As the weather cools down, many women over 40 notice a familiar pattern—winter weight gain. The colder months bring comfort food cravings, holiday gatherings, and a natural urge to slow down. But what if I told you that winter weight gain doesn’t have to be the enemy? You can actually plan for it, prevent it, or even use it to your advantage. Here’s how to handle winter weight gain so you come out stronger and healthier on the other side.
Why Winter Weight Gain Happens
Before diving into solutions, let’s talk about why winter weight gain is so common. During the winter, many of us are less active, crave richer, heartier foods, and indulge more during the holidays. Combine that with shorter days and colder weather, and it’s easy to see why our bodies tend to hold onto a little extra weight. But this doesn’t have to be a negative thing!
Instead of dreading those extra pounds, you can choose how to approach winter weight gain. You can plan for it, prevent it, or use it to your advantage—especially if you’re focusing on long-term health and fitness.
Option 1: Plan for Winter Weight Gain
If you know winter weight gain is likely, why not plan for it instead of fighting it? Here’s how:
Shift Your Focus to Maintenance
Winter is a great time to switch your focus from fat loss to maintenance. This means eating to fuel your body and working out to stay active, without stressing over the scale. It’s a break from constant dieting that gives your body time to recharge. After all, maintaining your weight through the winter is a win!
Enjoy Seasonal Comfort Foods in Moderation
You don’t have to skip the cozy winter meals, but balance is key. Aim to fill your plate with lean proteins, fiber-rich vegetables, and healthy fats. Foods like soups, stews, and roasted veggies can be comforting and nourishing without overloading on calories.
Give Yourself Grace
Allow yourself to enjoy the season without feeling guilty. The extra warmth your body holds in the colder months is natural and temporary. Remind yourself that weight fluctuates, and that’s okay.
Option 2: Prevent Winter Weight Gain
Not ready to let those extra pounds creep in? Here are some tips to help prevent winter weight gain:
Stay Active Indoors
It’s easy to get stuck on the couch when it’s cold outside. But staying active, even indoors, can help prevent weight gain. Whether it’s a home workout routine, resistance training, or simple movement breaks throughout the day, keep your body moving. Remember, small bursts of activity add up!
Fuel Your Body, Don’t Overload It
Eating more doesn’t have to mean eating poorly. Focus on nutrient-dense foods that fuel your body. Protein, fiber, and healthy fats can help keep you satisfied and curb cravings for less nutritious snacks. Think about adding the good, rather than restricting yourself.
Stay Hydrated
Winter weather can make you feel less thirsty, but staying hydrated is crucial for preventing overeating. Sometimes we confuse thirst for hunger, so keep up with your water intake. Try herbal teas or warm broths to stay cozy and hydrated at the same time.
Option 3: Use Winter Weight Gain to Your Advantage
What if you could turn winter weight gain into a positive? Here’s how you can use this season to build muscle and set yourself up for long-term success:
Embrace Muscle Building
Winter is the perfect time to focus on strength training. If you find yourself craving more calories, put them to good use by fueling muscle growth. Building muscle not only boosts your metabolism but also makes future fat loss easier. Plus, having more muscle helps you look and feel strong!
Focus on Strength-Based Workouts
Shift your workouts from cardio to strength training during the winter months. Building muscle can help offset any potential weight gain, and it’s an excellent way to stay active while indoors. Strength training will also give you a solid foundation for when you’re ready to focus on fat loss again.
Use the Off-Season to Recover
Winter is a great time to prioritize recovery. Focus on getting enough sleep, managing stress, and giving your body the rest it needs. Proper recovery will help you build muscle and prepare for future fat loss phases with a renewed sense of energy and focus.
The Bottom Line: Winter Weight Gain Isn’t the Enemy
Whether you choose to plan for winter weight gain, prevent it, or use it to your advantage, the key is to approach this season with a strategy. Winter doesn’t have to derail your fitness goals. In fact, with the right mindset and plan, you can come out of the colder months feeling stronger, healthier, and ready for what’s next!
Are you trying to lose weight but your family and friends resist your weight loss efforts? You’re not alone. In this video, I’ll share three surprising reasons why they may be doing this – and what you can do about it.
