With the cold snap hitting France this week, many of us are wondering if the cold helps burn calories and lose a few pounds… Answer.
A bitter cold sets in in France. Of the snow is even announced in certain regions… In cold weather, it is customary to say that it is necessary eat more because we spend more calories. True or false ? Under the effect of cold, the body has a greater energy expenditure to maintain your body temperature around 37°C. More simply, when it is cold: the body cools, the muscles contract reflexively, the internal temperature drops and to produce heat, metabolism accelerates: THE body burns more calories And draws on energy stocks. That’s what we call the process of thermogenesis.
72 calories burned by thermogenesis
But be careful of the shortcut that consists of thinking that the cold makes you lose weight, because that is not true. Number of calories burned by thermogenesis is minimal: this would represent 5% of total energy expenditure daily. For example, if your basal metabolism (the minimum energy the body needs to carry out its vital functions) is 1,450 calories (which is the average metabolism for a 30 year old woman, weighing 65 kilos), the share of calories burned by thermogenesis is only 72 calorieswhich is enough negligible. Therefore, to lose weight it is better to reduce your caloric intake through food and to practice a regular physical activity. For information purposes, a hour of walking allows on average to burn 100 to 150 calories, one hour of swimming, 500 to 600 calories.
Cold stimulates brown fat
In a study published in the journal Nature in 2022, researchers have shown that exposure to cold stimulated brown fatan adipose tissue commonly called “good fats” which has the ability to burn “bad” fats and to keep us warm when it’s cold.
However, “There is no reason to eat in larger quantities during the winter, our body doesn’t really spend more energy than during other seasons of the year. Our caloric intake must therefore remain the same ! What explains our greatest desire for “fat” is above all our desire to stay warm longer and to reassure yourself with cocoon foods to chase away the spleen of days without light”, Dr Brigitte Coudray, nutritionist and dietician, explained to us in a previous interview.
Do you burn more calories if you exercise in the cold?
As explained previously, we burn more calories when we exercise in the cold because low temperatures require a great adaptation from the body to maintain constant internal heat, which forces it to expend more energy. That said, exercising when it is cold must be accompanied by precautions. The body must be particularly heated (10-15 minutes of active walking or jogging at a low pace) because joints are stifferthe muscles are cooled, the blood vessels undergo vasoconstriction and the heart is put under even greater strain, which puts you at increased risk of injury.