Study: A 15-minute writing exercise can help you lose weight

And you thought sitting on your derrière churning out copy contributed to your waistline. Well, it still might, but putting pen to paper can also inspire weight loss.

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Sort of, say researchers at the University of Waterloo and Stanford University.

According to a new study published in Psychological Science, women who spent 15-minutes writing about their most important values lost more weight than those who didn’t put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

From Eureka:

“For this study, the researchers recruited 45 female undergraduates who had a body mass index of 23 or higher. A body mass index of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal weight; 58 percent of the women were overweight or obese. Each woman was weighed, and was then given a list of important values, like creativity, politics, music, and relationships with friends and family members. Each woman ranked the values in order of how important they were to her. Then half the women were told to write for 15 minutes about the value that was most important to her. The other half, a control group, were told to write about why a value far down on their list might be important to someone else.

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