Dr. Ellen Langer

Okay.

So here we take housekeepers who – first thing we did was ask them, how much exercise do you get?

Now, these are women cleaning hotel and motel rooms all day long.

Oddly, they say they're not getting any exercise.

And that's because they think exercise is what you do after work.

And after work, they're just too tired.

Okay, so now we take these women, divide them into two groups.

One group, we're going to teach them that their work is exercise.

They're told...

You know, working at the gym on this machine is like making a bed is like working on the machine.

We teach them that everything they're doing is in fact exercise.

So very simple studies.

We have two groups.

One group that now knows their work is exercise.

The other group that doesn't realize their work is exercise.

We take hosts of measures before we start.

And at the end, the two groups are not eating any differently.

One group isn't working any harder.

They're basically the same, except one group believes their work is exercise.

As a result of that change in mind, they lost weight.