Winter Weight Gain and How to Avoid It
The Primal Pioneer Podcast teaches you how to improve the environment you live, work, and exercise in so you can achieve optimal health. Heathar’s leading-edge teachings and expert interviews with integrative health professions teach you the most effective, simple yet deeply transformative solutions to overcoming and preventing every chronic disease today. You’ll walk away from this podcast feeling invigorated, inspired, and confident about your body’s incredible and natural ability to heal!
Winter Weight Gain and How to Avoid It
In episode 39 of the Primal Pioneer, I want to talk about winter weight gain and how we can prevent it. If you are someone who finds that you tend to gain weight around the winter months, stick around. I’ll be sharing tips surrounding that, as well as exercise. I want to dive into some issues I have regarding gym memberships. While I am a big fan of movement, some issues need to be addressed when it comes to the way we work out and where we work out.
But before we dive right in, let me introduce myself in case this is your first visit. I am your host, Heathar Shepard and I am incredibly passionate about helping people JUST LIKE YOU find the health and happiness they truly deserve.
Besides being an alternative healer and integrative health coach, I’m also a Traumatic Brain Injury survivor who struggled for 10 years until I discovered the MOST important factor for overall health: the environment we live and work in. And in The Primal Pioneer, I share what 98+% of doctors don’t tell you (or don’t even know!) about true health and wellness. You’ll learn about the importance of sunlight, as well as the foods and eating cycles that heal the root causes of chronic disease. And in an age dominated by technology, you’ll discover how EMF mitigation can drastically improve your life.
Everyone has their healing journey with their unique struggles...but I’m here to give you all the tools you need to make that healing happen!
So if you’re ready to learn more about winter weight gain and how to avoid it, keep on reading! And for even more details, listen to ALL of episode 39 of The Primal Pioneer on your favorite streaming platform.
Avoiding Winter Weight Gain: Movement can be good for the body, but most of us are either not moving enough or moving way too much.
Everyone is drawn to working out as soon as they gain weight. The first thing we are trained to think about is to eat less, eat healthily, and go to the gym. When does this occur usually? When we transition into the new year. January is a busy time of year for gym memberships and fitness programs. Don’t get me wrong, movement is amazing. However, we tend to work out vigorously and almost overcompensate. While there are times this can be beneficial and necessary, working our body out in an intense way can be counterproductive to health. If we go back to our ancient ancestors and how they used to move their bodies, they weren’t in the gym lifting weights and doing heavy exertion that many of us do today. They did work hard plowing fields, making farms, and building homes. If we think about their body type compared to our body type now, for those who work out in the gym, the physique is very different.
I’m not saying movement is bad for you at all. However, the way we go about it isn’t ideal. We are either not moving enough or moving way too much. When we do decide to move, it’s often very vigorous and intense. We would do our bodies a better service if we participated in a movement that was supportive of our health. This includes walking, hiking, or swimming. If you are someone who struggles with losing weight and especially during the winter, know that the solution doesn’t lie in vigorous, high-intensity exercise. We often correlate working out to good health. However, my experience has been different than that. I can say I am much healthier now versus when I worked out vigorously six or seven days a week.
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Winter Weight Gain, Point #2: Practice the Sunlight Rx throughout the spring and summer to set yourself up for a surplus in the winter.
If a lack of movement isn’t the whole story behind achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, you’re probably wondering what is. There is a lot to this, and I want you to ask yourself this question. What is the one thing that changes for everyone living outside of the tropics as we move towards winter? Sunlight. The sunlight availability and duration changes. This is the biggest shift we all experience as we move into the fall and winter seasons. As we are moving towards winter, sunlight levels decrease and UV light levels decrease as well. What does this mean for you? It means you can’t make vitamin D from sunlight during the winter months.
Most people hear that and assume they can take a supplement to make up for it. I urge you not to this because you shouldn’t be taking something that nature designed you to make. Instead, what I’d recommend for you is to boost your UV light exposure by practicing the Sunlight Rx throughout the spring and summer. This boosts your vitamin D levels naturally through the roof so that when winter approaches, you have this surplus of vitamin D. You can tailor your diet and help stretch or prolong those vitamin D sources throughout winter. This way you can go through winter without experiencing poor sleep, seasonal affective disorder, and weight gain. Most people struggling with weight loss and obesity are deficient in vitamin D.
Winter Weight Gain, Point #3: We have to adjust our diet according to the time of year.
