All you need to do to lose weight is spend 15 minutes writing about the values that are most important to you.
This is according to a new study published in the magazine Psychological Science, in which researchers recruited 45 female undergraduates who had a body mass index of 23 or higher (58 per cent of the women were classified as overweight or obese).
Each woman was weighed, then given a list of values – such as creativity, music, relationships – and asked to rank the values in order of importance.
Half the women were asked to write for 15 minutes about the value they considered of most importance in their lives. The other half (the control group) were asked to write about a value with less resonance, one they felt might be important to someone else.
The women returned to be weighed four months later. The group that had written about an important value had lost an average of 3.4lb, while the control group gained an average of 2.76lb, a pattern of weight gain that is apparently typical for undergraduates.
Now, the report I read doesn’t specify whether these women were also on a calorie-controlled diet or whether they did or didn’t take regular exercise, which surely would have skewed the statistics somewhat. However, the fact that this type of journaling – or “positive shrinking” as the Daily Mail describes it – might help women drop a dress size is fascinating in itself, especially if is being taken seriously by the psychological community.
According to Christine Logel of Renison University College in Ontario, co-author of the report, “We have this need to feel self-integrity. When something threatens your sense that you’re a good person, you can buffer that self-integrity by reminding yourself how much you love your children, for example.”
Ms Logel added that perhaps the women who wrote about an important value felt good about themselves and didn’t then eat to make themselves feel better. Over the course of a few months, that could make a real difference to their lives and their weight.
“Values affirmations can bolster self-control by focusing people on higher values rather than on immediate impulses,” she said. “By reminding people of what is really important, this also buffers people against mundane stressors that might otherwise sap mental resources which are needed for self-regulation and effective coping. Even when brief, values affirmations can have lasting effects if they interrupt ruminative cycles that worsen outcomes over time.”
If her theories are correct, then imagine the long-term effect of writing about your key values every day. That, combined with a good dose of counting your blessings, practising healthy self-care, processing your emotions and truly accepting yourself as you are is surely the best recipe there is for losing excess pounds.
Leave a Reply