Fall Weight Gain

Eating Strategies to Survive the Cool Weather

I don’t know about you, but I’d like a cookie. Every day, I’d like a cookie. Or cake, or chocolate. Warm mashed potatoes melting with butter. Banana bread, also with butter.

Every year it starts at the beginning of September: The temperature outside turns a little cooler, and suddenly all my best eating intentions no longer seem that important.

That decision to limit added sugars strictly? Hard to remember it in those dark evenings after dinner.

My goal of never snacking between lunch and dinner? Suddenly, so difficult to adhere to most days.

All that success with only eating whole grains when I eat carb-heavy foods? No longer seems very important to me.

It happens every year, and yet every year I am surprised.

Suddenly, as the weather turns cooler, eating healthfully seems an order of magnitude harder. And that’s before the holidays arrive!

I haven’t handled this very well in the past. In the past, as it has become harder to maintain my healthy eating habits and I grew frustrated, I said to myself, “Oh well, I guess this isn’t going to work! I guess I’ll try again in the spring.” And I gained weight, usually 5–10 pound between September and March.

I’d find myself overweight and unhappy with how I felt, looked, and moved. I would clean up my eating habits and lose most of the weight in the spring and summer, only to struggle again and giving up come fall.

A couple years ago, I decided to get off my annual eating roller-coaster.

My Four-Step Plan for Heading Off Winter Weight Gain

Step 1: First, realize it’s not just you. You are behaving just as your brain and body have evolved to behave as the weather turns cooler. One study found that study participants averaged about 86 more calories a day in cold weather, enough to gain a pound every 41 days (1). In another study, subjects found themselves hungrier at the end of a meal of the same size eaten in the fall than they had been in the summer (2). The theory is that colder weather stimulates our impulse to pack on additional weight to survive the winter and stay warm.

Step 2: Be sure to have a Plan B. My mistake in the past was to have no “pretty good” back-up plan when my attempt to adhere to really good eating habits failed. If I wasn’t able to maintain the habits I had established as my ideal goal, I ended up with no eating structure at all. It’s good to know what your ideal is, but establish a Plan B — and perhaps a Plan C and Plan D — as well.

My Plan A looks something like this:

• Three meals a day, no snacking in between.
• No seconds at meals.
• One treat a week.
• Mostly whole plant-based foods.
• Daily exercise of some kind (from walking to jogging to weight lifting) for at least 30 minutes.

The Plan B that I formulated is similar, with a few modifications. I’ve italicized the changes. If it’s a day where Plan A just isn’t working out, this is my fall-back strategy:

• Three meals a day.
• If I snack or take seconds after a meal, they should be fruits and vegetables only.
• Up to 1 square of chocolate or a cup of chocolate almond milk on any day I’m craving sweets, plus one more treat each week.
• Mostly whole plant-based foods.
• Exercise of some kind (from walking to jogging to weight lifting) for at least 30 minutes, at least 6 times a week.

On those days when I’m really struggling, I go with Plan C:

• Three meals a day
• If I snack or take seconds after a meal, they should be fruits and vegetables only.
• Up to 2 squares of chocolate or a cup of chocolate almond milk on any day I’m craving sweets, plus up to two more treats a week.
• Mostly whole plant-based foods.
• Exercise of some kind (from walking to jogging to weight lifting) for at least 30 minutes, at least 5 times a week.

Step 3: Have science-backed strategies ready for avoiding off-plan eating as much as possible and use them regularly. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Use future episodic thinking. To use this technique, you begin a planned meal by vividly imagining something you have planned in the future. It could be anything — an activity in the evening, a vacation next month, or a work project next year. Several studies show that using this technique before meals reduces calorie consumption by making the future effects of actions more real (3, 4, 5).
• Plan an activity after eating. Before you start a meal, plan some activity to do as soon as you feel satisfied, so you don’t keep eating. As soon as you are done with your meal, engage in the activity that you had planned. Do it immediately, even if it means you leave dishes to come back and do later. This technique is especially effective if the activity you plan is one you are looking forward to, but can work either way.
• Use mental visualization to avoid eating. When you want to eat, but aren’t actually hungry, visualize something vividly, or play a visual game on your phone. It could be anything — the key is that it is very engaging of the senses, especially vision. Several studies show that visualizing something vividly competes for mental space with our food cravings and reduces eating (6, 7, 8).
• Use mental visualization to reduce eating. But sometimes, you are going to eat that treat whether you are hungry or not. And in those cases, you use the opposite strategy: Imagine yourself in vivid sensory detail slowly eating every bite of it, over and over again. A study has shown this technique to reduce the amount you actually do eat later (9).

