Men are better than women
by Giz on Jan.26, 2009, under Uncategorized
I happened across some research news the other day on Yahoo… it seems that men are better at turning off their brains to resist cravings than women are. An excerpt:
In the experiment, the volunteers did not eat for a day and were then asked to suppress all thoughts of food.
When questioned further, the male participants reported fewer hunger pangs and fewer cravings for food.
Then, by using a brain scanner, scientists tried to see if this was backed up by differences in the patterns of brain activation between men and women.
After the men were told to resist their cravings, there was far less activity in regions of the brain called the amygdala, hippocampus, orbitofrontal cortex and striatum, reports the BBC.
The men seemed to do better and brain scans later revealed they had far less activity than the women in a part of the brain linked to desire for food.
So does this mean a gal should just give up resisting foods that she 1 - knows aren’t conducive to their goals and 2 - doesn’t necessarily even really want? Heck no! I’m not a researcher but I’m pretty sure the old adage still applies: “Practice makes perfect”.
Stick to your guns and keep trying,
giz
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January 28th, 2009 on 6:27 am
it is practice makes perfect and it is —if my marriage is any indicator :)—so frickin true huh?
my husband can walk away from my friends BEN AND JERRY in a way I can not.
January 30th, 2009 on 10:55 pm
Well, we may have a harder time walking away from sweets… but I think it’s ’cause guys have other temptations on their minds. I think the research that says guys think about sex every few seconds (or whatever the real number is) may hold a clue as to why the “food craving” area of their brain isn’t quite as busy as ours.
February 2nd, 2009 on 2:27 pm
LOL. Crabby, good point - I think I heard 7 seconds.
And Miz - I have absolutely no B&J resistance if it’s in my house. If I’m away, hubby can have a container last until it’s got freezer burn…
February 4th, 2009 on 6:38 am
I read this too, and sometimes I think that since we’ve been told all our lives that we have cravings, and cravings can’t be resisted, that we start to believe that … sometimes brain follows belief… putting this into practice, another story LOL
February 4th, 2009 on 9:04 pm
Good point, Mingo. “What you think about, you bring about.”