, I would try to focus on that day and try to enjoy the process as opposed to the outcome. It worked! I also have more testimonials on my site.

I see you have diet recommendations based on the Hornevian Groups. How and why did you come up with the idea of dividing diets into these categories?

One of the elegant aspects of the Enneagram is the classification by Triads. Riso and Hudson describe these beautifully, and I looked for applications of these Triads. Specifically, the Hornevian Groups were helpful because they describe the way people obtain what they need and their style of social interaction. The Triad consists of Aggressive, Complaint and Withdrawn Types. I renamed these Bolds, Rights and Deep Types simply because patients complained these names had negative connotations. This classification also helped me to simplify and generalize recommendations.

For instance, Bold Types (Aggressive Types 3, 7 and 8) want to make their own food choices and do not like being boxed in by restrictive rules or lack of variety. They may enjoy physical challenges, competition or group exercise. Right Types (Compliant Types I, 2 and 6) are comfortable with rules, authority and structure. These types benefit most from evidence-based strategies like Weight Watchers, which include a number system for calorie counting and group meetings that hold you accountable. Deep Types (Withdrawn Types 4, 5 and 9) can be intimidated by group exercise or group meetings. They may become overwhelmed by the idea of making complex recipes and easily experienced decision fatigue. The idea for these types is to make foods decisions ahead of time and decrease variability. They may benefit from things like meal replacement bars and shakes or pre-portioned frozen foods.

Do you use the three main instincts at all (Self-Preservation, Sexual, Social) in this work? I’m asking because I’m a Self-Pres dominant, and when I learned that I had hunger anxiety, knowing that this came out of my Self-Pres fears helped me to overcome it and lose 20 pounds. Also, because I have a Social blind spot, I don’t tend to fit the typical Seven profile of being socially oriented and prefer to go it alone when it comes to weight loss.

When I initially learned about the Enneagram, I did not learn about the three main instincts. Now I find myself resistant to obtaining a deeper understanding of these concepts. They may be beneficial, and I am probably missing out. However, I found that they added a level of complexity that was not required for my application to weight loss. That being said, sometimes I will find someone who identifies strongly with Type and yet there seem to be other drivers of their behavior not explained by simple Enneagram Type. I am impressed to hear that this was a significant breakthrough for you in terms of weight, so I need to make a concerted effort to improve my understanding on the instincts.

You recommend a vegan diet – why?

My site started out entirely about personality as it relates to weight loss. But as I learned more about “plant-based” diets, the more I realized it was imperative to highlight this way of eating. It is now the number one recommendation I tell my patients, friends and family, and it overshadows any specific skill recommendation that I can give. The vegan diet is clinically proven to be the most effective, sustainable and health-promoting diet. It can reverse heart disease, cancer and diabetes, which are our most common killers. I tell every patient about the benefits and practical aspects of eating this way. Beware that just going vegan is sometimes not enough, because Oreos, Coke and French fries are vegan. The healthy vegan diet is a whole-food, plant-based, no-oil diet. Now, instead of primarily using the Enneagram to prescribe specific weight loss strategies, I use it to pinpoint motivations that individuals may have to switch their diet. Once I get them to switch to a plant-based diet, then I can almost say “my work here is done.”

Can people work with you if they don’t want to go vegan?

Yes, of course. None of my patients come to me as vegans. Vegans don’t usually require a doctor’s assistance, as they usually don’t have typical diseases like high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, heartburn, kidney stones, asthma, constipation or various rheumatoid diseases such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis or rheumatoid arthritis. In a similar way, I look forward to working with someone who smokes cigarettes, because I know that if I can motivate them to stop smoking, then their health will improve dramatically. Every time a smoking patient sees me, I am looking for a way to help them stop smoking. This is the same way with meat, dairy and eggs.

What’s the best way for people to contact you if they’d like to try out DIETnosis?

My site is absolutely free. Simply go to www.dietnosis.com and subscribe, and I will keep subscribers updated with the latest personality-based evidence regarding weight loss. People can also reach out to me on Twitter (@Dietnosis), Facebook or email (Scott@DIETnosis.com).

Further Up Maslow’s Pyramid: Self-Esteem vs. Real Meaning

No, you’re not seeing double. I didn’t finish my thoughts on Maslow’s famous pyramid last week, so here it is again. I’m sure that’s terrible for SEO, but it must be done.

I left off talking about the three basic instincts. As I mentioned last time, it’s not wrong and in fact necessary to have these instincts, but the problem is that we get fixated on one of them. This causes an unhealthy preoccupation with that one, possibly to the detriment of the others. We are not whole as long as we remain driven by one of these instincts. This is why it’s important to know and understand what drives you. Sandra Maitri, in “The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram,” has a wonderful diagram showing the outline of an upside-down human being. Across the top of that outline are the three instincts, which have taken over. Another diagram shows the human right-side up, in which the instincts rest at the bottom of the outline. The Enneagram Institute has a paid test on the instincts to help you figure out your “stack”: the order of importance for each instinct to you.

It’s also important to understand how to get free of this imbalance. Once you know your instinct fixation, watch out for it. Observe it nonjudgmentally. Observing is enough to take its power away. I can prove this from experience. As a self-preservation Seven, I have always traveled with food and water everywhere I go – even to the grocery store – just to make sure that I don’t have to experience a moment of deprivation. (I do have low blood sugar, but still…) In fact, one of my friends calls me “The Walking Picnic.” Last year, I began to notice, to my surprise and delight, that I was leaving the house with no food packed in my purse, and even forgetting my water bottle! I had made no forced, Superego-driven decision to do this. It happened organically as I have steadily done the work of self-observation and awareness and become less afraid.

Now we come to the upper region of the pyramid, and here’s what I find really interesting. The top two bars of the pyramid, in my estimation, are really about the first and second halves of human life (to borrow Richard Rohr’s paradigm). The need for self-esteem is present throughout the earlier years, as we go through school being recognized for accomplishments that we think make us “special.” This is necessary to our psychological development. It gives us an idea of what we’re capable of and what society values.

However, I believe that the intention of God is that, eventually, humans begin to discover that the recognition isn’t enough. You’ve reached this rung, you’ve gotten these awards or achieved these goals and isn’t that great, but you sense something’s missing still. This should propel you to the tip of that pyramid toward self-actualization. Unfortunately, forces within and without conspire to keep you complacent, distracted, hopeless, driven to do more – whatever. Can you think of a being who benefits from humans not thinking about the meaning of life and their deeper purpose? Do you imagine that he’s pretty good at derailing people? The Superego doesn’t help, either, trying to convince us to stick to its carefully proscribed plan.

I’m reminded that the first washing machine was invented in a Shaker community, with the goal of freeing up more time to pray. Today, we have more labor-saving devices than you can shake a stick at, but how many of us calculate how many hours of labor we’re saving and devoting those hours to additional prayer? I’m not trying to be preachy; I’m trying to prove a point: getting to the second-half-of-life realization that there’s a deeper purpose to our existence can be tough. This is why some people retire and just feel lost; what they thought was their purpose—their job—is gone, and they don’t know how to replace it. Not a lot of people seem to get to the top rung of Maslow’s pyramid. If you’re reading this blog, you are probably on that journey.

The word “self-actualization” may give some Christians the heebie-jeebies, but I look at it as becoming your actual self: a person who experiences their purpose, meaning and inner potential. That’s a tall order. Sort of like climbing a pyramid – hard work, but what a view when you reach the top! Let’s encourage each other as we climb. As always, I welcome your thoughts in the comments below.