Winter Weight Gain: The Why

happy Saturday. So this topic today is something that I've been thinking about as I've been listening to my own body and we're recording this in the fall. It's becoming pretty cold here in New York. I don't know what temperatures are like over there in Tennessee, Amy, but it's getting colder pretty much wherever you live, and what I'm craving is starting to change. How about you? Yeah, I am enjoying betternut squash soup. I have had tons of sweet potatoes. I want things that are warm and kind

of rudy. I'm enjoying a lot more bread and things that are very filling, like hardy. They feel more hardy. I love smoothies, but I haven't really had a smoothie in the last couple of weeks, and so that's just a shift that I've personally seen in my own eating. What's it like to be able to honor that after you know your history of green juice is no matter what, and salads and all that. I mean, honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is just like a sigh

of relief. Like I feel like I could just take a big inhale and exhale right now, and that would explain how I feel, because it's nice to just be able to go with the flow. And while what we're talking about right now is seasonal, but it really could be a metaphor too for how I handle meals with friends. I just had a dinner the other night and kind of what we had planned on ordering fell through last minute. We had to pivot and do something else, and it

was not stressful. I like flowed into kind of like how you flow into new seasons. I flew into the new menu no problem, and that I think is what represents like I just I had to honor what was happening in that moment and just go with it and kind of listen to what I was craving and what

sounded good to me even though it threw me. And it's kind of like, now that I'm in recovery, I can listen to my body similarly with the seasons when it's colder outside, I can, you know, evaluate things, what am I craving and not be thrown off by it and just select whatever feels good to me in the moment.

And So the conversation that I was having with myself, as I normally have conversations with myself, is this idea that we as humans act like we are not part of our environment, and we are very much a part of our environment for survival and biological reasons. There's going to be fluctuations as seasons change, as time goes on, to our bodies and to our desires. So first thing I just want to tackle here is the topic of

weight fluctuations during seasons. And I think weight fluctuations in general, when we talk about them, we don't really think about things outside of, oh, why am I gaining weight? Did I eat too much? And we label that as a bad thing, But we actually gain weight during the colder months for really good reason, and it's for our bodies

to protect us. But because we think that we're so static that we should weigh you know, a hundred something pounds or two hundred something pounds or three hunt whatever your static number is, that you think that it should stay at that exact number all the time. Is failing to realize how we're interacting with our environment in a way that's really supportive to our bodies. It's only because we have viewed ourselves as being static do we label

a weight change up as bad. And um, I think that really can throw us for a loop and not being able to honor what our bodies are wanting. So, like you said, you're creaving the butternut squash soup, the sweet potatoes, breads, me too, And I wanted to kind of discuss why that happens and remove the blame for our listeners if they have gone up a couple of pounds over this holiday season, and take the blame off of them and because they overdid it at Thanksgiving, you know,

whatever it is. I want them to realize that bodies do fluctuate and therefore start to detach themselves from that number so that they can continue to honor where their body is guiding them. Does that make sense, Yes, very much so. The fact is different foods are available per different season, and how we personally store those foods, that energy,

how we use it, it all changes. And while science doesn't have this all figured out, we know that there's a phenomenon that's happening, which is most mammals are gaining weight to some degree during the colder months. And the idea is is that we're doing that in anticipation of

our environmental demands. So the seasons are changing, and our bodies might even be a little bit premature to change with it, so that we are protected for the change that's coming, meaning we might gain a little bit of weight naturally in a maybe positive way, if we didn't have this idea that wegain is purely bad. To protect us in many ways. To keep us warm is the you know, if we boil it down to evolution to keep us warm during those months. Yeah, I mean if

you're in a healthy perspective with it. Well, I say healthy in air quotes, but like if you're mentally in the right mindset where you can hear this and see the wegain is a good thing, Like you could honor and thank your body for doing what it's supposed to

be doing to help keep you safe. So again going back, like we're part of our environment, but we act like we're not right, Like we eat foods completely out of season because we have bioengineered to either make them available for us or we you know, can ship them in from other places. But we are or we should be

in sync with our surroundings. We should be craving amy the butternut squash because that's what can be grown right now, and being part of that system is really cool, and I think it's something that has been completely cut out of the conversation and what it means to be healthy, because you know, again growing up for me, it was like what's the healthy option, cold salad, raw foods. But in fact, the foods that your body can better digest, that you can enjoy might be the things that are

a little bit more hardy. Uh. They might contain more vitamins and minerals that are protective for you during the cold seasons, to protect you against cold and flu and maybe even COVID who knows, you know. So there's so many different elements to why we may be craving those arch ear or more complex foods in a good way.

