Believe it or else…

• Tuesday February 20, 2007 in: Diet and Exercise Tag(s):

  Technorati Tags: exercise

  Exercise is good for the body. This is a general fact and everyone knows this. However a new study thinks that there's more to exercise than what we actually know. It concludes that unless you think you are getting a good workout, you won't be able to get the most out of your exercise. Meaning, it's not enough that you sweat it out in the gym, it is also important that you believe that you are doing a great job while you're at it. Belief in exercise boosts the benefits.

  Here's what MSNBC Fitness has to say to make things a lot clearer.

  Hotel cleaners who were told that their work of cleaning roughly 15 rooms each day was enough physical activity to maintain a healthy lifestyle were more trim and fit four weeks later than their peers who weren't given this message, Dr. Ellen Langer and her student Alia J. Crum report in the February issue of Psychological Science.

  While the placebo effect of fake pills is widely accepted, Crum and Langer note, no one has yet studied whether the belief that exercise is maintaining fitness might exert a kind of placebo effect as well.

  "These results support the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or in whole via the placebo effect," Crum and Langer write. "Whether the change in physiological health was brought about directly or indirectly, it is clear that health is significantly affected by mind-set."

  So, the power of the mind is at play in our quest for the right shape. So the next time you hop into your treadmill and sweat your fat away, you know what to do next.