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If you heard someone tell you that “The weather made me fat,” you’d probably laugh and throw that into the same pile of excuses as “the dog ate my homework.” Well, the truth is, there are actually scientifically-researched reasons for winter weight gain. If you live where the seasons change, or even worse, where the weather is cold and cloudy most of the year, or if snow and ice dash your plans for outdoor exercise, and you’re worried about your waistline, then this week’s Burn The Fat Q & A is a must-read…
QUESTION: Hey Tom, is there any evidence that during cold weather and in the winter it gets harder to lose body fat? For me, it seems easier to lose weight during the hot weather. I was wondering if there’s a reason for this? Maybe you crave different kinds of food? Do you lose your appetite in the summer heat? Or does appetite goes up in the cold? Does metabolism go down in the winter? If you have any information on this, I would be grateful. Thanks!
ANSWER: Yes, there are many reasons why many people gain fat in the winter. They are both physical and mental. From a psychological point of view, here’s one simple explanation: The changing seasons can affect your mood.
A condition known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) has been studied at length by psychologists and psychiatrists. Often much more than just the “winter blues” but an actual type of depression, SAD occurs during the short days and long nights of winter and fall and when there are colder temperatures and less sunlight.
Symptoms include depression, cravings for specific foods especially calorie-dense carbs, loss of energy, feelings of hopelessness and oversleeping. Obviously, these types of symptoms can lead to weight gain.
In a Swiss study titled, “Eating style in seasonal affective disorder: who will gain weight in winter?” researchers discovered that not only did patients with SAD eat more sweets and starch-rich foods, they were also more susceptible to emotional eating, reaching for sweets under emotionally difficult conditions such as when depressed, anxious, or lonely. One of the standard treatments for SAD is bright light therapy. Making sure you get enough quality sleep, but also get up at first light is also important.
Another psychological aspect of how the weather affects food intake, activity and fat loss is that in warm climates, people are wearing less clothes and enjoying the outdoors more, so this creates more motivation. Let’s face it, people want to look good when they aren’t wearing as much clothing. In winter and in cold climates, you’re covered up, so there’s less self consciousness and no accountability since you usually won’t be seen in public in shorts and tank top, etc. Therefore, most people tend to stay on a diet more diligently and train harder in the warmer months. (It’s no coincidence that so many bodybuilders bulk in the winter, and cut for the summer).
Of course, then we have the issue of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays – a traditional time of celebrating, feasting, drinking and gift-giving (sometimes the gifts are edible too!) Many people worry about the holidays because they think they’ll gain 5 pounds, 10 pounds, or even more. Studies have shown that seasonal weight gain is real, but it’s usually very small – no more than 3 pounds and usually only about a pound, if you average it out in a large population.
The problem is longer term research has also found that it’s the type of slow weight creep that often goes unnoticed, and over a period of 10, 15 or 20 years, is enough to lead to overweight or obesity. This is how many men and women wake up one morning at age 40 or 50, look in the mirror and ask themselves, “how did I get so heavy?” (a pound or two a year, after every winter season, left unchecked).
The most famous study on his subject was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Here’s what they concluded:
In contrast to the common perception that weight increases during the winter holiday season, the weight of the vast majority of subjects in this study changed little between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. The subjects believed they had gained four times as much weight as their actual holiday weight gain of 0.37 kg. Fewer than 10 percent of subjects gained 2.3 kg or more. Thus, despite the fact that 85 percent of the study subjects made no effort to control their weight, large weight gains over the winter holiday season were not the norm. Unfortunately, we also found that the weight gain during the fall preholiday period and the increase during the holiday season were largely maintained during the postholiday winter period from January to February or March, resulting in a net average weight gain of 0.48 kg. In subjects who completed one year of observation, the weight increased by an average of 0.32 kg during the holiday period and 0.62 kg over the entire year, suggesting that the period contributing most to yearly weight change is the six-week holiday period.
This study was focused mainly on the effect of holiday eating patterns on fat gain. Most people do eat and drink more between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. However some people suspect there is something else going on and that cold temperatures must have something to do with the weight gain on a physiological or metabolic level. Does metabolism slow down in the winter, as if we are going into hibernation mode?
Ironically enough, the reverse is actually true. Exposure to cold temperatures causes a shivering thermogenesis response which means there’s an increase in metabolism to produce more heat. To create heat requires energy (heat = calories burned). In fact, over the years, many weight loss gurus have promoted the idea of cold exposure to boost metabolism, suggesting weird “hacks” like turning off the heat in your house, going outside underdressed in the winter, swimming in freezing lakes or surf every day, or doing that bizarrely still popular cold shower thing.
