How much weight do we gain over Christmas? Is it a myth?
Good morning everybody but the first thing wake up. Wake up you've got a very important voice note to listen to this morning because as usual I try and share as many research studies I read as possible. I try and break them down into plain English and share them with you. There's a lot of insight in these research studies. Not to say they're perfect, that they should be like oh well the researcher says that's a % that's the only thing that could be like the answer to a question for example.
Speaker 1:But a lot of these studies give us a little insight into our own behavior. And today, got a study three studies actually, mentally, it was a huge day today on the study front, about why we overeat over winter, like, you know, what's the reality of the waking of winter and stuff like that so you can feel a bit better about going into this, like, two week run up to Christmas. So are you listening? Are you ready to learn? Let's go.
Speaker 1:So there's a study done in 1991, a year before I was born, in the European Journal found people consumed more calories in the colder months and felt hungrier even though they were eating larger meals. So the researchers closely tracked how much people ate from season to season and how quickly they ate it. Turns out the study subjects consumed about 200 calories more a day beginning in the autumn when the days started to go darker. And this study found that we seem to be very sensitive to light. Less of it prompts us to seek food and eat faster, also impacts our sleep.
Speaker 1:If we don't get that sleep in a midday for two hours ish, your sleep actually gets worse. So the sun is power. This is why they worship the sun god guys. Back in the day, the sun is god. Sun gives life to the solar system.
Speaker 1:Basically, he's the god. Let's let's put a little let's let's agree to that. Okay. Next one. Then there's a 02/2005 study, okay, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that study participants consumed an average of 86 calories more each day in the autumn than in the spring.
Speaker 1:Not a huge amount, right? But they ate more fat than saturated fat in the winter months. The lower physical activity levels was observed in the winter and the highest in the spring but the researchers who conducted the study also noted that the magnitude of extra calories was fairly small over a year. Another study done in 2013 found that the change of season may influence the balance of hormones that control hunger and appetite. So you leptin made by fat cells that decreases your appetite.
Speaker 1:You got ghrelin which increases your appetite and also plays a role in body weight and glucocorticoids controls how your cells use sugar and fat and curbing inflammation. A prior review that looked at data in people and animals found the seasonal changes affected many hormones related to hunger and appetite including glucocorticoids, ghrelin and leptin. And the note on ghrelin and Leptin, if you diet for a long amount of times, if you're in the calorie deficit for a long amount of time those get impacted as well. So what you want to start doing is if you have been dieting for a while, is worth going into maintenance or just above for a good one week you can do two weeks just so you can kind of like replenish your leptin and ghrelin levels so your hunger levels come back down and your satiety for meals goes back up and your stress levels come down as well so the glucocorticoids will come down. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So if you have been dieting for a while it's a good time to look at Christmas as a way to kind of replenish those hormones but being careful not to go overboard. Okay. According to a 2016 study by the University of Exeter in The United Kingdom of course, people have evolved to have subconscious urges to overeat and limited ability to avoid becoming obese, especially in the winter. We may be genetically disposed to overeat and store more fat during the winter months and there are other reasons for overeating and how to deal with them. That just makes the evolutionary sense right.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the reason number one why we overeat in the winter is to do with temperature. When internal temperature drops the body burns more calories to fight the cold. Our mind tells us to throw on natural layer of clothing and sometimes grab a calorie loaded hot food or drink such as chocolate bars cookies and white chocolate mochas. The solution here is to warm up without consuming too many calories so try drinking hot teas and broth based soups loaded with beans, vegetables, know plain black coffee works as well. So you start looking at these kind of alternatives when you're feeling that need for something warm as the winter comes just have that as opposed to you know the Starbucks four fifty calories, chocolate and whatever mocha.
Speaker 1:Try not for the like zero to low calorie drinks and you'll have the same effect, the same like psychological effect from it during the winter months. Reason number two is obviously we do less physical activity in the winter in general. We're less likely to maintain our exercise routine and we're just generally more likely to decrease movement because obviously it gets cold, it's dark in the mornings, it's darker after work straight away as well. So our activity drastically drops depending on some people might not, some people most people they will drastically drop. So maintaining an exercise routine is a really good course of action.
