Weight Loss - It's All in Your Head

Filed in archive Weight on February 15, 2007

Sure. We exercise, but is it doing us any good? Probably not, if we don't believe we're benefitting from it. So all that straining and sweating may be just a waste of time. For exercise to help lose weight, we have to put our whole body into it, and that includes our brains.

According to Aphrodite Womens Health, your mind-set may be influencing how well your exercise routine works. Researchers at Harvard set out to prove it.

The researchers studied 84 female housekeepers from seven hotels, where half of them were told that their regular work was enough exercise to meet the requirements for good health, while the other half were told nothing. Langer wanted to determine if the subjects' mind-set (in this case, their perceived levels of exercise) could inhibit or enhance the health benefits of exercise independent of any actual exercise.

Four weeks later, the researchers assessed any changes in the women's health, and, astonishingly, found that the women in the informed group had lost an average of 2 pounds, lowered their blood pressure by almost 10 percent, and were significantly healthier as measured by body-fat percentage, body mass index, and waist-to-hip ratio.

So, when we exercise, instead of concentrating on how hard we're working, and how tired we are, instead we should be thinking about all the weight we're losing, imagining our blood pressure dropping and our bodies glowing with health. It wouldn't hurt to try it, and it just might work.