Step 4: However you do with your eating habits this fall and winter, view your choices with self-compassion and reward yourself for your successes. I know it's easy to think of following Plan B — or Plan C or Plan D — as a failure. It’s not. It’s still moving you toward your goals and values in life, just a little more slowly. Beating yourself up won’t get you there any faster — studies show that participants who exhibit self-compassion lose more weight than those who don't (10, 11).

Have compassion for yourself if Plan A just isn’t working out. Praise and reward yourself for sticking to the plan at any level you can. Life is stressful enough — don’t pile additional stress on yourself by seeing Plan B as something less than the success it is. Spend a moment thinking about some of your worst eating days and reward yourself for how far you have come.

Works Cited:

1. Ma, Y., Olendzki, B., Li, W. et al. Seasonal variation in food intake, physical activity, and body weight in a predominantly overweight population. Eur J Clin Nutr 60, 519–528 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602346
2. de Castro JM. Seasonal rhythms of human nutrient intake and meal pattern. Physiol Behav. 1991 Jul;50(1):243–8. doi: 10.1016/0031–9384(91)90527-u. PMID: 1946724.
3. Levens, S. M., Sagui-Henson, S. J., Padro, M., Martin, L. E., Trucco, E. M., Cooperman, N. A., Baldwin, A. S., Kassianos, A. P., & Mdege, N. D. (2019). The Effects of Positive Affect and Episodic Future Thinking on Temporal Discounting and Healthy Food Demand and Choice Among Overweight and Obese Individuals: Protocol for a Pilot 2×2 Factorial Randomized Controlled Study. JMIR research protocols, 8(3), e12265. https://doi.org/10.2196/12265
4. Levens, Sara & Sagui-Henson, Sara & Padro, Meagan & Martin, Laura & Trucco, Elisa & Cooperman, Nina & Baldwin, Austin & Kassianos, Angelos & Mdege, Noreen. (2019). The effects of positive affect and episodic future thinking on temporal discounting, and healthy food demand and choice among overweight and obese individuals: Protocol for a pilot 2x2 factorial randomized controlled study (Preprint). Journal of Medical Internet Research. 8. 10.2196/12265.
5. O’Neill, Jessica & Daniel, Tinuke & Epstein, Leonard. (2015). Episodic future thinking reduces eating in a food court. Eating behaviors. 20. 9–13. 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2015.10.002.
6. Kemps, E., & Tiggemann, M. (2015). A role for mental imagery in the experience and reduction of food cravings. Frontiers in psychiatry, 5, 193. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2014.00193
7. Knäuper B, Pillay R, Lacaille J, McCollam A, Kelso E. Replacing craving imagery with alternative pleasant imagery reduces craving intensity. Appetite. 2011 Aug;57(1):173–8. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.04.021. Epub 2011 May 4. PMID: 21569806.
8. Kemps E, Tiggemann M. Hand-held dynamic visual noise reduces naturally occurring food cravings and craving-related consumption. Appetite. 2013 Sep;68:152–7. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2013.05.001. Epub 2013 May 14. PMID: 23685086.
9. Morewedge CK, Huh YE, Vosgerau J. Thought for food: imagined consumption reduces actual consumption. Science. 2010 Dec 10;330(6010):1530–3. doi: 10.1126/science.1195701. PMID: 21148388.
10. Mantzios, M., & Egan, H. H. (2017). On the Role of Self-compassion and Self-kindness in Weight Regulation and Health Behavior Change. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 229. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00229
11. Mantzios, M., Wilson, J.C. Exploring Mindfulness and Mindfulness with Self-Compassion-Centered Interventions to Assist Weight Loss: Theoretical Considerations and Preliminary Results of a Randomized Pilot Study. Mindfulness 6, 824–835 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-014-0325-z