Losing weight the analytic way - what about this new strategy?
So much money is spent in clinical trials to manufacture pills to make you lose weight, so many snake oil salesmen try to get you to buy miracle pills, and so many people wasted time and money in diets that did not work long-term.
What about this elementary solution?
- If you gain more calories than you lose (e.g. through over-eating), you will eventually get overweight or obese.
- Calories is energy.
- Temperature is energy, and can be swapped with calories.
- If you lower the temperature in your environment (e.g. you dress more lightly, you turn the heat off, you eat cold rather than warm meals) then you lower your energy intake, which is equivalent to lowering your calories intake, which in turn should result in weight and health improvements (not to mention that disease-spreading mosquitoes don't do well in a cold environment).
Why such a simple cost-free solution was never proposed? Is it because people will compensate by eating more due to a colder environment, or because people hates lowering temperature from 74 to 71 degrees as much as they hate going on a diet?
What do you think?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Steven Paul Sanderson II on -
I don't know if eating cold food will necessarily help, does seem like an interesting proposition though. With dropping the temperature, your body will adjust and slow your system down thereby having the opposite affect you are looking for, when your body is not running at maximum efficiency it tries to put you there or make adjustments so that calories are preserved for self preservation. Yes with a drop in temp, your body may heat up a little to make up for it, but eventually it will drop and will start to shut systems down if you get to cold, so my thoughts are that exercise and diet are the optimal ways to go, of course counting calories will help, but you must count what goes in and the exercise to ensure that more are burned in a day then consumed, and you cannot burn to much more then comes in otherwise if the ratio drops to much your body will again start to slow down and shut down non critical 'operations'
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Permalink Reply by Aaron Maternowski on -
i did read an article once talking about cold water during a workout. The body has to stoke the fires to raise the temp of the liquid prior to processing it. This results in a slight bump of the metabolism, and an increase in calorie burn.
although a cold room will lower your body temp and slow everything down. I would think exercising in a colder environment may result in a slightly higher calorie burn...?
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Permalink Reply by Steven Paul Sanderson II on
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True the body will have to raise the temp to process the liquids or whatever else it is you are eating and excercising in the cold will do that for a minute until you warm up, then your just warm anyways, I don't know how much of a difference it would or would not make....maybe time to experiment?
Aaron Maternowski said:i did read an article once talking about cold water during a workout. The body has to stoke the fires to raise the temp of the liquid prior to processing it. This results in a slight bump of the metabolism, and an increase in calorie burn.
although a cold room will lower your body temp and slow everything down. I would think exercising in a colder environment may result in a slightly higher calorie burn...?
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Permalink Reply by Waleed Sarwani on
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There definitely seems to be some benefit to overall health and some even claim longevity to regular short-term exposure to cold temperatures (search for "cold thermogenesis") like taking ice-baths, for example. However, the benefits seem to be due to a reactions from the body's physiology like making anti-inflammatory chemicals.
I think the calorie-in/calorie-out model itself is maybe flawed and there is medical and biochemistry science emerging to support this. What if it's the TYPE of calorie that is the problem (i.e. calories from carbohydrates versus calories from fats and proteins). The Atkins diet was sort of the based on this premise.
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