3 Surprising Reasons Family And Friends May Resist Your Weight Loss Efforts
The #1 reason that people don’t support you is they don’t believe you. I’ve done a series on our Youtube Channel before where I kind of pinned down my husband and asked him why husbands tend to sabotage their wives. And as I’ve talked to different people in families, especially within the Eat More 2 Weigh Less community, a huge reason why people don’t support you is that you don’t believe them.
Maybe you are that girl that cries wolf, or you’ve experienced that person constantly changing things up. This is their seventy-eighth fad diet, their twelfth time quitting smoking, or they’re starting a new MLM or whatever it is. There’s always this person constantly starting something but never finishing it. And perhaps, that’s been you in the past.
Typically the people closest to you remember all those things. So whenever you start trying to change something, especially if you’re that person, that girl who’s always just been kind of radical and taking everything to the extreme. If that is you, then you can’t really expect people to just jump on board. Even I tend to hold people to that standard. If I know somebody who is always saying that they’re gonna do something, I just wait it out to see if this is really something that’s gonna stick or not. And that could be what somebody’s doing for you. So whether you’re that person that doesn’t believe people or you’re someone that nobody believes, just make sure that you’re committed first before you try to get other people to jump on board.
Watch the video above for more reasons why family and friends may resist your weight loss efforts
It’s entirely possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. In fact, you may even find that your body composition changes quite a bit in the first few weeks of starting a new workout routine. But is it healthy? And more importantly, is it sustainable? Watch the video below to learn about Body Recomposition and if it’s the right path for you.
Body Recomposition: Can You Lose Fat and Gain Muscle at the Same Time?
Body recomposition is losing fat and gaining muscle. These two things are the epitome of what you typically try to do when you want to lose weight.
This is not to be confused with Body COMPosition. With Body Composition, if you hire a personal trainer, they take your weight, picture, measurements and have you do something like a DEXA scan, which helps you understand what your body fat and muscle mass are. However, when doing a Body Recomp, you will usually find that the fat percentage went down and the lean body mass percentage went up. What this does is instead of just focusing on weight loss, like stepping on a scale, you are making sure that the weight that you look at changes.
Watch the training above for a more in-depth look into Body Recomposition…
You want to lose weight, but not at the expense of metabolic damage. Such a simple request that, unfortunately, most weight loss methods just can’t seem to deliver on.
Here are three main things to focus on when attempting to lose weight that will help maintain a healthy metabolism:
#1 Make sure you’re eating enough!
Under eating is the number one reason for metabolic slowdown from dieting. Eating too little leads to your body adapting to the lower calorie intake (read: the “deficit” becomes “maintenance”) and ultimately slowing down your metabolism. This is counterproductive when it comes to weight loss.
The key is to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible by eating enough food, with a sufficient macronutrient intake for your goals.
Key Takeaway – Be sure to eat enough calories (consisting of high amounts of protein and fiber) to allow for fat loss but also maintenance of muscle mass.
#2 Lift Weights.
Muscle mass is a critical part of your metabolism, so you’ll wanna preserve every ounce of it. Resistance training will help you to maintain as much muscle mass as possible while losing weight. When you focus your exercise efforts on building (or at least maintaining) muscle, your metabolic rate will remain high, and your body will know exactly what to do with the calories you consume.
It’s important to note that just because your training involves a dumbbell, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re building muscle. Group classes or training with super high reps is often cardio-based and not conducive to muscle building.
Key Takeaway – Lift, but do so with the intent to build or maintain muscle. Stick with weights that you can do 8-12 reps of in any particular exercise, but that fatigue you by the end of each set. Muscle = metabolism!
#3 Give Yourself Enough Time.
Don’t tackle weight loss with a tight timeframe! You will likely end up putting your body in a position where you may end up damaging your metabolism. Plan for diet breaks every 4 or 8 weeks to take time off from eating less and go back to consuming maintenance level calories.
Key Takeaway – If your fat loss is happening too fast and seems too good to be true, it probably is. Weight loss of one pound per week (for women) and two pounds per week (for men) is a good gauge to use.
The best kind of fat loss is permanent fat loss! By using the guidance above, you will be on your way to losing as little muscle mass as possible, all while keeping your metabolism burning and healthy and losing fat as well!