I like that you mentioned about the you know, being able to eat what's in season, and shipping and all the different things that the future has given us and technology and engineering certain foods during different times of the year. Like back in the day, you don't have that. No, you could eat what you could grow in that season,

and you got what you got. And you also needed to eat certain things, yes, to protect yourself and keep yourself warm, so simpler times, you know, exactly, And it's more than even just like the shipping, you know, the way we store food, from frozen foods to canned goods. We kind of progressed technologically a lot more quicker than we did biologically. Does that make sense? Our food advanced

more quickly than our than our bodies can register. Oh hey, we don't need as much extra body fat because we wear coats now, you know, things like that. But nonetheless, it's so cool that our bodies have our back in this way. And if we stay away from the idea that our weight is one static number, we can allow for some fluctuations and be okay with them. Now, I'm not encourage anybody listening to way themselves and you know say, okay,

but I'm getting five pounds, ten pounds, fifteen pounds. I'm not saying that at all, But I'm saying, if you're noticing your body is changing during the winter months, maybe just take the quote unquote blame that has been put on you off of you so that you can start to work in part of a bigger system. Because there's also a lot of peace, gratitude, and mindfulness that stems from eating foods that are available to that specific season.

You said peace, gratitude, mindfulness, I'm going to add satisfaction into that, because yeah, you're you're going to be more satisfied. And I say this as someone that spent many a winter's downing super cold green juice like because that is what I thought I needed to do, and I wasn't listening to my body, and I wasn't able to enjoy certain things that were around that probably would have offered

me so much comfort. Instead, I was chasing comfort in something that was labeled by society standard to make me happier, to make my life better, to make my life easier, to be more convenient. When really, and again, green juice is not bad. It's not the enemy. It was how I was treating green juice. I had it on a pedestal, as like, this is the one thing I have to have every single day, even when it's freezing cold outside.

And maybe I'm really craving a big bowl of oatmeal, Like I didn't give myself that because nope, that's not what I eat for breakfast. I drink green juice for breakfast. So I wasn't very good at listening to my body and honoring it. And so once I threw some of that out the window and I was able to adopt this mindset, I then had the satisfaction I was chasing

all along. Yes, beautiful. When we recognize that our body's weight or body size might fluctuate seasonally, we could also use that as a tool to comfort ourselves when we start to feel panicked that we are gaining weight. So, rather than disrupting your relationship to food or exercise, which you've worked so hard to establish and be in tune to, can you put your hand over your heart on your belly, take a deep breath and say, this is a normal fluctuation.

Sometimes my weight fluctuates up, sometimes it fluctuates down. And I'm also part of an environment. The last thing I just want to mention with all of this is you also might be craving sugar more in these winter months. And again I want to say, you're not broken. Amy and I talked about this a lot, but sugar need to digest. Simple carbohydrates are going to produce the hormone serotonin, the neurotransmitter into your brain. Serotonin is that happy hormone.

And one of the reasons for this could also possibly be that with season changes, a lot of people experience sad or different levels of depression. Because we're outdoors less, we're getting less vitamin D. So when is the last time that you picked up something sweet that you really wanted and said, how would this make me feel? Mentally? And allowed a food, a high sugar food, whatever, it is, a treat, a candy, whatever. So what would it feel like to really stop for a second and ask yourself

what do I want? And perhaps it's that sugar, that cake, that candy, and ask yourself, how would this elevate my mood?

And if the answer is this is going to make me feel really happy, what would it feel like to be free of those labels and allow yourself to consume that food and know that you're benefiting your mind and your mental state without the drama of bringing in ever loaded relationship to that food you may have had prior, right, because then when you bring in the drama, that's when the food brings you down, and it does the opposite of like you think it's gonna make you happy, but

then you have all the drama attached, and then five minutes after you eat it, you have the guilt and the your You know it brought you down. But yes, I mean food can bring you joy, It can bring you up. It can bring you happiness, regardless of what we've been told for so long that we have to earn this food or if you eat that you have to be punished for it in some way and you

have to go run or feel bad about yourself. Like I feel like I was given that messaging all the time growing up, and even as an adult, I still hear it, but now I'm aware to it and I shut it out. It's like fork the noise, shout out, Lisa. I have to fork the noise and shut it out. Because that is a very common saying, like of like oh I can't eat it, or oh I'm gonna eat this, but I'm going to run later. Oh I just eat a cookie. I can't even believe it. Or I said

that stuff in front of people. But then once you get in a better place and I don't call people out on it anymore. I'm not trying to be I'm not that annoying person. I'm not going to be a part of that conversation anymore. I'm not going to feed into that any longer because I know that I can get joy from a piece of cake and I can get joy from a cookie. But now I have a healthy enough relationship to decide when that's going to be

and when it's not. Yes, I love that. So if your weight is changing, if your body is fluctuating, if you're craving starts your heavier foods, just remember that you're functioning as part of the environment, as a human being, and you're doing exactly what you need to be doing. Awesome, all right. We appreciate each and every one of you so much, and we wish you all the encouragement in the world on your journey, and we would love to

hear from you again. We continue to take personal stories to make sure you send us an email if you would maybe like your story featured on an Outweigh episode. You can email us hello at Outweigh podcast dot com. Right, Thanks Lisa, Thanks everyone, m HM