4 Reasons We Gain Weight In The Spring

It’s springtime – aren’t we supposed to be losing weight? Shedding our winter pounds? Well, we found a few reasons we may be gaining weight instead with a little help from registered dietician Dawn Jackson Blatner.

Cadbury Eggs are at every check out aisle. More candy is consumed on and around Easter than any other time of the year – except Halloween. And the candy seems to linger around the house for weeks. Think about it: 90 million chocolate bunnies are sold and 16 billion jellybeans.

We’re exercising more. I know, it sounds counterintuitive. But when the weather gets nice and we start exercising more – we start eating more to compensate. But a 600-calorie smoothie has twice as many calories as you can burn in a half-hour jog. And exercise actually suppresses your appetite for about two hours. So, if you feel hungry, you’re probably dehydrated. Drink some water instead.

Longer days. When it stays light later, we go to bed later. And a lack of sleep triggers hunger hormones. Also, dinner may get pushed back until it’s dark out – so you have more snacking hours in between lunch and dinner.

We start drinking iced coffee drinks. But a small Dunkin Donuts Coffee Coolatta has 400 calories. And liquid calories don’t register as real food in your brain – you end up eating just as much solid food as you normally would. So what may sound harmless – iced coffee – could be the reason you can’t fit into your khakis yet. Stick with plain iced coffee, a little skim milk with a shot of sugar-free syrup at Dunkin Donuts and save yourself 300 calories.