Is It Possible to Think Yourself Thin?

A study was done involving two groups of women interested in weight loss. One group was told that it is not possible to think yourself thin, that your thought patterns don't have any influence on losing weight. The other group was told that yes indeed, it is possible to think yourself thin, and your thoughts of losing weight will actually take form and help you lose additional calories.

Sound like psuedoscience? Turns out that the group of women who were told that it's possible to think yourself thin actually did lose weight during the course of the study, and with no reported change in activity or diet.

Does merely thinking about losing weight actually help you lose weight? Is it true that all you have to do is have a positive attitude about it and the pounds will just start melting away?

The answer, alas, is no. It is not possible for thinking about losing weight to actually make you lose weight.

What is possible is that the shift in attitudes helps you burn more calories without realising you're doing it!

To understand why that second group of women lost weight wile the first group didn't, you first have to understand a little bit about the human mind and how it works, and how our thoughts influence reality.

Most people understand that, say, thinking a unicorn will walk into their front yard and offer them a ride to work doesn't mean that it's going to actually happen, no matter how hard we wish for it. Some things are outside our personal sphere of influence.

But it's all there in that word "personal." It is possible to affect ourselves with our thoughts. This has been demonstrated time and time again in the medical field, for example. Cancer patients are much more likely to reach remission if they stay positive through the ordeal than those who are negative and give in to depressive thoughts. Having a positive outlook won't cure cancer, but it will make the pain easier to manage, it will help you keep your goals in sight, it will assist in taking care of your body, and it increases your chances of coming out the other side. A negative attitude and depression means that an overtaxed body has yet another problem to deal with and can't expend as much energy working toward the recovery process.

(I'm not saying that all people with depression are quitters and losers here. In tough situations, depression is just about inevitable, and nobody should be blamed for a chemical imbalance in the brain that isn't their fault. I'm merely stating what a positive attitude has been shown to do, versus a negative one. Even those who stay positive may have the imbalance associated with depression. Some people are just better at fighting than others. I speak from experience with my own depression when I say that.)

Anyway, now that that little seque is over...

Thoughts can affect our lives in small but noticable ways. How does this translate to weight loss? How did that positive attitude help that second group of women lose weight when they claim they didn't do anything extra?

Likely, what happened is that the second group of women were more vigorous without even realising they were. Walking with a bounce in your step burns more calories than just plodding along while shuffling your feet, for example, because you'e using more energy with each step, and that energy comes from the food you eat and the stored fat in your body. Those women may not have noticed they were walking a touch more quickly, tidying up a little more energetically, but they may very well have been. It was done in baby steps, and so gradually that none of them noticed, but it was still done. Even a single extra step each day will mean you've walked further by the end of the year.

Also, with the thought that a positive attitude helps you lose weight in mind, these women probably also had weight loss constantly on the brain. They had positive reinforcement the whole time, coming from themselves. Therefore they were more likely to make healthier choices in terms of diet than those who were told that it doesn't matter. The first group had neither positive nor negative reinforcement, and so statistically weren't likely to change anything about their lives. But if the "think yourself thin" attitude went deeply enough as to be unconscious, the second group of women may have made healthier choices without knowing they were doing so. Maybe they didn't notice themselves adding a few more vegetables to meals, for example, or choosing carrot sticks instead of candy bars for a snack.

The problem with presenting only the bare results of that study is that it doesn't look hard enough into other causal factors. It seems, at first glance, that merely believing you'll lose weight will make it happen without anything else needing to change. It doesn't look at psychology, human behaviour, or any of the myriad other factors in our lives than can influence things. It doesn't look at how we react in context, it doesn't show enough emphasis on human tendancies, and it takes too much liberty with the assumptions.

I don't dispute the findings of the study. I believe it to be possible, but within the context of the additional information I've written about here. Just because the women didn't report any changes, or didn't even notice any changes, it doesn't mean that no changes occurred. We can look at scientific data until the cows come home, but unfortunately, we don't have a way yet to quanity and qualify the exact amount that our beliefs influence our lives in tangible ways. This, I believe, is the real key to explaining why that group of women lost weight when the other group didn't.