Unfortunately exposure to the cold, either cold air or cold water, as an attempt to get your body burning more calories doesn’t pan out into real world fat loss results over time, even if you can show a short term (hours) study showing elevated calorie burning. Why not? Aside from the fact, that it’s a small amount of calories burned, the main reason is that your body can adapt and compensate for heat losses over time. Another reason is that it’s just not practical or pleasant to freeze your butt off in an attempt to speed up your metabolism, so your attempt probably wouldn’t last long if you tried.
An intriguing example of the impact cold temperatures have on energy balance is the case of swimming. Parodoxically, it was observed that many people who took up swimming burned a ton of calories, but didn’t lose fat (or they even gained weight). At first some people thought the body was laying down fat for insulation. But after some astute scientists took a closer look, they found out, as you would expect, that swimming can be an excellent fat-burning exercise, but many people don’t experience much fat loss from swimming because it also turns out that swimming increases appetite, especially in cold water.
Therefore, we could hypothesize that the same would happen in cold weather (air) temperatures. If your body uses some energy for shivering or heat production, it can compensate for that energy loss by increasing your appetite, so the results in increased energy expenditure, if any, are likely to be short term. (Amazing how your body works that way to counterbalance things isn’t it?)
Some scientists suggest that eating more in the cold winter months is hard-wired into our biology as a survival mechanism. They theorize that humans have a natural tendency to eat more in winter because historically speaking, this was a time when there were shortages of food. While there’s virtually no chance of starving to death in modern industrialized society, we may be unconsciously giving in to our evolutionary desires.
For a variety of reasons, most people tend to eat more in the winter, and especially during the holiday season. At the same time, we move less, and usually we blame it on the weather (“It’s too cold” or “I can’t run on snow and ice!”).
A study conducted in Massachusetts and published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition made some interesting discoveries about seasonal variations in food intake, physical activity, and body weight in a predominantly overweight population. Key findings included:
- Daily caloric intake was 86 calories higher in cold months compared to spring
- Lowest physical activity was in fall and winter
- Highest physical activity was in the spring
- Body weight peaked in the winter
- All seasonal changes were small, but significant enough to be measurable
Pedometer research published in the journal Medicine and Science and Sports And Exercise has revealed just how much activity goes down in the winter compared to the other seasons. In a group of middle aged women, who are generally less active than other groups to begin with, there was a large drop in steps taken per day from summer to fall to winter:
7616 steps per day in summer
6293 steps per day in fall
5304 steps per day in winter
5850 steps in spring
Over the holidays, most people blame weight gain on the food, but it’s not just the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s celebration feasts (that’s only three holiday meals in six weeks after all, right?), it’s also less activity through the whole winter that contributes in a big way to the expanding waistlines. Outdoor workout routines sometimes end abruptly and nothing indoors is done to offset it.
The drop in activity is not just formal training sessions, the amount of walking around you do all day long takes a dip as well, especially if you’re not tracking it. This is why using a pedometer like a fit bit or smart watch year-round is such a great idea. You can see changes between your seasonal step counts and if you catch them dropping as winter arrives, you can adjust your activity easily simply because you were tracking it and staying accountable. Also, it’s not that difficult to add an extra 2500 steps a day. Combine that with some accountability on the nutrition side, and this alone can winter weight gain at bay.
The answer to the winter weight gain question is that yes, there are legitimate scientific reasons why it’s easier to get fatter in the winter. If you do nothing to prevent it, there’s a good chance that you’ll put on a pound or two of fat over the dark, cold winter. Because this average amount of weight gain isn’t much, it’s especially dangerous because you either see it and brush it off as “not so bad” or it may slip by completely unnoticed at first, and it doesn’t come off. In 10 years, you’re 10 to 20 pounds heavier. In 20 years, you’ve gained 20 to 40 pounds, all from slow weight creep.
Fortunately, winter weight gain is not a foregone conclusion. This is a battle you can win – fairly easily. To stay lean all year round, what you must do is stay active, regardless of the weather, and stay diligent with your nutrition most of the time (enjoy all your holiday meals, but keep your nutrition on point the other 80% to 90% of the time).
The best way to achieve this is to set a goal, create a plan, and stay accountable. I’m not against setting goals for the in January – I think it’s a great time to think about what you want to achieve for the New Year. But it’s a losing strategy to wait for new year resolutions and have no new goals to work on over the holidays. The best way to approach this is in two phases. November and December are perfect months to set goals to close out the year strong. Create goals for this 60-day period and that will keep you motivated through the late fall and early winter.
For years, I promoted holiday fitness challenges in our community, and if you can find one, by all means, participate. If you can’t find a formal contest, challenge, race, or some kind of fitness event, create your own. If possible, invite friends to join you to increase accountability. If feasible, higher a coach to help with the plan and make you even more accountable. It’s amazing how motivated you’ll be and how hard you’ll work when you know you have to report your progress to a coach every week.
