Many factors can affect your weight, including heredity, eating habits, physical activity, mental health, lifestyle, stress, and weather.
The connection between weather, stress, and weight is complex and multifaceted. Here is how each of these factors interrelates:
Weather and Stress: The connection between weather and stress is evident in how environmental conditions can significantly impact mental health and well-being. Extreme weather conditions, such as heat waves or severe cold, can increase stress and anxiety levels by disrupting daily routines and causing physical discomfort. Not being able to socialize and staying indoors for a long duration also adds to the stress. Rapid weather changes can also interfere with sleep patterns and overall stability, further contributing to elevated stress. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), for instance, is a type of depression that occurs during the shorter, darker days of winter, leading to increased stress and mood disturbances.
Stress and Weight: The connection between stress and weight is largely due to the hormone cortisol, which is released in response to high stress in the body. Cortisol is basically a stress management hormone. Elevated cortisol levels can lead to increased appetite, cravings for high-fat and high-sugar foods, and the accumulation of abdominal fat. Chronic stress can also lead to emotional eating for comfort, where individuals consume calorie-rich foods to cope with their feelings.
You are more likely to grab a pack of chips, a burger, and a cold drink to make you feel better when you are stressed. Stress makes you feel tired, so it is unlikely that you will go out or exercise. This behavior often results in weight gain over time. Stress also slows down metabolism, which makes it harder to lose weight. Furthermore, stress can disrupt sleep, which is another factor that can contribute to weight gain.
Weather and Weight: The connection between weather and weight is influenced by various factors, including physical activity levels, appetite changes, and metabolic responses. In colder weather, people tend to be less active due to the discomfort of being outside, leading to reduced physical exercise and potential weight gain. The body also burns more calories to stay warm, which can increase appetite and food intake. A heavy meal of hot chhole bhature, parantha, poori-halwa feels comforting on a cold winter day. To add to the problem, there are festivals and vacations.
Conversely, during extremely hot weather, while appetite might decrease due to the heat, physical activity can also decline because of discomfort, leading to a possible imbalance between calorie intake and expenditure. Still, you are more likely to lose weight in summer than in winter. Moreover, frequent changing weather disrupts your established schedule. It is tough to develop regular habits of exercising and sudden changes in weather impact it. Then it becomes difficult to restart that again.
Combined Effects:
Interaction among weather, stress, and weight is complex. The combination of stress and unfavorable weather can exacerbate mental health issues. For example, someone experiencing high stress might find gloomy, rainy weather particularly depressing, further compounding their stress levels. High stress levels are most of the time linked to putting on more weight, but sometimes the reverse is also true.
In general, during winter months shorter days and colder weather can lead to reduced physical activity. Most people like to stay indoors and lead a very sedentary life in winter. It feels cozy to snuggle in your bed with your favorite snacks with a movie. There are many days when you do not feel like cooking and love to order pizzas or burgers for food. All this increases your calorie intake. Higher stress levels in winter might be due to SAD, probably due to decreased physical activity and socializing. Again, this leads to emotional eating and weight gain.
In summer we have a reduced appetite than in winter. Mild summer weather might be a good opportunity for weight loss if you eat less exercise and sweat more. But harsh summers lead to discomfort and also decrease physical activity. Harsh weather in any form increases stress levels potentially leading to weight gain if caloric intake remains high. Hot weather increases the need for hydration. If we do not keep ourselves hydrated, our body might mistake it for hunger, and we overeat. So, in summer both possibilities exist depending on your lifestyle.
You might end up losing or gaining weight.
Strategies to Manage:
Light Therapy: For those affected by SAD, light therapy can help alleviate symptoms and reduce stress. Expose yourself to more artificial light to overcome that gloominess. Go out whenever possible to make you feel better.
Regular Exercise: Finding ways to stay active indoors during bad weather can help manage weight and reduce stress. Exercise is an essential component of good health and weight management. There are many ways to exercise indoors like yoga, gym, dance, aerobics, Zumba, skipping, etc. Weather should not be an excuse for not exercising regularly.
Healthy Eating: Managing stress through healthy eating habits, like choosing nutritious snacks, can prevent stress-related weight gain. Prefer home-cooked food and use healthy ingredients for cooking. Processed foods lead to weight gain and are a root cause of many diseases. Monitor your sugar intake in all weather conditions.
Hydration: Staying well-hydrated, especially in hot and rainy weather, can prevent mistaking thirst for hunger. Good hydration improves mood and reduces stress too. You may take the help of apps and reminders to remind you to drink water. Choose plain water over sugary and caffeinated drinks which are dehydrating. Sugary drinks add unnecessary calories and make weight loss difficult.
Stress management techniques: Practice yoga, meditation, pranayama, and mindfulness.
Practice gratitude every day: When your internal environment is good, external factors do not impact you too much. Keep yourself physically and mentally healthy and stable to be able to tolerate weather changes better. Harsh weather will always be part of life, build your life in a way that you can cope well in all-weather situations.
Understanding the connection between weather, stress, and weight can help in developing strategies to maintain a healthy lifestyle year-round.