Think Your Way to a Healthier Weight: Study

Phrases like "ideal weight" can be really misleading - a healthy weight looks different for everyone, and weight is not the most important sign of health. It's an idea that should be treated with care and understanding.

But losing weight (if you want to for health reasons) doesn't have to mean fad diets and super strict workouts, like what popular trends suggest. Those often cause negative mental and physical problems, which isn't worth it.

However, according to Harvard psychology professor and mindfulness expert Ellen Langer, Ph.D., your mindset could play a part in healthy weight loss. Here's what research says about this interesting idea, and what it means for discussions about weight loss.

In a study led by Langer1 a group of researchers studied 84 female room attendants working in seven different hotels.

They told one group that their work (cleaning hotel rooms) was actually exercise and counted toward being active.

The other group (the control group) wasn't told this, so they thought their work didn't count as exercise, and the only exercise that counted was working out after work. Neither group exercised regularly because they were busy.

After the experiment, the researchers made sure nothing else had changed (like their diet, lifestyle, hours worked, etc.). Then they could see if their mindset made a difference.

"By now seeing their work as exercise, there was a significant decrease in weight," Langer recounts. "There was a change in waist-to-hip ratio2, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down—we assume all because of the change of their mindset."

Pretty impressive, right? Now, to be fair, this is only one study, and the reason behind this finding needs to be confirmed through additional experiments.

But still, it's a topic worth discussing. As we mentioned earlier, the conversation around healthy, sustainable weight loss doesn't need to center around stress-inducing diet and exercise changes.

Instead, perhaps we should have more conversations about mindset, how to create sustainable changes, finding movement that you enjoy, metabolism-boosting tools, and finding pleasure in preparing healthier meals. This is just one piece of the puzzle.

Langer did discover a link between weight loss and mindset, finding that women who considered their daily movement as exercise lost more weight than those who discounted it. Neat, no? For more tips on mindfulness and health, tune in to Langer's episode below: