Shiver Away the Pounds!

[Content Note: Fat hatred; classism.]

Hey, fatties who work in cold environs: There's GOOD NEWS about freezing your ass off all day—it'll totes help ya slim down! MAYBE.

An upside of your freezing cold office: Dutch endocrinologists argue in a new report that exposure to mild cold temperatures – around 64 to 66 degrees – can help you lose weight.

Here is a helpful graphic that accompanies the story!


It could be!

The theory goes like this: Weight is determined by energy intake (the calories you consume) and energy output (the calories you burn). The authors of this new paper hypothesize that setting the thermostat to a cooler temperature will make our bodies work harder to warm themselves – which means more calories burned.

Keeping the thermostat turned low is not the solution to the problem of obesity – because there is, of course, no single answer, says Dr. W. D. van Marken Lichtenbelt, lead author of the paper. But Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, a New York City endocrinologist who was not involved in this report, says it's a "reasonable" hypothesis.

"They say, 'Look, this is a serious problem; we've tried a bunch of different things, and nothing appears to be working that well, so we have to think outside of the box,'" says Mechanick, president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

The authors say there is evidence that cold temperatures activate brown adipose tissue, a form of fat that generates heat by burning calories from regular fat. "They're using those principles to say, 'Well, maybe there's an easier way. Maybe if we could train somebody to be in cold, that training could have them burn off calories and generate heat,'" Mechanick says.

LOLOLOL OMG. "Maybe if we could train somebody to be in cold." Yep. Sounds totally "reasonable" to me!

One of the things that training fat people (like circus animals!) "to be in the cold" would entail is telling many of us to ignore our bodies' signals for food, which is what happens to a lot of people (of any size) when you sit and shiver for a long time. You start burning a bunch of calories to stay warm, your body will likely start indicating it needs fuel.

So essentially this hot new theory boils down to: Fat people should be cold and hungry all the time in order to get thin. MAYBE.

True Fact: Prolonged exposure to cold and food deprivation are considered acts of torture. So, at this point, anti-fat crusaders are literally just proposing torture to make us thin. I MEAN FOR OUR HEALTH.