Thinking about going for a run has the same health benefits as actually going for one, according to a groundbreaking new study.
The study was carried out by Professor Imona Jetski at the American University of Malta.
“We divided our test subjects into two groups: one group that got up early in the morning three times a week to run five kilometres before work, and another group that promised themselves they would get up and run, but ultimately decided to stay in bed,” Prof. Jetski told Bis-Serjetà.
“At the end of the study, we found that the two groups had burned exactly the same amount of calories.”
Prof. Jetski emphasised that to be effective, the mental effort expended had to be more than just a passing thought.
If you want to lose weight just by thinking, it’s not as simple as thinking, ‘I should go for a run. No, I don’t feel like it.’ You need to spend at least an hour after your alarm goes off going back and forth in your mind, angsting, feeling guilty about being an unfit piece of shit, thinking about how much better you’ll feel if you do run, but also about how much your muscles will ache, and – depending on the season – thinking about how warm your bed is or how it’s only 6 am and it’s already 30 degrees outside.”
The professor also expounded on the advantages of not going for a run.
“You don’t need to buy special thinking shoes, and science hasn’t yet found a link between thinking and increased stress on the knees. And because you didn’t go for a run, you don’t have to spend time uploading your route to all your social media accounts afterwards. Although, if you know Photoshop, you could just fake it and get all the praise anyway.”
Prof. Jetski added that research has found that 100 percent of both people who run and people who don’t run die at some point in their lives.
“So is it really worth the effort?” she asked.
