Boost your mood to drop weight - Shape Your Life

While public-health experts debate the possible causes of America's obesity epidemic, here's one simple explanation: our moods. In Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise (Oxford University Press, 2003), Robert E. Thayer, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, describes how the stress, depression and anxiety that result from our pressured lifestyle drive us to self-medicate with food and make us avoid exercise--the very thing that would improve our mental state. Among his findings:

* High anxiety levels often make us eat less, but lower-level anxiety--especially if it's combined with low energy--often makes us eat more.

* In one study, the biggest mood change that resulted from doing 20 minutes of moderate exercise was a feeling of revitalization and energy; pleasure and happiness were next, followed by tranquility.

* Moderate exercise primarily increases energy; intense exercise mainly reduces tension.

Thayer offers compelling evidence that understanding and controlling our negative moods is the key to managing our unwanted urges to eat and that exercise is a better mood regulator than food is - or just about anything else. By choosing exercise instead of food when you feel down, he says, you can achieve what you most need and want: "calm energy."

COPYRIGHT 2003 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group