Walking Helps Prevent Chocolate Abuse

Walking can help you lose weight, and it’s not just because of the exercise. In a study by scientists at the U. of Exeter, chocolate lovers who were asked to take a brisk 15-minute treadmill walk before beginning work snacked on only half as much chocolate as study participants who were allowed to skip the walk and rest instead.
In an earlier study by the same group, a 15-minute walk was found to significantly reduce chocolate cravings.

You can read more about the walk to eat less chocolate and kill the chocolate cravings studies on the ScienceDaily web site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Get up and take a brisk 15 minute walk before your usual chocolate craving time. If walking isn’t convenient, try a different exercise. And remember, just trying not to think about chocolate doesn’t work.

More Breaks, Less Weight

In a study of nearly 5,000 US adults, researchers found that those who took more breaks from sitting tended to have smaller waists. The link between more breaks and a smaller waist was significant even after taking into account total time sitting and daily exercise habits. Several recent studies have shown that sitting is generally bad for your health. This study gives hope that a few more breaks during the day may help to counteract some the negative consequences of all of that desk time. Dr Genevieve Healy, the University of Queensland researcher who led the study, said: “Our research showed that even small changes, which could be as little as standing up for one minute, might help to lower this health risk.”

You can read more about sitting study on The European Society of Cardiology’s web site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Make a goal of standing up to stretch or walk around once or twice an hour. You might also try standing up whenever you take a phone call, or moving the trash bin away from your desk so you will have to get up and walk to it. (Hey, I can do that right now!)