Stay cool

I came across an interesting article by James Hamblin, in The Atlantic, that discussed the benefits of staying cool.  I'm not talking about stress reduction.  On the contrary his piece focused on increasing stress on the body by decreasing temperature.

Scientists (from NASA, Harvard and U.C. Irvine) have been researching the beneficial effects of people exposing themselves to cold to reduce fat.  That, of course, is an oversimplification of the research and its intent.  The fact is that in post industrial societies people rarely experience a significant temperature change in their environment, so researchers have posited that this has contributed significantly to obesity and metabolic syndrome.  The theory of "environmental thermodynamics" has been put into practice to burn fat in overweight individuals and in people who currently exercise, eat sensibly and who want to maintain an ideal weight.  One of the modalities used to make you chill is an ice vest that can be purchased on line.

It has been determined that keeping people in an environment between 55 and 65 degrees causes them to burn fat (instead of storing it).  The theory is that because we are animals we are programmed to respond to a changing environment, so if we spend our winters in offices and homes that are kept at a cozy 72 degrees we are never experiencing the stress that comes from being cold. The leading proponents of this theory place the lack of a "Metabolic Winter" above both diet and exercise in the epidemic of obesity resulting from an overabundance of food and comfy temperatures.  The author of the article states that "Seven million years of human evolution were dominated by two challenges: food scarcity and cold." And now for many humans these challenges no longer exist.

I was fascinated by this article because serendipitously a day before I read it I weighed myself for the first time in four weeks.  I had lost about seven pounds (155# from 162#).  My new low-carb diet had been in effect the previous time I stepped on to the scale, so it wasn't a factor and I wasn't trying to lose weight.  I hadn't changed my exercise routine, but I had been spending a good bit of time outside doing carpentry and throwing logs around during the finger numbing first three weeks of January.  When I think back on previous winters when I ate lots of carbs all day long I also lost weight.
The theories and studies discussed in the article suggest that winter should not be a time of feasting and inactivity.  We would be better served to behave more like the rest of the animal kingdom by allowing ourselves to experience the cold (come over to my house and sit upstairs away from the wood stove for a few hours) and eating less.

I am grappling with dissonance as I sit in front of my SAD light writing this blog.  If I am going to be true to my inherent nature then I should give over to the winter blues that my brain compels me to feel this time of year.  But I suppose, like many,  I will suck up my pride and bask in the psychic warmth of artificial UV rays and write about the glory of the Republic when lean mean people wore blazers in subzero temperatures as they walked to work and their children waited patiently at the bus stop to be taken to school.