I hate exercise. So do you. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could get all the benefits of exercise by just thinking about exercise? Thankfully, that’s exactly the kind of thing that our scientists are working on:
In this study, she decided to look at whether our perception of how much exercise we are getting has any effect on how our bodies actually look. To do this, she studied hotel maids.
As any casual observer of the hospitality industry knows, hotel maids spend the majority of their days lugging heavy equipment around endless hallways. Basically, almost every moment of their working lives is spent engaged in some kind of physical activity.
Well, turns out that the maids don’t really think of their jobs are exercise. That is not good.
Despite the fact all of the women in her study far exceeded the U.S. surgeon general’s recommendation for daily exercise, the bodies of the women did not seem to benefit from their activity.
Langer and her team measured the maids’ body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, weight and body mass index. They found that all of these indicators matched the maids’ perceived amount of exercise, rather than their actual amount of exercise.
If you have been paying attention, you’ll notice that this is opposite of what we really wanted at the top of this page. Let’s see if something can be done about that.
So Langer set about changing perceptions.
She divided 84 maids into two groups. With one group, researchers carefully went through each of the tasks they did each day, explaining how many calories those tasks burned. They were informed that the activity already met the surgeon general’s definition of an active lifestyle.
The other group was given no information at all.
One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio — and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.
One possible explanation is that the process of learning about the amount of exercise they were already getting somehow changed the maids’ behavior. But Langer says that her team surveyed both the women and their managers and found no indication that the maids had altered their routines in any way. She believes that the change can be explained only by the change in the women’s mindset.
Essentially, what Langer is talking about is a placebo effect. She says that if you believe you are exercising, your body may respond as if it is.
Yippie! Read the full article while I go off and imagine that I am running the marathon.
I was searching the net with words ‘effect of thinking of exercise’ – and i landed on your blog. For the last 9 years i have been practicing this with very good result. The only problem i have is my beer belly. I am unable to do anything about this, otherwise i have a body of a gym goer with very hard muscles, footballer calf muscles etc, collar muscles etc.
I saw a link to a book too: Effects of Directed Thinking on Exercise and Cardiovascular Fitness. Laura L. Ten Eyck1,*,; Dana P. Gresky2,; Charles G. Lord.
It is nice to know that somebody is interested in this which i am practicing for years. When I told my wife about this – one should see the look she sported !
That is to say – it is very difficult to talk about this to anybody. I do not get fever/cold, and get very good sleep.
I hope people do more research on this for the betterment of people, especially the ones who suffer due to various illness.