Learning Self Control Helps Combat Obesity

If you placed a marshmallow on the dinner table in front of your child, could they wait to eat it?

Could they wait 15 minutes?

It’s hard enough for adults to delay gratification. But kids who are able to learn self-control skills at age 4 have a lower body mass index 30 years later, according to a study to be published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

In fact, it also helps them as adolescents in other areas such as: academics, social skills and handling stress, according to a press release from Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati.

“Interventions can improve young children’s self control, which may decrease children’s risk of becoming overweight and may have further positive effects on other outcomes important to society…” said lead researcher Tanya R. Schlam, from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, in the release.

Between the years 1968 and 1974, researchers gave 653 4-year-olds a test on how well they could delay gratification. They were offered a cookie or a marshmallow and told that if they could wait an unspecified amount of time to eat it, they would be given a second treat. The children were made to wait 15 minutes.

Years later, researchers followed up with the study participants.

“The researchers found that each minute a child delayed gratification predicted a 0.2 decrease in adult BMI.”

They also discovered that only 24 percent were overweight and 9 percent were obese. That’s considerably lower than the national average in 2008 which found 34 percent overweight and 34 percent obese, according to the news release.

With results like that, it makes putting off dessert worth the wait.

Alice Warchol is a freelance health blog writer.

+ Learn about Nutritional Analysis

+ Find a Fitness and Weight Loss Program