Personality was associated with weight fluctuations over time (see Table 3). Controlling for the demographic covariates, participants with a dispositional proneness to experience negative emotions had greater fluctuations in weight. In particular, those who were highly impulsive (N5: Impulsiveness) and prone to depression (N3: Depression) had more difficulty maintaining a steady weight. By contrast, participants who scored high on Conscientiousness, and particularly the facets of C2: Order, C3: Dutifulness and C5: Self-Discipline, were able to maintain a more steady weight. Finally, highly active (E4: Activity) participants were also less prone to weight fluctuations, perhaps due, in part, to their physically active lifestyles. We found virtually identical associations between weight fluctuation and personality using either the simple standard deviation or the estimates from HLM (see Table 3). These associations between personality and BMI fluctuations remained significant after controlling for initial BMI.
