When winter comes, most people tend to stay home, keep warm and enjoy the tasty, creamy and often fatty and sugary meals, common for the season. And once the spring brings the sun and the plans for beach vacations, everyone’s heading to the gym. In fact, the bone-chilling cold right now is the perfect time for weight loss, according to a new research. Lower temperatures help burn more calories, so now’s the time to exercise outside.
A team of researchers, led by Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt of the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, studied the effects of mildly cold weather on people who are regularly outdoors such as firefighters, military personnel, and so on. The scientists wanted to understand how the cold air affected the way our bodies burned fat for energy. For ten years, they studied people who spent six hours a day in the cold and found that this made the body produce more brown fat cells. What does this mean for dieters? Well, brown fat burns energy to keep us warm, but only when we are babies. As we grow older, this type of tissue lessens in our bodies, but regular exposure to cold can increase those levels. In fact, by staying outside, we train the body to create more of this particular type of fat. And instead of storing calories, brown fat burns them to control our bodys temperature.
There’s another weight loss benefit from the cold – shivering expends five times more energy than resting. This “shivering workout” further boosts the effect of outdoor exercise, even if it’s not the most pleasing thing to do. According to Sean Burch, adventure-fitness consultant and owner of the world record for running a marathon at the North Pole, cold weather stimulates your body and your senses. In contrast, the heat and humidity will tire you faster and although many people believe that sweating helps you lose weight, they are not exactly right. In most cases, the weight we are losing when sweating comes from the water in our bodies, and not from the fat tissue!
A previous study in Japan found that people who spent two hours a day for six weeks in a colder room (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 17 degrees Celsius) had decreased levels of body fat. In addition, they got used to the cold and trained their bodies to produce more brown fat.
In fact, the winter diet can also be beneficial – there are certain foods and drinks that will boost our metabolism and increase the burning of calories. Spicy food, for example, can not only help you feel warm, but it will also increase your metabolic rate. Hot peppers are the best option. Hot tea and coffee will also activate your body, as long as you don’t load them with cream and sugar. Black coffee and tea with honey are the perfect weight loss beverages. Another common winter food, beans, is a great source of low-calorie, high-fiber protein. If you are craving for snacks, choose home-made low-fat popcorn, instead of the common microwave version, which is loaded with processed fats.
There are many ways we can exercise and eat healthily even in the freezing cold of the winter. When there’s will, there’s a way, so don’t look for easy excuses and get outside for a nice shivering workout.