Speaker 1:So this means like be enthusiastic about doing the dishes maybe, those calories, get those walks in. Try and not be too lazy in terms of like when you go out to the shop and malls and stuff, take the stairs not the escalators, like little things inside the house every hour, try and move around, take phone calls standing up, pacing back and forth. Standing desks work really good if you work from home, ask for one for Christmas. A lot of these ways just let's add these little habits up. As well as we can do this we're gonna essentially negate reducing our through walking and just general one in the summer when we're pumped up for going outside army.
Speaker 1:Reason number three is dehydration. People generally tend to drink less water in the winter, which leads to dehydration. So the drying heat of room heaters and stuff like that as well and the layers of clothes makes our bodies dehydrated. Our bodies need water of course, but we confuse our thirst with hunger and eat more food basically That's happens quite a lot. So the solution here is let's just make sure we are drinking the two liters of water a day minimum.
Speaker 1:Okay. You know, warm teas and soups are good as well. They come towards you in daily fluid intake. So make sure we've got a lot of lovely teas lined up and experiment some nice teas, I don't know. You've got PG tips classic, obviously.
Speaker 1:You've got the green teas, you've got the Earl Grey. But what about those exotic teas? Know, try them out. What am I gonna try out? Know Louise and Brian had a delivery before these like proper exotic teas and they were amazing.
Speaker 1:So I might go for the older what was that? Jasmine? There's so many teas guys. Lucky you'd be here forever. Number four, winter blues.
Speaker 1:So people suffer from vitamin D deficiency and experience lower serotonin levels, so that's a neurotransmitter linked to feelings of pleasure and well-being. And you know this is due to basically having such a small amount of sunlight in the winter and when we do have the sunlight in the winter we're not really out between eleven and two aren't we? So if you do work from home, think it's vital because I mentioned this on a podcast before about the sleep impact of not having two hours of exposure to the sun middle of the day. If we can in the winter go outside when the sun is out or when there's light, get your steps in, try and be out and about during like the eleven to two p. M.
Speaker 1:Period. Everyone's gonna work from home now anyway. That's going to help massively not just sleep but with vitamin D as well. And you're going to feel happier because your vitamin D levels go up. So really important otherwise do definitely, do definitely, do go and purchase some vitamin D and consume it because you have to get it from the sun.
Speaker 1:And I believe some foods, I'm not sure about from the sun I believe. I have to double check on my vitamin d knowledge. But there's a website called examine.com that tells you exactly what the dose of vitamin d you should be using per day. Examine dot com, go to vitamin D and it'll tell you what the study say and it'll tell you the amount to consume per day. So both of the deficiencies just mentioned serotonin vitamin D have actually linked to the onset of seasonal affective disorder, so SAD.
Speaker 1:So this is depression related to changes in the seasons, and then people see comfort obviously when they feel this way with calorie dense foods, lots of hot chocolates, calorie dense stuff and you know it's not going to lead you to more happiness and down the line it's going to make you feel worse the way yourself. So the solution like I said get outside in the daylight hours, get more sun on the skin, get the vitamin D's topped up. If you are suffering from SAD obviously go and seek help because it is a thing and there's a lot of research into this. There's a place in I think Norway or Finland that gets like less than an hour of sunlight a day and the rates of suicide are really high there. Not to take us on a dark turn but the sun is so important for our health, just sunlight in general.
Speaker 1:I think we underplay the importance of it. Okay, need sunlight for a plant to stay alive man. Same for us, we need that sunlight. So make a conscious effort if possible to get sunlight in over the next few weeks. Go for those nice walks with your family and dog or whatever.
Speaker 1:And the fifth one is the reason we tend to overeat over Christmas. We believe we're gonna gain weight anyway. Okay. So we go into the winter thinking, well, we're gonna gain weight anyway, so bugger it. I'll see you forever.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna gain weight blah blah blah. And that then dictates the actions to actually gain weight. So it's a self fulfilling prophecy. So let's prepare our minds. If we think about it, right, we're thinking about Christmas this year.
Speaker 1:It's on the weekend and then the New Year's on the weekend. If you really wanted to, the next three weeks don't have to be any different to how you've already lived for the rest of the year. So we have a week, you can be productive, can train from home, you can go to the gym, get your steps in, you can go out in the weekend or whatever like normal. This weekend, happy days and the next weekend, it's just Christmas weekend, you got Christmas Day and Boxing Day in the weekend, job done. Then you go back into Monday's if it's a new week as if you just come going back to work but you're not, but go back to work on yourself.
