Paint the Room Blue

I was listening to the radio this morning and the radio personality was listing off tips from a new study that are supposed to help you eat less when you sit down to dinner or breakfast or whatever. As I thought more and more about each of the items on the short list, the more I think they all make perfect sense.

By the way, I looked for the link to the article or source for the list but I couldn't find it so we'll just have to list these as helpful pointers from an eat-less angel .... or something like that.

Here are the four pointers:

1. Light a vanilla scented candle: the vanilla scent reduces dessert cravings and is supposed to help you stop eating earlier. The scent alone is sugary enough to put those thoughts of chocolate cake out of your mind.
2. Listen to soft or soothing music: slower and soft music tends to be relaxing. Like when you get a massage, the music playing in the background is usually soothing and without lyrics. Its purpose is to calm you down; so, the same goes with eating. Calmer music can help you relax and slow down which gives your tummy time to digest what you're eating.
3. Turn the lights on and keep them bright: just like trying on clothes in a dressing room with fluorescent lights, bright lights make food look less appealing. Dimly lit restaurants make more money because the low lights help people throw their eating inhibitions to the wind causing them to order and devour more.
4. Lastly, paint your dining room blue: wherever you eat your meals, if that room is painted in blue shades then supposedly you will eat less. The reasoning behind the color theory has to do with the light causing the blue of the walls to reflect a blueish/gray hue on the food making it look less appealing. Apparently, the study showed that people who ate in blue rooms consumed 33% less than others.

Most of that makes perfect sense to me. Bad lighting can make food look less appealing, vanilla scents are so sugary that it could replace the want for dessert and music can be calming. The only part that I'm not so sure about is the blue room. Do colors really make a big difference in how a person is feeling, the way they look or how much they'll eat? They say taupe is soothing and yellow can cause panic. So now blue can stunt your appetite? In that case, let's paint the kitchen, dining room and living room blue -- just to cover the whole ground floor. Or maybe I'll eat in the guest room from now on since it's already painted in a blue color.

I think these pointers are good ones, though, despite the fact that they may or may not come from a medical journal or academic source. Tonight at dinner I think I'm going to turn off the TV and turn on some soft music. I can't do anything about the color of the walls, but I can light a few scented candles and see if that curbs my appetite at all. I do fell bad for the hubby though, he's 125 lbs soaking wet and certainly doesn't need to eat any less, but he'll sit through my experiments just because he knows how much I want to drop the weight. Let's give this study a shot!

The New BMI (Body Mass Index)?

Leave it to a professor from the University of Nevada, Reno to come up with a new system for figuring out what a person's healthy and optimal weight should be. For decades, literally, people have calculated their optimal weight using the Body Mass Index (BMI) which uses height and weight to calculate an estimate of their body fat. However, it isn't an exact science, but more a tool to find out where you should be as far as weight and BMI are concerned according to your height.

For instance, I weigh 213 pounds and I'm 5'6". My current BMI is 34.4, well above the healthy range for a person my height. The healthy BMI range is 18.5 to 24.9. My goal of weighing 150 pounds puts me right into that healthy BMI range with a 24.2. I thought these numbers were a bit strange, however, because when I calculated my range the BMI said I could be as low as 114 lbs or as high as 156 lbs and still be considered healthy. No offense to the BMI, but if I was 114 lbs then I would be in danger of looking like I had an eating disorder.

So, those discrepancies are exactly what sparked George Fernandez, a professor of applied statistics and director of the Center for Research Design and Analysis at the University of Nevada, Reno to reevaluate the BMI system and find a new, better way to determine one's Max Weight Limit (MWL). For the entire press release, visit http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uonr-npd091809.php, otherwise, here is a primer.

Fernandez says every person, male or female, has an optimal max weight limit. Furthermore, that number can be determined using basic algebra. He says that there is a baseline height for males and females that can be used to determine the optimal weight; for males it is 5'9" and for females it is 5'0". Also, for men the base weight is 175 lbs and for women it is 125 lbs. For each inch off the baseline height, add or subtract five pounds. When you calculate your height with the additional or subtracted weight, then that is your Max Weight Limit.

I am 5'6", so I am 6 inches above the 5' standard. For each of the extra 6 inches, I add 5 pounds for each inch, so an additional 30 pounds can be added to the base weight of 125 lbs. According to Fernandez's method, I can weigh up to 155 lbs (125+30) and still be considered healthy.

For me, it seems this method turns out alright since it appears to line up really well with the BMI calculations. However, I heard about this when I was listening to Mark & Mercedes in the Morning on Mix 94.1, and there were men calling in to talk about what their optimal weight was and it seemed to be very low for a healthy, strong man. If I remember correctly, one man weighed around 230 lbs at about 6'4" and was considered to be in great shape, but he's more than 20 lbs heavier than Fernandez's study recommends.

I guess this just means that it's not an exact science either! Maybe the best way to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight or not is to actually be healthy. Eating healthy, exercising and getting the recommended physicals at the doctor is definitely one of the most effective ways to keep in shape.