Weight Gain Shockers: Air-Con, Sleep, Relationship

Thanks to the intolerable heat in Singapore, many of us love to stay in an air-conditioned room. However, this temporary comfort could come at the expense of weight gain!

• Digestion and fat-burning are affected – Research says that if you spend long hours in an air-conditioned room, your body temperature will drop. For every 1°C drop in your temperature, your metabolism will slow down by 12%! This may in turn affect your digestion and fat-burning, causing you to suffer from constipation, accumulate stubborn fats and put on weight!
• Increased appetite – When we are cold, our appetite for high-calorie, high-carbohydrate foods increase as these dishes make us feel warm and cozy. This not only wreck our weight loss diet plan, it also causes us to pack on extra unwanted calories (even though we aren’t hungry at all) and thus translating into weight gain.

Not getting enough sleep is common but did you know that a lack of quality sleep could be causing you to gain weight unknowingly? In fact, research found that those who slept 5 hours or less a night were more likely to gain 13kg or more than those who slept 7 hours per night. Why is that so?

• Slow metabolism – Sleep deprivation lowers our basal metabolic rate, hence slowing down fat-burning. Thus, even if your diet remains, you might end up with a bigger waistline.
• Mindless eating – When we do not get enough quality sleep, our body produces less leptin, a hormone that tells us when we should stop eating. When the hormone level is not balanced, we could end up spoiling our weight loss plans as we reach out for a cup of coffee, sweets or other comfort foods for a quick shot of energy.
• ‘No’ to exercise – When we are sleep-deprived, we naturally feel exhausted throughout the day and hitting the gym is certainly the last thing on our mind. However, if you are at the other end of the spectrum and insist on exercising so that you can achieve your weight loss goal, STOP! Your ambitious plan to lose weight fast could be putting you in danger. The lack of sleep affects our coordination level, thus making exercise potentially dangerous. What’s more, what your body really needs now is sufficient rest in order to function properly (in case you have already forgotten about it, scroll up to the above two points for a recap)!

• Dating – Getting into a new relationship could mean eating out more often. Think about it – movie dates with popcorn or chips, café hopping, suppers and so on. This shift into a new pattern of eating or even overeating could cause you to put on weight! Furthermore, if your boyfriend’s eating preferences (saltier, oilier, more meat etc) are different from yours, a sudden change in diet may affect your body’s digestive pattern, causing you to put on weight unknowingly.
• Happiness Fats (from marriage) – Interestingly, according to research, there is a syndrome known as ‘happiness fat’ and it is highly ‘contagious’! If your partner puts on weight, there is a 37% chance that you will too. However, this doesn’t come across as surprising.Though lifestyle habits vary across individuals, most married couples have the tendency to stay in and watch television together. So what does this entail? Snacking! Almost every one of us have experienced the amazing ability of food commercials; they make us crave for some food at any time of the day (and even right after we had dinner!) Because of the unnecessary snacking and couch potato lifestyle, our weight loss diet plans are foiled and our waistlines start to expand.Not only that, when dining with a companion (in this case your husband), you tend to eat a larger portion unknowingly. That could be because there are distractions (e.g. conversations) that prevent you from picking up cues from your body that you are already full! This in turn increases the likelihood of weight gain.
• Breakup – With every breakup comes weight gain. This is definitely not an exaggeration. When we are stressed, our body will secrete more cortisol, a hormone which encourages excess calories to be converted to fats, especially around the tummy area. Thus making stress one of the top causes of weight gain in the tummy.Stress also causes a drop in our blood sugar level, hence driving the craving for sugar and fat! So we end up reaching for comfort foods and this, with absolute certainty, means weight gain to many ladies.

Weight Loss Tip
You might have realised that despite how atypical these 3 causes are, food or rather our diet is the common factor that links them up. In fact, it plays a pivotal role in our weight control; it could work against you and become one of the causes of weight gain or work for you and help you to lose weight!

The golden rule to remember is that cutting calorie input is always so much easier to control then increasing calorie output. That said, it does not mean that you should kickstart a low carb diet right now. Instead, choose your food wisely and you won’t have to worry about the extra bulges while wearing tighter clothes! For more information on diets that aid weight loss, click here.