You can keep up the cardio part of your plan indoors on a bike, treadmill, rower, or elliptical machine, or simply with body weight exercise. Yes you can! You don’t need to brave driving through the elements to a gym to keep strength training either, you can do that at home as well. A home free-weight set up as simple as dumbbells and a bench, plus resistance bands and bodyweight training can take you a long way. Add more equipment if your space and budget allows (click here for some simple home gym tips).
But the winter months are also a great time to get adventurous and try something new, like winter sports. I admit, I’ve never been a fan of cold, ice and snow. Even though hiking and backpacking are my favorite hobbies behind lifting, I’ve always been a three-season outdoorsman.
In October this year, just as the first frosts were hitting, I decided to keep hiking as well as set some running goals, doing as much of it as possible on the trails. All I had to do was invest in the right gear and warm layers and I never had to step on a treadmill. To my surprise, I loved it, even in the cold and snow.
In December, after the first big storm, I did something I never thought I would: I bought my first pair of snowshoes and went out for over 5 miles the Sunday before Christmas. It was a quad burner and a serious test of cardio. I didn’t get traditional snowshoes either – I got running-racing snowshoes. Bombing down the hills in packed snow was the most fun I had in years.
At the same time, for these last three months of the year, I decided to try a new lifting schedule with a hypertrophy-focused split routine I’d never tried before. (It’s a “3-2 Hybrid split” and I’ll write about that in an upcoming post. I also included home gym equipment I had rarely used before – a landmine – along with my usual barbell and dumbbell exercises. (Watch for upcoming posts on landmine training too!)
As a result of setting new goals, creating new programs and trying new things for the late fall and first part of winter, I was more engaged, enthusiastic, motivated, and my overall activity level (steps, miles, calories burned), was the highest it had ever been by mid December. I was eating 90% unprocessed food, but I was not dieting or restricting any foods or food groups, and actually had to eat more to avoid losing too much weight.
Winter weight gain is a problem for a lot of people. There really are many forces conspiring to get you eating more and moving less, but these pitfalls are avoidable and the solution is not complicated. We can’t change the seasons, but we can change ourselves. I did it, many others have done it, and you can do it too if you follow the advice from this blog post.
Remember that the end of the year holiday season is only the first part of the winter. January and February, sometimes into early March, are the coldest and snowiest for most of us and a resolution without a great goal, reason why, and plan is not going to sustain you long. Unlike the end of the year, when fitness challenge opportunities are not always as plentiful, they are everywhere starting January first.
The Burn the Fat Company has sponsored holiday fitness challenges for years, and this year we are holding our famous Burn the Fat Body Transformation challenge contest in January. If you’re a Burn the Fat reader, you’ll be invited to join us and enter, free. Get preliminary details at: www.burnthefatinnercircle.com/public/Burn-The-Fat-Contest-Calendar.cfm
Hope to see you in the challenge. Until then,
Train hard and expect success!
Tom Venuto,
Founder, Burn the Fat Inner Circle
Author, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
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Scientific References:
Kräuchi K, Reich S, Wirz-Justice A, Compr Psychiatry. 38(2):80-7. Eating style in seasonal affective disorder: who will gain weight in winter? 1997.
Hamilton SL, et al, UK adults exhibit higher step counts in summer compared to winter months. Ann Hum Biol. 2008 Mar-Apr;35(2):154-69, Department of Human Sciences, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK.
Higginson A et al, Fatness and fitness: exposing the logic of evolutionary explanations for obesity, proceedings of the royal society of biological sciences. 283: 1822, 2016.
Ma Y, et al, Seasonal variation in food intake, physical activity, and body weight in a predominantly overweight population, Eur J Clin Nutr. 2006 April; 60(4): 519–528. University of Massachusetts, Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine
Newman, MA, et al, Monthly variation in physical activity levels in postmenopausal women. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009 41(2):322-7. Department of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Ricci MR et al, Acute cold exposure decreases plasma leptin in women. Metabolism 49(4): 421-423, 2000, Rutgers University, Department of Nutritional Sciences.
Uitenbrock DG, seasonal variation in leisure time physical activity. Med Sci Sports Exer 25(6): 755-760, 1993.
Yanovski, J, A prospective study of holiday weight gain, New England Journal of Medicine, 342:861-867, 2000.
White, L., Increased caloric intake soon after exercise in cold water. Int J Sport Nutr Exer Metab, 15: 38-47, 2005.
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss expert. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking. Tom is a former competitive bodybuilder and today works as a full-time fitness coach, writer, blogger, and author. In his spare time, he is an avid outdoor enthusiast and backpacker. His book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and now as a hardcover and audiobook. The Body Fat Solution, Tom’s book about emotional eating and long-term weight maintenance, was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom is also the founder of Burn The Fat Inner Circle – a fitness support community with over 52,000 members worldwide since 2006. Click here for membership details
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