Another huge reason why people may gain weight during the winter is that they don’t alter their diet as the light frequency in the sky changes. As the UV light leaves the sky, we keep the same diet or similar even when this light frequency is changing. This is why I'm not a fan of a one diet fits all. There are zero diets right now that consider the light environment. This is a big influence because if you think about your food, what does it need to grow? Food needs light to grow. It’s almost like your body has a barcode for the type of light the food is exposed to. For example, if you eat a banana in the middle of winter. Bananas are grown in strong UV light. When you eat this, your cells are getting information that UV light is present when it actually isn’t.
This can create a mismatched state. Then this drives inflammation which is an underlying root cause of things like weight gain. We can look at the diet changes in our ancient ancestors as another example. They did not eat the same diet year-round. They had to go based on their environment and what was available to them. This would include foods that had protein, fats, rather than carbohydrates and starches. We would do our bodies a big favor if we learned to eat according to the season. This is a huge way to prevent winter weight gain.
Hi, I am Heathar
With over 12 years experience as an alternative healer, integrative health coach and one who has been through severe physical injury trying every remedy under the sun to heal myself with no avail…I’m here to tell you, all of those things are not only attainable but are foundational to achieving optimal health and are core elements to overcoming all chronic and stubborn diseases.
At the age of 23 I suffered a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) preventing me from the ability to engage in physical activity for over 12 years post my car accident. Today, I know I could have recovered from this injury much quicker if I had known then what I know now! But….the accident lead me down the healing path. A path that I was destined to take to help myself heal and to learn how to help others heal complicated and chronic disorders as well.
During this time, I learned two things: How to harness the healing power of sunlight and how to utilize frequency based medicine to facilitate biological transformations in the body - all the way down to the mitochondrial level.
Today, I lead an active life and you can bet I’m uber passionate about teaching others how they can overcome even the most daunting health experiences that most medical professionals have band-aid solutions for, at best.
And today, my health continues to improve each day and I now lead an active, healthy lifestyle - all of which I thought would never be possible to achieve again. All it took was discovering the most effective path to health and healing to get me there and now, to help my clients get there as well!
Winter Weight Gain, Point #4: 3 reasons I’m not a huge fan of working out in the gym to lose weight.
I want to touch back on this topic regarding exercise. We are taught that if we are unhealthy, we have to get into the gym to get that weight off. Here are three key points as to why I’m not a fan of working out in gyms. Firstly, If you are overweight or struggling with weight issues, we know that initially there is a metabolic imbalance occurring. We can tell this simply by looking at the individual who is struggling with their weight. Vigorous exercise further depletes hormones. If you don’t have enough hormones to start with, you go into a gym and workout vigorously, this activity depletes the hormones. You will further perpetuate this imbalanced state.
If you do want to engage in strenuous activities, wait until your hormone panel has improved and metabolic health has improved. If you want to work out and do something light, that is more in alignment with helping get your hormones and metabolic health back on track.
The second reason is that you are essentially exercising in an artificial environment. You are indoors and under fake light. Chances are there’s lots of wifi surrounding you as well. Think about your gym. How many people are there at one time? How many of them have their iPhone or Apple Watch on them? Not only are you working out in artificial light but you are also working out in a microwave radiation radio frequency environment. This isn’t a great idea as it’s not optimal for your cells.
The last reason is that anybody struggling with weight, type two diabetes, and obesity suffer from an energy production-related disorder. There is compromised energy production at the mitochondria and cellular level. When we expend too much energy working out vigorously, this only further depletes our energy production and capabilities. To overcome these root issues of weight loss struggles and weight gain, we must improve the energy production capability. The first step is to reset the metabolism using meal timing, light, high octane proteins, and fats. Then you can add in exercise when you see improvements in your hormone panel.
The Bottom Line of Winter Weight Gain and How to Avoid It
My suggestion for you as winter approaches is to skip the gym membership, cut the carbs, and know that exercise alone is not the solution. I hope hearing about these factors and reasons behind weight gain can help you make better choices when it comes to your health journey. Also - be sure to join my metabolic reset course for further support when it comes to preventing winter weight gain and obtaining long-term health goals!
If you enjoyed this episode, I would appreciate it if you took one minute to rate and review. Each review helps more people just like you learn the deeper truths about health, healing, and what’s driving our epidemic rates of poor health today. Don’t forget to take a screenshot of the episode, share it on your Instagram stories, and tag me @sunlight_rx. Thanks for tuning in and see you next week!
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