Guest Author - Deborah Markus

My first thought, on getting word that someone had done a study concluding that walking can help you stop craving chocolate, was something along the lines of, "Well, duh." If I'm craving chocolate and I know I really shouldn't have it -- perhaps because I've already just had some, and then I had some more -- the best way to keep myself from lunging for it is to do something else. Anything. Taking a walk is not only a focused activity, but will quite literally remove me from the scene of the chocolate.

My second thought was, "Wait -- someone's getting paid to study this kind of thing?"

And my third thought was to wonder where exactly I could apply for funding.

On reading more about the study, which was reported in late November 2008 at Science Daily, WebMD, and other web sites, I saw that the situation was more complicated -- and more intriguing.

Two researchers at the University of Exeter did a study involving 25 "regular chocolate eaters" -- that is, people who consume the sweet on a regular basis. In this case, all the participants indulged in the equivalent of at least two 50-gram bars a day. I just checked my shelf, and it turns out that 50 grams of chocolate is a pretty hefty bar. Just to give you some perspective, those 100-calorie bars that Hershey's puts out for people who are trying to diet without feeling deprived are 17 grams of chocolate apiece.

So: 25 people who had a habit of putting away at least a baking-sized bar of chocolate a day were told not to have any at all for three days. Which is where, if I'd been involved, this experiment would have lost at least one member.

The participants were then asked either to walk briskly on a treadmill for 15 minutes or to sit quietly. It isn't mentioned whether the quiet sitters were asked what they were thinking about. I'm guessing chocolate.

After the walking and/or resting, the participants were asked to take some kind of test (mental, not physical). Each participant was then given a chocolate bar and told to unwrap and handle it, but not to eat it. Which is where, if I'd been involved, this experiment would have been reported to Amnesty International.

Apparently the participants who'd been exercising instead of resting reported less-intense cravings.

I do wonder how much less intense we're talking about. Were the people who exercised calm enough not to burst into tears when they realized that they really, really weren't going to be allowed to have the chocolate they'd just opened up and fondled? Were they just too tired from their exertions not to wrestle the researchers to the ground and demand to have their chocolate back?

As disrespectful as I've sounded about this study, it does sound valuable. I hope more work is done toward learning about, as the researchers put it, how to interrupt cravings. And anything that encourages people to exercise more frequently is good. I'm getting into a regular exercise habit myself, and it really does make me think about what I'm putting into my body.

Still, I'm going to remember my own old trick of exercising once a craving hits. It's a good distraction, and it makes me feel too self-righteously healthy to give in to the temptation.

And I don't intend to get in the habit of unwrapping and handling chocolate I'm not supposed to eat.