Are We Hungrier During Cold Weather?

Everything changes and shifts with seasons, heart rate, our mood, and our overall sense of well-being. It's a fact that you will tend to eat more in the wintertime. Scientists from the University of Massachusetts with a cardiologist Ira Ockene at the head of the research have found that we still have the primitive impulses from long time ago, and that gaining weight during wintertime happens because our ancestors were driven to stock on the food for the winter ahead. It's a simple biology, bodies go into “eat as much as you can while there's enough light outside“ overdrive.

Another widely accepted explanation is that the human body functions best at optimum temperature of 37° Celsius (98.6° F). The surrounding temperature in the winter is much lower than that, so the body gets cold. The blood has to provide nutrients and heat to our bodies. What happens when we eat is that all the nutrients go to the bloodstream and provide energy. Food breaks up into smaller particles, and smaller nutrients release energy.

Winter tends to freeze and slow everything down. As the days become shorter, most of the people go to bed earlier and often full. It's completely fine, animals do it too, it's not something that we should fight off. It's part of the life cycle. As the sun starts appearing less and less, we shut down because we're very sensitive to light. There's a reason the Sun is called the source of life. Don't feel bad for munching, understand that it's a part of life and the earthly cycles. It's time to restore. But we have to compensate for it by being more active earlier in the day and later, when the winter ends.

READ What To Do About The Wintertime Blues

There are no light salads around, so we subconsciously think of them as of summer food. Studies have shown that the average person gains around two pounds every winter (little less than a kilo) and overweight people a lot more. If a person doesn't do anything about it when the winter ends, the weight stays on, and more and more piles on in the future. Majority of people 50 years and older were 30 to 35 pounds (13 to 15 kilograms) lighter in their 20s. In the following part of the article, you can find out what to do to keep the weight off, but it's mostly the common sense, going out, exercising, making your mind engaged in other things, and not indulging in carbohydrates too much.