Thinking Makes You Fat

You’d think with all the technological wonders being announced daily that somebody would come up with a Nutty Professor-like weight loss potion eventually. Likely “they” are working on it and are personally invested in it because “they” have likely gotten fat, too, thanks to the computer age.

Psychosomatic Magazine by several scholars, all with Ph.D. trailing behind their names. They grabbed a little more than a dozen women from Laval University (adjusting for menstrual cycles) and tested the effects of different tasks on their hunger levels. A couple of hours after breakfast, some were given the task to relax, others to summarize some text, and others to perform a challenging computer task. The scientists also took blood samples to analyze, and each student performed each of the tasks on three different days.

After the tasks, the students were given access to a buffet and their food intake was monitored. They found that the students who performed the summarizing task ate on average 848 kiloJoules more food than the students relaxing, and those who performed the challenging computer task ate 1057 kJ more.

Sigh. Thinking makes you fat. No wonder.

Just remember, though, this study was preliminary with a small sample of women.

But still…

This, coupled with that silly New York Times article about blogging leading to cardiac arrest should make you think twice about skipping out on exercise, which is still the only way to really combat it. It’s especially bad news in the wake of another discovery that carbs actually

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