Mind Voodoo and Weight-Loss

Based on my personal experience, I've always thought there was a mind-voodoo component to weight-loss.

Simply by telling 44 hotel maids that what they did each day involved some serious exercise, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and Alia J. Crum, a student, were apparently able to lower the women’s blood pressure, shave pounds off their bodies and improve their body-fat and “waist to hip” ratios. Self-awareness, it seems, was the women’s elliptical trainer.

Source: NYT via Metafilter