Speaker 1:Then you go that week where you can chill and you know you don't have to go crazy but you got that week then where the weekend be in the New Year's. Obviously you can go to party wherever New Year's and back to it on a Monday. So this Christmas is lined up perfectly for us actually to get back to it and enjoy the weekends to the max without it really messing up. Because usually you know Christmas day might be on Wednesday, then you can box it in Thursday, then you've got a big weekend so you've really got like four five days of big time drinking or going out. This time it can be condensed into the weekends like normal.
Speaker 1:So think about that and just think about how you want to go and deal with the next few weeks. Know like take it slow, know everybody should have time off in hell of a year. But yeah, it's up to you how to deal with it. But you don't have to gain weight. You don't feel like you have to gain weight.
Speaker 1:But what's interesting is I don't think I have time to go into all three studies but I want you to not stress so much about weight gain over Christmas because this study shows that it's not much of a big deal. So a lot of experts say that weight gain over holidays, the Christmas holiday is a myth, okay. And if we look at the research they do tend to have a point here. So a February study by Jan Ovisky involved a 95 adults showed that the majority put on one pound in six months from late September to early March. A year after the study began a 65 of the participants were weighed again.
Speaker 1:On average they were each up about 1.36 pounds from their initial weight. So you gain weight from September to November, a bit of weight. You gain the most amount of weight before November and Jan, and then you kind of lose the weight between Jan and March, not much though. And then you know the rest of it you lose as well because it's summer. So it kind of all balances out.
Speaker 1:It's a small increase so people don't pile on the weight fast in most cases. It's a slow increase over years and years. So on average people are gaining about a, you know, half a kilo to a kilo a year, but that does add up if you think about it. Five years, five kilos, ten years, ten kilos. So from your weight when you were 18 to 28 to 38, you know, that could be 20 kgs, which is a lot to gain from 18 to 38.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? So it is a trend, but we can cut that trend by doing a few interventions. Another study. Right? Most of the subjects had no evidence of significant weight change.
Speaker 1:Over fifty percent had body weights that differed by no more than one kilo at each of the three measurements which are pre holiday, holiday and post holiday. People who were overweight or obese to begin with were more likely to gain five pounds or more during the initial six month season according to the study, which was done in February. So if you are overweight or obese you are at more risk of gaining more weight, okay, because there's a lot of things that happen there to make weight gaining easier or you know your satiety to food goes down, your movement is going down, your motivation goes down, you feel like you can't do it so you're kind of in a spiral downwards but things can change. A 2012 study consisting of two forty two men and two zero one women aged 40 to 69 found that sixty five percent of men and fifty eight percent of women gained only 0.5 kilograms of body weight with fifty percent of both groups gaining only 1% of pre holiday body weight. The research has also found that obese men gained more body weight than obese women.
Speaker 1:And a 02/2013 study involving 48 males and a hundred females aged 18 to 65 with an average BMI of twenty five, which is overweight, evaluated in mid November and early January, so fifty seven days. The participants gained an average of 0.78 kilograms, which is 1.7 pounds. Obese participants of 30 BMI over and more at risk as they showed the greatest increases in body fat. Initial body weight not exercise significantly predicted body fat percentage and body weight gain. Okay.
Speaker 1:Another study in 2016 paper by Hollander published also in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at weight gain data of almost 3,000 people over the holidays in three countries, so Germany, Japan, and The United States. Overall weight increased by naught point six kgs in the participants from The United States, Zero Point Eight kilograms in those from Germany, during the Christmas to New Year holiday season, and 0.5 in Japan. Okay? So not much difference, but I'm quite surprised. United States is less than Germany, but it's definitely a spike.
Speaker 1:So what happens here, I'm looking at the graph and I'll do a post on Instagram about this. August to December, our weight's coming down and then December the Jan, it kind of spikes up. It's not a huge amount, there's definitely a spike in the New Year and it comes back down to April. There's a bit of a gain from April to May between most of these countries due to the holidays of Easter and Golden Week in Japan. And then it comes back down from May towards August, September, and then back up a bit in September and back down.
