People Gain 1.7 lbs On Average During The Winter. Here's How To Avoid Winter Weight Gain.
Noam Sharvit
We Help Busy High-Achievers Lose Weight, Restore Their Health And Look The Part With The "100 Days" Integrative Method.
Winter weight gain is real!
It just seems that our appetite is stronger in the fall & winter.
It’s becoming colder, with more holidays and delicious warm meals, staying indoors, less light, sleeping more and the winter blues.
NIH researchers?found that the average person gains 1.7 pounds as the year draws to a close, and loses 0.2 pounds in the spring. They found that virtually all the weight people gain over the year occurs in the second half, especially from October through December. As summer ends, our appetites increase and our weight ratchets upward.
If you’re looking to lose a significant amount of weight, it’s crucial to not fall off the wagon during the winter and holiday period.?
Look at the compound effect -?1.5 pounds X 20 years = 30 pounds. It’s a lot.?
So why does it happen?
There are 3 main reasons:??
1) The Holidays?
In many parts of the world, wintertime is filled with holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s. We typically celebrate them in social gatherings filled with heavy cocktail parties and family dinners.
On top of that, those who work in big companies often partake in a number of work-related celebrations during the holidays, at which high-calorie foods and beverages are served.
Researchers conclude that the main reason for winter weight gain is increased?calorie intake during the holiday season. This is due to larger portion sizes and greater consumption of high-calorie foods and beverages, such as pies, cakes, and cookies, and high-calorie beverages like?hot chocolate, eggnog, and spiked cider.
2) Less exercise?
Cooler weather usually means that we’re indoors, dangerously closer to the refrigerator, and far from bike trails, the beach, or anywhere else where we might get a bit of physical activity. In the NIH study, those who were the most physically active in the fall were least likely to gain weight.?
Exercise is not necessarily the tool that directly helps you shed the excess weight, interestingly enough exercise works simply by getting you away from accessible food.
3) Winter Depression?
As the days become shorter and shorter, low light levels can trigger depression, along with cravings that are muted during the warmer times of the year. It is called?Seasonal Affective Disorder?(SAD), or winter depression. At the same time, you’ll lose your normal energy and will have trouble getting out of bed.?
When the cravings hit you won’t start looking for pickles. What you’ll crave are sweet or starchy foods. The reason is that high-carbohydrate foods naturally cause the brain to?produce serotonin, a mood-controlling neurotransmitter.?
These foods cause a natural mood boost and make us feel better. Now, there is nothing wrong with using foods to cope with winter blues. But you’ll want to be careful about which ones you choose.?
Whole-grain bread, brown rice, pasta, and fruit provide healthful carbohydrates, which increase your natural serotonin production with very little fat.?
Another important recommendation, if you suffer from this problem, there is a treatment you should be aware of.?
It’s the “Light treatment,” which means taking a fifteen-minute walk outdoors (or just being outside) in the first hour of waking. This step alone cut cravings dramatically and boosts our mood and energy levels, in addition to burning off a few extra calories.?Sunlight dramatically changes our hormones and neurotransmitters, and apparently not viewing sunlight in the morning is the main reason for the winter blues.?
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How to avoid winter weight gain
1) The first thing we need at this time is extra motivation.?
In winter it’s much easier to stay home, be closed off, nobody sees you, wear many layers, and enjoy a good series on Netflix with a warm delicious treat. It’s super fun!
This is why, particularly at this time, we need to?find stronger motivators?to get us out of this comfort zone. In summer you naturally interact with many people, go out, and move more, which makes you more motivated and conscious about your physical shape.
But, if you care about your health and getting/staying in shape ask yourself:
Staying on track at this time is crucial for your weight loss journey. As you’ve seen in the first image, people gain weight in the winter every year, so if you just maintain your weight during that period, that’s a huge success. Then during the year, you lose weight and in the long run, you get yourself to a healthy weight range and are able to keep it off for years.??
A common misconception is that it’s okay to gain a few pounds during the winter, and then lose those pounds with the “new year resolutions” in January. However, research shows that it’s not the case, and a?new year's resolution is not enough.?
?2. After you found your deeper motives you start implementing some basic habits so you’ll maintain weight at that time.
?3. Don’t fall into the?“what the hell effect”.
This is when one forbidden cookie can lead dieters to eat the whole bag. Once you’ve already strayed from your goals, why not go all the way? In the holidays we see it all too often, we have a big dinner where we celebrate with our family & friends. We enjoy the meal and eat whatever we want in big portions, which is fine.?
But the problem is?the next few days, our mind says if I already went off track this evening, why not indulge and enjoy myself this weekend with the leftovers and also the following week with all the small celebrations with my colleagues. Then you suddenly wake up noticing that you spent two weeks completely off track.
It’s not logical but it somehow happens to all of us. We tend to forget our goals and motives in those moments.?
Once we are aware of this human tendency we’re already much more likely to not fall into that.
What you need to remember is that it’s completely ok to enjoy yourself in these holiday dinners, I’ll go further and say enjoy yourself fully in the holiday dinners so you won’t have regrets and suppressed feelings that you were careful and self-aware in the dinner. One meal off track won’t cause damage to your weight loss journey. The next day, remember your motives and get back to your healthy habits with renewed energy because of the great time you had last evening.?
?The Bottom Line:
Winter weight gain is real, and it's crucial to hold this under control in order to keep the weight off for the long term. Using the right tools and habits, it's possible to enjoy the holidays with your family and friends, eat great food and still maintain your weight!
If you're looking to LOSE WEIGHT this winter, we created a free instructional video with 5 simple habits you can start implementing today in order to lose around 5 kgs until Christmas. As always, it's practical and science-based. Here's the link:
Enjoy the video, and have a good & healthy winter!