You may have heard the tale of two personalities: for many of us, the idea that there are two basic kinds of people resonates based on personal experience. Others consider a “spectrum” between two polar opposites when thinking about how these two fundamentally different types of personalities affect our lifestyles and life choices.

Classically speaking, Type A is the organized, controlled decision-maker: or what some would call the “control freak”. This kind of individual always seems to have everything together, but often, when we look closer at the situation, we see that there is no magic to it - it's just a question of prioritizing. The Type A individual simply puts more work into planning everything in his or her life.

Type B, on the other hand, is not oriented toward a tight schedule, concrete planning, and rigidly controlled decision-making. It's not always that the Type B individual wants to coast through life, it's just that they have replaced this control with other values.

In between these two extremes, you have a whole wide variety of personality types that fall into the spectrum in different ways. When looking at planning a fitness goal, it can be helpful to see where you fall, and how this might impact your planning decisions.

Type A: the pitfalls

The danger for this kind of personality in fitness planning is that a tendency toward perfection or overt control can get in the way of what is not entirely orderly process. Weight loss cannot be planned down to the pound; rather, an individual sometimes has to just work “blindly”, with an end goal in mind, but also with the realization that results will come slowly. The Type A might also be tempted to give up when they do not meet their own rigid expectations, or when a schedule has to be altered a bit. In the case of physical fitness, it's most often true that “the perfect is the enemy of the good” - and the Type A should take this maxim to heart, knowing that a consistent approach is better than a perfect one.

Type B: the potential dangers

With a Type B personality, a kind of reverse situation applies. The Type B is not likely to despair when a schedule changes, or when some carefully planned element of their fitness routine shifts slightly. They are more likely to let their goals “fizzle out”, either by being too indulgent in allowing changes to occur, or to just drop off over time. The solution to this is to practice a focused determination and be aware of how any changes are affecting your original schedule.

Going the distance

The key to these situations is balance - when an individual finds that they can keep a positive attitude despite change, that they can keep their momentum despite shifts in their schedule, and when they can accurately record fitness projects to stay motivated, they are competently handling whichever kind of personality they have. Striking a balance between disappointment and carelessness is essential to doing the long-term work that is needed to stay in shape and keep developing healthy goals for life.