Winter is sneaking up on us and it is the time to crank the heat up in the house. This time of year makes it much harder for me to stay in shape because I like to play sports outdoors and the weather does not cooperate with ideal conditions. Although the heat is much more comforting than the cold, lower temperatures seem to help with weight loss and reduced body fat.
In a recent study, eight people with little to no brown fat cells were exposed to 63 degree Fahrenheit temperatures for two hours a day for six weeks while a control group would go about their everyday lives. The group that was exposed to the lower temperatures had 5% less body fat at the end of the six weeks than the control group.
At first I was surprised by the results of this study. Because it is harder for me to go for a run outside or play basketball at the park, I’ve always thought that winter is the lazy season where people gain weight. This study explained that when the temperature is colder outside, your body has to use more energy to keep warm and it was something that I have always overlooked. Obviously this study will be more accurate with a larger sample size, but the results seem like they would continue this pattern.
A person should not put themselves in freezing temperatures with minimal clothing to lose weight. This study suggests that sometimes it is good to expose ourselves to cooler temperatures to make our bodies adjust to stay warm.
http://www.livescience.com/42764-temperature-training-lose-fat.html
http://www.weather.com/health/news/cold-weather-torches-body-fat-study-shows-20131017
I loves reading your post. I always thought the contrary. However, I think the number of participant to that experiment is not enough to say that cold weather leads to weight loss, but i do think that the arguments you give are a valid reason to prove that cold weather leads to weight loss.
I feel as though I am having a hard time agreeing with this idea because of the fact that during the winter i find I am actually gaining weight during the winter. I am curious about what the study actually looked like because i would almost like to see a visual in which would portray the correlation between weight and temperature. I do agree however that we burn fat while warming our bodies yet i feel as though it is not enough to lose weight in a significant way. My feeling is that we do not get as much exercise as we do in the warmer months making it more likely to gain weight in the winter.
This is very intriguing because in my mind winter is a weight gaining season. Winter has a lot of comfort eating and not a lot of exercise. People want to stay inside and lay in bed. But I never thought of how thats a behavioral change, making it a behavioral weight gain, but in reality the cold weather its self would help you lose weight.
I was very surprised when I saw this article. I always thought that peoples bodies put on weight during the winter. There is one thing that takes away a lot of creditability from the article, the study that was used only surveyed eight people. This sample size is way to small for a study about weight loss. Every single person is different and looking at eight people will not give a good representation of the whole population. I think that because the amount of people in the experiment is so small that it becomes almost completely invalid. I think that when it comes to studies about weight loss the sample size needs to be bigger than normal because there are so many confounding variables that play a role in the outcome.
I agree with you that on principle I would assume the opposite of this idea is true because people spend less time outdoors and are inherently less active. However, the results of eight people hardly seems like a large enough sample of the population to draw the conclusion that cold weather leads to weight loss. Additionally, 5% less body fat is not a significant change, given a margin of error. Were people weighed at the same time at the beginning and end of the study? Since our weight fluctuates throughout the day that could cause for the low percentage change if it was not taken into account. The idea that our bodies use more energy to keep warm when it is cold outside is not something I have ever considered to be a factor either, but I wonder how that plays a role in overall body fat loss?