Your Locus of Control Can Influence Your Weight Loss Success.

Your Locus of Control

What is Locus of Control?

Locus of control is a concept originally developed by the psychologist Julian B. Rotter. The principle of the notion refers to how strongly people believe they are in control over situations that affect their lives.

Ones locus of control sits on a spectrum between, internal locus of control and external locus of control. Somebody with a strong external locus of control supports the belief that one is helpless, without blame, and not in control of one's successes and failures. Conversely, somebody with a strong internal locus of control believes they are completely in control of their own destiny, with one’s actions having a direct influence on one’s future.

Rotter, designed a question-based assessment and a corresponding scale to identify where participants sit in the internal-external spectrum.

An example of the types of statements that Rotter would ask:

1. Misfortune is usually brought about by people’s own actions.

2. Things that make us unhappy are largely due to bad luck.

As you can see from the examples given that the mind-set of the statements is indeed very different. The first statement would indicate that an individual has a belief that people are in control of their own actions and what occurs is largely due to the decisions that they have made. Rotter refers to this as having a high internal locus of control.

If somebody identifies towards the second statement, it shows a mind-set that life events occur outside of their control. Rotter refers to this as having a high external locus of control.

How does ones locus of control influence dieting success?

A while ago I was working with a client who’d been recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she was in her late 40s, extremely successful, clever and showed some signs of possessing a high internal locus of control. When Andrea (not her real name) came to me, she was determined to “get rid of” her diabetes, she believed, over the past few years while climbing high in her career, she had let her personal healthcare slip. Andrea took full responsibly for her condition and believed she was fully in control of fixing it! After only a one month, Andrea had reversed her diagnosis and after a few more months she was living a very sustainable healthy lifestyle and has never looked at an insulin needle again!

As a side note - If you are reading this and think, ‘wow I can fix my diabetes in a month,’ please take care, Andrea is an extreme example, she is a very determined person, an A-Type personality and definitely not like the majority of us. Andrea has a very high internal locus of control, is a high achiever and most people would consider Andrea to be very successful in many parts of her life.

Conversely I have met and worked with lots of people who inject themselves regularly with insulin and believe type 2 diabetes is just a symptom of their age, life and there isn’t much they can do about it. Indicating a higher external locus of control.

Locus of control and weight loss

You can probably see from the example, that if you believe you are responsible for your health status, then you’re more likely to take independent action. If you don’t feel that you’re entirely responsible for your health status then you’re unlikely to make the changes required to reach your goals.

You have to believe that you’re in control of your own destiny and the changes you’d make will make the difference. If you are looking to lose weight for the long-term, your mind-set of having a high internal locus of control will help you to have the strength for long term success. Without at least some internal locus of control, you will struggle to take the responsibility for making the required changes.

Take our locus of control test and find out where you sit on the spectrum

TAKE THE TEST

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Charlotte Mottram is a Psychologist and Weight Loss Consultant. Charlotte lectures at Bournemouth and Poole College in the uk and has been helping people lose weight for over 20 years.

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