As we approach Halloween, we thought it would be a good time to look at the spookier side of weight loss and as well as cheap, synthetic spider webs and increasingly ghoulish masks that includes superstitions. We’re not saying that the following superstitions are a good excuse for digging into the Halloween sweets, but they’re some curious factors that you can at least consider when it comes to weight loss.
You Will Get Hungrier At The Full Moon
Just as werewolves find their hunger is uncontrollable at the full moon, you too might have a good reason to find yourself wanting to eat more around the full moon. Studies have shown that the average person takes longer to fall asleep and longer to reach the REM phase of sleep around the full moon. This results in you getting 25 minutes less sleep on average at the full moon. 
Why is that a problem? Sleep is absolutely key when it comes to controlling hunger. Less sleep equals less of the hormone leptin, which controls how full we feel when we eat. Added to this we also produce a hormone called grehlin when we sleep less and that increases our hunger urges. Altogether it’s a pretty spooky and scary thing to happen to your weight loss.
Your Blood Matters
Did you know that there are 650 calories in one pint of human blood, which suggests that vampires might want to consider controlling their impulses unless they want to ruin their famously svelte figures. It’s not just vampires who have to watch out for blood though. Research has shown that some ABO blood groups can impact on BMI. For women blood types B and O were associated with higher rates of obesity. For men the O and B blood groups had a lower prevalence of obesity.
Clearly, you’re not going to be able to change your blood type, even if you wanted to, so there’s limited value to this knowledge. However, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on your blood if you are fighting fat. Blood tests are one of the best and most accurate ways to check for a range of obesity-related conditions, including diabetes. So don’t ignore the red stuff.
A Storm Is Good For Your Weight Loss
It would be a fairly useless haunted castle if there wasn’t at least two or three bolts of lightning per minute, plus there would be very limited chances to reanimate a corpse if you couldn’t harness the 1.21 gigawatts that lightning produces (didn’t have to look that stat up for obvious reasons). The truth of the matter is though that some inclement weather is not a bad thing for weight loss.
Researchers in the Netherlands found that colder weather and especially keeping buildings cool can be a good way of improving the metabolism. When the body is cold it activates the brown fat reserves. This type of fat contains lots of heat-generating mitochondria and in order to raise your temperature this brown fat is sacrificed to give you a heat boost. The key here is making sure that your body isn’t constantly coddled with nice warm rooms, so make your dad and the scales happy and turn the thermostat down.
Do you have any weird beliefs about your weight loss? Always wear your lucky pants to weigh in? Only eat an odd-number of vegetables at each sitting? Let us know on Facebook and Twitter.
