As summer gets closer and closer, many of us are worrying about our bikini bodies (or lack thereof). Losing weight or just toning up can be hard, especially if you’ve been in hibernation all winter long. I mean, come on. We need a little extra padding to avoid the insane cold. Plus, winter is the season of hot chocolate, holidays and comfort food.

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Photo courtesy of Pinterest

But if your skinny jeans are feeling a little tighter than usual, don’t blame all that food. Instead, blame your personality.

Wait, what?

According to this study on personality and eating habits, your personality traits actually do affect how you eat.

Researchers measured eating habits correlated with the personality traits found in the Big 5: extroversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism.

The findings:

Extroverted people, like the typical people-pleasers they are, are more likely to eat out with friends and have bigger portions of less healthy foods.

Conscientious people (people who tend to follow the rules) are unsurprisingly the healthiest. They’re the ones that will snack on carrot sticks instead of chips when the munchies hit.

Neurotic people are the most prone to emotional eating and usually eat dense and high-energy (aka high calorie) foods. Cue eating a whole bar of chocolate when finals week hits, because they have the least amount of restrained eating.

Open and agreeable people are more likely to be vegetarians and drink less sugary drinks.

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Photo courtesy of quickmeme.com

I’ve long thought personality is linked to eating habits and even disorders, but this new study just proves that there’s actually research backing it. I’m not saying that you should change your personality to lose weight, but if you find yourself eating a whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s at the end of a bad day, keep this mind…

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