Laugh Yourself Slim

Those of us who have been overweight know it can make us feel miserable.  Diet and exercise are crucial to help us shed the unwanted pounds and keep them off.  Did you know enjoying a good laugh can also help lose a few pounds?

Yes, it is true!   Laughter is really the best medicine for a weight issue as discovered in recent research published in the International Journal of Obesity

It was a small study with 45 pairs of adult friends in a room set up with equipment to measure the amount of calories burned and to monitor the type of laughter, the rate and duration of the laughter.   To measure their heart rate each of the participants wore a heart monitor.  The participants were then shown serious and funny film clips.

What the researchers discovered was that laughing increased the calorie expenditure and heart rate by up to 20% and the longer the both heart rate and calorie expenditure by up to 20 per cent – and the results were greater for the participants that laughed longer.

Next the researchers, using the results, went on to calculate that depending on the person’s weight and laughter intensity a mere 15 minutes of laughter a day would burn 10 to 40 calories,  This is enough to drop 1 to 4 pounds a year.

Why laughter helps lose weight…

“They burned 20 percent more calories when laughing, compared to not laughing,” Buchowski said. “Then we calculated whatwould happen if somebody laughed for 10 or 15 minutes a day and we found that it was up to 50 calories, depending on your body size and the intensity of the laughter.”

The thinking that laughter can be beneficial to one’s health has been around for many years. It could be because laughter increases the amount of oxygen in the blood and reduces muscle tension.  It also gives your heart exercises and the heart produces happy chemicals called endorphins in the brain.. It makes perfect sense that laughing would help burn calories as well because of the extra movement and increase in heart rate linked with laughing.

To be clear… you cannot eat a piece of cake and laugh it off since laughing does not burn lots of extra calories.  Laughter can also make  us feel more positive about life which in turn helps us feel better about ourselves and boosts our motivation to say goodbye to the excess pounds once and for all.

If nothing else when you add laughter into your life and include it on your list of weight loss tips it gives you every good reason to have fun with friends and loved ones, watch your favorite comedy program or movie or enjoy other ‘happy’ activities.  Whatever it takes to get you laughing.