If you’ve noticed an increased appetite over winter, and the reading on the bathroom scales tipping into your personal ‘red-zone,’ you may be wondering why, and also, what you can do about it. Firstly, know you’re not alone with this common cold-season difficulty, which can impact any adult, at any age. The fact is, winter overeating is not in your imagination, and it occurs for a number of reasons.
Fuelling our body is one way to provide it with more warmth, and we naturally seek out warmth in colder weather. We also tend to socialise less in winter, when getting out and about can all feel a bit too much of a challenge. The less we go out and socialise, the more we are ‘home alone,’ and the more we comfort-eat to compensate for feelings of isolation. We also (unless we’re vigilant) tend to exercise less in winter, so the extra calories we’re tempted to consume don’t get a chance to be used up. On top of all this, winter light levels can affect the natural mood-chemicals our body produces, lowering our ‘feel-good’ levels, and causing us to eat in unhealthy ways but which provide comfort in the very short term.
If you are concerned about your winter eating habits, here are some ways to curb them:
Satisfying ‘sippers’
Often, it’s not calories we crave in winter, it’s comfort. This comfort can be found in a lovely hot drink that doesn’t pack in unwanted calories. Choose the following hot drips to sip throughout the day (and consider keeping them on hand in a flask for convenience): broth or miso consomme, herbal teas, heavily diluted fruit juice, lemon juice with just a smidgen of honey, unsweetened milk flavoured with warm spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.
Seek out safe doses of sunlight
Healthy, safe, doses of sunlight deliver vitamin D, and can enhance our mood. However those benefits can’t be reaped by sitting in the sun, behind glass. Make the effort to go for a walk or engage in outdoor activities on sunny days – all that may be standing between you and a curbed appetite is a warm coat and some professional advice on skin protection (the sun has the potential to harm your skin, even in winter, so talk to your GP about the sort of skin protection you need over the winter months).
Pack in the protein
Protein is the body’s natural appetite suppressant so be sure to include it in every meal, and snack on it throughout the day. Convenient and healthy protein snacks include dry roasted nuts and chickpeas, low fat yoghurt, jerky (the low-fat, sugar-free variety), veggie sticks with hummus or peanut butter, dry-roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, low-fat cottage cheese and apple slices.
Fab fibre
Include fibre in your meals, especially at breakfast – it will keep you feeling satisfied for longer. Fibre-rich breakfast foods include porridge made from oats or brown rice, chia pudding, wholefood muesli, wholegrain toast with peanut butter, baked beans and wholegrain toast, buckwheat pancakes, and bubble & squeak.
Alcohol action!
Reaching for a stiff drink may be comforting when you come in from the cold, but alcohol is sugar laden, and as such, will only increase your appetite. Cutting back on alcohol is a good idea at any time, but especially so in winter when our body takes little encouragement to demand unnecessary calories. If you do want to enjoy a drink in winter, be sure to eat protein-rich snacks at the same time.
Work your way through winter carefully so you emerge from it as fit and healthy as you were before the temperature started to drop!