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.