Speaker 1:So this trend is seen in like in literally every country, right, which is interesting. A 2017 review of 15 studies about holiday weight gain published in the Journal of Obesity reported a gain of only 0.3 to 0.9 kilograms or 0.6 to two pounds between the November to the second week of Jan. They also found that only the 2016 study had a long term follow-up. Okay, so more than eighty five percent of participants made no effort at all to control weight and yet gained just a small amount of weight over a twelve month time frame so 1.3 pounds. And they found that half of the weight was lost shortly after the holidays whilst half of the weight gained remained until summer and beyond.
Speaker 1:So the lesson here is and I'm leave you with this is it doesn't really what you're gonna do over the Christmas week and just after it. What really matters is what you do most of the time. What have you been doing most of the years what matters like we look at it as percentage, you've done 95% of the work, you've got 5% to go even if you went guns blazing over Christmas day and the week after. How much can you realistically gain in that week? Like for example, if we look, let's have a look at some foods that I know I've done a Big Mac comparison before Big Mac calories, let's have a look.
Speaker 1:So for you to gain a pound of fat you need to eat 3,500 calories over your maintenance. Let's assume your maintenance is 2,000. Just as a general number, a Big Mac has how many calories in a Big Mac? It has five forty calories, okay. So you'd have to eat 6.4 okay, you'd have to eat six and a half Big Macs plus your usual a pound of fat.
Speaker 1:So for you to gain three pounds of fat you need to eat 20 Big Macs above the calories. So you've already got calories right, but if we actually add 2,500 okay, so you'd have to eat 10 Big Macs a day to gain a pound of fat. Okay, so 10 Big Macs a day, you know times ten days you're gaining 10 pounds. Like but who realistically here is eating 10 part 10 equivalent of 10 Big Macs a day? And if we look at stuff like you know, what other Christmas foods out there, like if we look at Sunday, the Christmas dinner for example, dinner calories average, know, are just these are base numbers guys.
Speaker 1:So the average calories in Christmas dinner is a thousand. Okay? So you'd have to eat five and a half Christmas dinners a day to gain a pound of fat. So you'd have to eat about 16 Christmas dinners to gain, three pounds of fat. Are you eating your equivalent of 16 Christmas dinners over the festive period?
Speaker 1:I don't think so. So let's not worry too much about, the festive period. I want to, you know, I'm gonna do another pause for this next week and I've another study to show interventions that can work. But don't worry too much about this thing. Just treat every day as a new day to do what you want.
Speaker 1:Make sure you improve yourself. What's your one big thing every day? Even on Christmas Day, what's your one big thing on Christmas Day to make it a success? There's so much things to do. One big thing on Christmas Day is to make sure whether I get a Christmas dinner ready or even enjoys.
Speaker 1:Don't know whatever. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. You've got two weeks now essentially leading up to Christmas. Let's not leave those, let's not leave those go to waste. We can still slack off work, slack off the pressure of trying to do and improve and achieve something in 2021.
Speaker 1:Year is essentially over now in terms of big achievements you wanted to get done. But the years are over in terms of like trying to reinforce good habits. So you don't have to look, it's a decision. You don't have to go off the rails just because it's the festive period. You can have more joy going into January by having some self control and moderation than you would if you just let it completely go.
Speaker 1:And if you do let it completely go you're gonna have to eat a lot of Christmas dinner equivalents to put on a lot of fat so there's that as well. So those two realistic points I think will help you but I wanted to share those studies because I found them really interesting and if I find any more I'll post them of course but this is a long voice note. Apologize twenty minutes listening to me talking about Christmas Day studies and Christmas studies. I don't know. It might be helpful.
Speaker 1:But share this with people, you know, get people on-site over Christmas, know. You don't have to go berserk and, you know, ruin everything by just eating five and a half Christmas dinners a day for fifteen days straight because if you did that, I'd be impressed. You know, I'm I'm not sure impressing in a good way, but I would be impressed. But enjoy your day. Let's not focus for Christmas right now.
Speaker 1:What's your one big thing today? That if you like, as a reminder, what is the one big thing? If you did this today, it would move the needle the most in terms of feeling better getting shit done. What's your one big thing? Get that done.
Speaker 1:Bring the focus into that task. And trust me, you do this every day. You've had 365 big one big things complete per year. That'll change your life. So that's it for now.
Speaker 1:Speak to you tomorrow.
