Digest a 'la Simone: Thinking=Eating, Excuses

Two recent suggestions from my friend Simone.

From Jezebel, I'm not fat, I'm just smart details the findings of a new study that found that people consume more calories following "intellectual work" than after relaxing. Apparently, doing a crossword or Sudoku puzzle causes people to eat more calories than say, staying at wall. (That is, of course, unless your name is Henry David Thoreau.)

The study's main author, Jean-Phillipe Chaput hypothesized that this could be a contributing factor "to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialized countries."

Meh. I don't know about this study. Something seems off.

Firstly, the problem is not just the consumption of more calories--it's the consumption of bad calories. When most people snack during the work day or during finals or whenever, it's most crap food: chips, cookies, and crunchy salty sweet things.

Secondly, this implies that a lot of people (specifically, people with weight problems) are doing a great deal of heavy thinking, if you will. Really? I don't know.

From Lifehacker, Why Your Self-Handicapping Excuses Don't Work (And How to Fix Them) highlights a NY Times article discussing self-handicapping.

Self-handicapping is something that everyone does on occasion, but people who do it regularly are generally seen as annoying. Who wants to hear excuses all the time? (Otherwise known as whining.)

To protect our fragile egos, we've all thrown out the occasional "my dog ate my homework" type excuse, but for people who do it often, it becomes an exercise in self delusion. The Times cites some interesting information:

Studies of college students have found that habitual handicappers — who skip a lot of classes; who miss deadlines; who don’t buy the textbook — tend to rate themselves in the top 10 percent of the class, though their grades slouch between C and D.

It's one thing to miss an occasional deadline, forget an appointment, etc. but when the same thing happens consistently with the same reasons for failure being offered, it's not healthy.

The Times also points out that if someone else is giving excuses for you, people won't hate you. But they don't explain how to get other people into doing it... I suspect the trick is to recruit someone with an extra dose of patience and sympathy.

Good luck with that!