In the mood…music and lighting can impact your weight

Posted by Liz on Sep 3, 2012 in diet | 0 comments

Lately, I’ve been focusing on diet, exercise and weight a lot of Flashfree, mostly because women consistently talk about the changes that they are trying to make to eat more healthy foods, incorporate regular exercise into their busy schedules and pay closer attention to the more granular details of their lives, like stress and schedules. So, I was truly intrigued when I ran across a study in Psychological Reports discussing how music and lighting can also impact both how much we enjoy our food but also, how much we eat during a meal.

Although this research focuses on fast food restaurants, I believe that it could easily be extrapolated to the home setting or influence our choices of setting when we eat out. When the researchers did a partial makeover on a local Hardees, adding softer lighting and less jarring music to half the restaurant, they found that patrons who ate in the ‘chill section actually lingered longer and consumed roughly 18% less of what they ordered. Moreover, they rated the food more enjoyable.

When was the last time you sat down for a proper meal, turned off the cell phone and email, dimmed the lights and put on some relaxing music? I was fortunate to do so over the weekend with a good friend and it was just what the doctor ordered. I wasn’t paying too much attention to how much I was eating but rather, that it was such a nice to treat to simply hang out and talk for hours.

Perhaps it’s time to change the focus towards atmosphere. It may make a world of difference.