You want to lose weight, but not at the expense of metabolic damage. Such a simple request that, unfortunately, most weight loss methods just can’t seem to deliver on.
Here are three main things to focus on when attempting to lose weight that will help maintain a healthy metabolism:
#1 Make sure you’re eating enough!
Under eating is the number one reason for metabolic slowdown from dieting. Eating too little leads to your body adapting to the lower calorie intake (read: the “deficit” becomes “maintenance”) and ultimately slowing down your metabolism. This is counterproductive when it comes to weight loss.
The key is to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible by eating enough food, with a sufficient macronutrient intake for your goals.
Key Takeaway – Be sure to eat enough calories (consisting of high amounts of protein and fiber) to allow for fat loss but also maintenance of muscle mass.
#2 Lift Weights.
Muscle mass is a critical part of your metabolism, so you’ll wanna preserve every ounce of it. Resistance training will help you to maintain as much muscle mass as possible while losing weight. When you focus your exercise efforts on building (or at least maintaining) muscle, your metabolic rate will remain high, and your body will know exactly what to do with the calories you consume.
It’s important to note that just because your training involves a dumbbell, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re building muscle. Group classes or training with super high reps is often cardio-based and not conducive to muscle building.
Key Takeaway – Lift, but do so with the intent to build or maintain muscle. Stick with weights that you can do 8-12 reps of in any particular exercise, but that fatigue you by the end of each set. Muscle = metabolism!
#3 Give Yourself Enough Time.
Don’t tackle weight loss with a tight timeframe! You will likely end up putting your body in a position where you may end up damaging your metabolism. Plan for diet breaks every 4 or 8 weeks to take time off from eating less and go back to consuming maintenance level calories.
Key Takeaway – If your fat loss is happening too fast and seems too good to be true, it probably is. Weight loss of one pound per week (for women) and two pounds per week (for men) is a good gauge to use.
The best kind of fat loss is permanent fat loss! By using the guidance above, you will be on your way to losing as little muscle mass as possible, all while keeping your metabolism burning and healthy and losing fat as well!
Here at EM2WL we have talked in great length before about this lifestyle being a journey, not a race. We don’t reach the end result in 21 days or 90 days, or even in a year. The path to breaking free from Diet Mentality begins with a single step forward. For CTDM Workshop Alum member Rachel Perry, the first step forward was to take a step back.
Healing During the Messy Middle
Rachel joined the Fam during our first Crushing the Diet Mentality workshop over two years ago. Eager to learn how to take control of her life again, Rachel jumped right in to the materials and began her journey. She quickly realized that she had wasted over 20 years of her life by jumping on every latest diet trend. (not including the thousands of dollars in the process) After the workshop ended, the real work was set to begin. Rachel made the decision to enter a chill phase and spent the next two years relearning how to just live life again.
Rachel recently sat down with Kiki to discuss her messy middle – that part no one sees between the before and after pictures. In her interview, Rachel discusses many of her mindset shifts that occurred over her two years in chill. Some key points they discuss in this vlog are:
Having a DEXA scan done and seeing just how much muscle she had lost from dieting
Gaining 10 pounds in a year and none of it being Fat.
Learning that the work is being done under the surface, and that you can’t see it most of the time.
Understanding what it truly means to be in a Chill phase.
Learning that diet mentality makes you track time, not behaviors.
Realizing that it is a really cool journey learning about yourself.
Appreciating that she can now have Cadbury eggs in the house months after Easter
No more GUILT!
Rachel’s journey is far from over. She shares her messy middle to encourage new members that there are people who took back their life. There are members of the Fam who understand your struggles and are here to help. And there is life after the scale.
Be sure to take a few moments and listen to this amazing conversation!
Be sure to head on over to our Online Facebook Community to see Rachel and all of the Fam who have gone through, or going through the Messy Middle
Here at EM2WL we have talked in great length before about this lifestyle being a journey, not a race. We don’t reach the end result in 21 days or 90 days, or even in a year. The path to breaking free from Diet Mentality begins with a single step forward. For CTDM Workshop Alum member Rachel Perry, the first step forward was to take a step back.
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