Winter weight gain

🥶 Winter weight gain.

If you are being affected but winter weight gain. This post is for you.

❄️ Every year I gain weight without Exception. From around August onwards. It’s not bothered me as much as this year, because this year I have some fat loss goals and I don’t want to undo ↩️ the work from the first part of this year. So let’s investigate.

✅The most likely culprit is your activity has dropped, in the summer you were just more active with low-level activities. Due to colder darker, long nights and hormonal changes due to circadian rhythm.

💊 Lack of Vitamin D plays a part too.

✅Not so much your workouts more lighter activities like walking. This comes under the heading of NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

✅If you don’t believe me You can check your own step count. Mine drops from August onwards as my weight increases. Around 2k-3k steps less per day compared to summer and a weight gain of around 1lb per month. 👇

( I’ll add a picture of weight over laid with steps)

📝If we quickly do the maths here

3500 calories in a pound so that’s around 120 calories per day over my maintenance. So to release body fat I need to create a calorie deficit. Maintenance is also an option.

🤔When you hear the words calorie deficit.

Immediately what comes to mind is to exercise more and eat less. However, for many, this isn’t the right way to create a deficit.

🔥Although this can work it can also lead to burnout, especially in the winter.

Exercise more and eat less. Is low energy in and high energy out. No system can handle that forever. A better approach is high flux or low flux.

❄️Winter and lack of sun, and changes in circadian rhythm can affect your hormones. However, Hormones don’t make fat. What they do is

⬇️Up or down-regulate hunger.

⬇️Up or down-regulate movement.

⬇️Up or down-regulate motivation.

⚡️🧬They also play a part in nutrient partitioning.

1 calorie can’t become more than 1 calorie.

🤔We have all been there, hungry, with low motivation, and with a shitty step count. Very common in the winter months, with the lack of sun.

🗣️I’ll often hear coaches say ‘work harder in the gym and hit 10k+ steps.’ For some All this does is drive down your motivation, dive up hunger, and drive down unconscious movement. You end up eating back your exercise calories and then some.

💪🏽A couple of hours a week in the gym isn’t going to counter 24 hours per day.

🥹In Reality what happens is you don’t hit your step target daily then feel bad about it, your workouts you start to hate, and you unconsciously cheat on your diet, & you are peckish all the time.

⭐️What you need for fat loss, is a calorie deficit and the right nutrient partitioning.

No LAW says this has to be at 10k steps. ✅You can diet with high flux ,lots of energy coming in and lots going out, like an athlete or low flux less energy in and less out like a hibernating bear.

🐻The bear loses fat over the winter with zero step count. Your metabolism is always working, even during rest. We can use this fact to our advantage.

❄️During the winter months, I find low flux works better for me.

Because circadian rhythm drastically changes with the darker nights.

📝Something I didn’t know till recently was My Drive to eat in the winter goes down but will DOUBLE with more movement.

🤔So if you are hungry during the winter months try moving less as in don’t spend your willpower trying to force movement, wild I know.

This is how I think about it.

🙂6-7k steps equals Low hunger

😃12k steps in the summer equals medium hunger,

🤤12k steps in the winter equals ravenous hunger.

Can you relate?

Moreover, there is also a motivation cost.

🌞 In the summer, it’s no problem to hit 12,000 steps. In fact, it’s a joy.

❄️ But in the winter it seems to cost so much more motivation because it’s cold, wet and windy.

🌳

This is like a tree, a tree Doesn’t move Per se, but it will grow and produce leaves, flowers fruits, nuts/Seeds. It can do this because it ‘eats’ more energy from the Sun during spring and summer. This is called high flux lots of energy in lots out. In the autumn and winter, it loses its leaves stops growing and lowers energy intake, due to less sun. This is called low flux it eats less and moves less. This concept of low and high flux is repeated in nature over and over.

⚡️We can model this Concept.

⚡️Yes, it feels weird to recommend less movement, but this will help lower appetite and the background feeling of Peckish-ness.

This should help lower Unconscious picking, snacking, and grazing which adds up quickly. 🐄

📝 Note: I’m still doing zone 2 and lifting weights. (see my other posts)

✅So for me, I’m not going to try and burn the 120 calories per day, I’m just going to reduce eating by about 100-300. To get me to or just below this new lower winter maintenance total daily energy expenditure. (TDEE) my main goal is to maintain my weight till at least mid January.

Working WITH your circadian rhythm will help balance your hormones, and lead to an easier calorie deficit and possibly better nutrition partitioning.

🐻If your ancestry came from a place for the ground, frozen over. Then it’s worth knowing that a large portion of their food during the winter would be meat.

🐻Your ancestors would’ve moved less in the winter months, consumed more meat and burned more of their body fat to survive the winter.

Tl;dr

You burn less total energy in the winter, it’s better to reduce intake, and not worry about trying to burn more, to help control appetite.

Here is an example.

☀️ Summer diet high flux

TDEE 2000

Consume 1600

🥶 Winter diet low flux

TDEE 1500

Consume

1300

Angus Logan

Personal Trainer

Metabolic Coach

Health Coach

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