Kev Kennedy's Blog

Think yourself thin

I discovered an interesting fact the other day. Apparently, your brain is responsible for up to 25% of your metabolic rate. Or to put it another way, 25% of the calories you burn off are burned off by your brain.

So, can you think yourself thin? Well, there might be a connection between self-perception and health. If you think you’re healthy, even if you’re not, you’re apparently more likely to live longer. And if you are more aware of the exercise you’re getting you’ll begin to see the benefits of that exercise, in losing weight and toned muscles.

But another way you can think yourself thin is to think more, because thinking uses the brain, and the brain burns off calories. Or to put it another way, day-dreaming is good for you, and ‘time-wasting’ activities like sudoku or online scrabble is actually mental exercise and therefore important to your overall wellbeing. Mind you, your boss might have other ideas.

Mental stimulation is therefore important, which might explain why watching TV is a favourite hobby for the majority of obese people. Generally TV doesn’t stretch your brain in the same way that, for example, a book would. An exception to that rule would be Lost, because goodness knows what’s going on in that show!

There’s also the ‘boredom’ factor. One of my bad habits is to eat simply because I’m bored. When my brain is being stretched by a challenging assignment, or I’m lost in a complicated literary storyline, or I’m discussing politics with people who think differently from me, I don’t feel hungry, and I don’t ‘graze the fridge’.

So, the thinking both burns up calories and distracts me from taking on more!

[You can read more on the research into how thinking burns calories here]
 

Created on Mon 1st September 2008 10:53