Using your brain directly makes you lose weight by burning your calories. It can help you by keeping you focused on healthy choices, like eating well and staying active.
When you think hard, it can help you stay motivated and handle stress better, which are important for sticking to a weight loss plan that works for you.
How Thinking Hard Help You Lose Weight?
Robert Sapolsky, a professor at Stanford University, recently stated that during tournaments, chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories per day, which is three times higher than the daily average.
Your body’s metabolism, which is like its engine, and putting in mental effort can both help with losing weight.
Here’s How:
Firstly, your metabolism controls how rapidly your body burns calories, even when you aren’t moving much.
When you use your brain a lot, such as when you’re studying or solving a problem, you burn more calories than when you’re just chilling out.
Secondly, when you’re putting in mental effort to reach your weight loss goals, you’re more likely to make healthy choices. You might decide to eat more veggies and less junk food because you’re focused on feeling good.
Plus, mental effort helps you resist cravings and emotional eating by making you better at controlling your impulses.
So, By maintaining a healthy metabolism and making the mental effort to make smart choices, you can help your body lose excess weight and keep it off in the long run.
Caloric Burn From Thinking:
Thinking uses up energy, just like when you’re physically active, but in a different way. Even though you might not feel like you’re burning calories when you’re lost in thought, your brain is actually working hard.
It’s kind of like a busy city that never sleeps, with lots of activity going on all the time.
When you’re thinking hard, your brain cells (neurons) are firing messages to each other, and that takes energy. Imagine it’s like a bunch of little workers in your brain, buzzing around and using up fuel to keep things running smoothly.
While we can’t exactly measure how many calories we burn from thinking, studies show that our brains use a lot of energy – about 20% of the body’s total. So, even if you don’t break a sweat when thinking about an issue or imagining things, your brain is still working, burning calories.
Mindful Eating and Intellectual Awareness:
Mindful eating and being aware of your thoughts helps you in losing weight.
Imagine you’re sitting down to eat your favorite meal. Mindful eating means really focusing on every bite – enjoying the flavors, feeling the textures, and listening to your body to know when you’re full.
Now, cognitive awareness is understanding why you eat what you eat. Maybe you reach for a bag of chips when you’re stressed, or you always have dessert after dinner out of habit.
Intellectual awareness helps you recognize these patterns and make smarter choices.
By combining mindful eating with cognitive awareness, you become more in tune with your body’s needs and cravings. This can lead to healthier choices, better portion control, and ultimately, successful weight loss in the long run.
