Is Cold Exposure Causing You to Eat More?

Today’s topic? Cold exposure—and why the growing body of research is starting to question its role in fat loss and metabolic health. Jerred unpacks a recent 2025 study that challenges popular claims around cold plunges and their benefits.

❄️ The Study: Does Cold Really Burn More Fat?

Study Title:
Cold Induces Increased Ad Libitum Energy Intake Independent of Changes in Energy Expenditure
Published: 2025
Participants: 47 healthy adults (average age: 37, average BMI: 32)

Protocol Overview:

• 24-hour sessions in either 66°F or 74°F rooms

• Light clothing only—no bundling up

• Participants alternated between "cold" and "neutral" conditions

• Researchers tracked calorie burn, hunger hormones, and actual food intake using a metabolic chamber

📊 Key Findings

• +400 Calories/Day: On cold days, participants ate significantly more—without realizing it

• No Increased Calorie Burn: Despite being in colder temps, energy expenditure remained unchanged

• Hormones Changed, But Not Behaviorally Predictive: Hunger hormones shifted, but didn't align perfectly with why people ate more

• No Appetite Suppression Afterward: There was no compensatory “cutback” the following day

🔥 “Being cold just made them want to eat more—even without feeling hungry.”
— Jerred Moon

🧠 What Does It Mean for You?

This study did not involve cold plunges, but it suggests a pattern: cold exposure may increase unconscious calorie intake—which can offset any potential fat-burning benefits.

And it mirrors findings from previous research showing your body naturally counteracts added stress (like extra cardio or fasting) by reducing movement and encouraging rest later in the day. It’s a subconscious battle—and cold might be another stressor with unexpected consequences.

🧊 Cold vs. 🔥 Heat: Which Is Better for Recovery and Fat Loss?

✅ Conclusion: Heat wins. Cold is a tool—but it’s not a miracle.

🔄 Use Cold Exposure Wisely

Jerred isn’t anti-cold exposure. In fact, he used to cold plunge frequently and acknowledges the mental toughness and grit it can build.

However, if you’re using it as a fat loss tool, be cautious:

• You may be unintentionally triggering more hunger

• If not tracked, it can derail your calorie goals

• Cold doesn’t significantly boost metabolism unless you’re shivering for extended periods

“If you’re not tracking your macros and relying on cold to help you cut, it may be working against you.”

🧠 Coach’s Tip: Consider Your Recovery Stack

Instead of jumping on the cold plunge trend, consider making heat exposure (like sauna use) a regular part of your recovery and conditioning. The evidence consistently favors heat for:

• Improved cardiovascular health

• Enhanced metabolic function

• Appetite control

• Sustainable use

👊 Train Smarter With the Right Tools

Cold plunges might feel productive, but the science says they may not be the best choice for fat loss. For athletes, data-driven training and recovery will always beat hype.

👉 Join the Garage Gym Athlete program at GarageGymAthlete.com
💪 Get smarter programming, better recovery, and sustainable results—backed by real science.

And remember: If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Podcast Transcript

 Jerred: What's up ladies and gentlemen, Jerred Moon here and welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast. So today I'm gonna be going over a study on cold exposure, and this is. Another cold exposure study. I've been covering this more recently because I find it really interesting. I think the only people who hate, uh, you know, bro science influencers more than me are actual scientists because what we can see right now from all the different kind of studies coming out and what I've been covering recently on the podcast.

Is that cold exposure, cold water immersion, all of that kind of stuff. I feel like it's, it's under attack, if you will. Like people the like, I think the scientific community is coming after it because of how crazy popular I. Uh, you know, cold water immersion, cold plunging, all these things got, how, how crazy those got.

And I'm not anti cold water immersion or anything like that. Like I said, I've, if you go back, I think it's two recent episodes in the two nineties where I talk about hot baths and how they have a lot of research behind them. There was another one where I talk about how, you know. The, the difference between hot and cold, uh, and the in, how you should approach cold exposure and the real benefits there, uh, and what you can actually expect.

And so here's the deal, like there are definitely some benefits from cold immersion and being cold, uh, but they might be overstated and heat just seems to be the clear winner over and over again. Uh, but what's interesting about this study, and this is the one I want to get into, is this study was done in 2025, so very recent, and the name of the study is Cold Induces Increased Ad Lido Energy Intake independent of changes in energy expenditure across.

A controlled crossover trial in adults. And like I said, it was done in 2025. Uh, not a very creative title, but I'll explain what all of that means here in a second. So there are 47 healthy adults in this study. The average age was 37 and the BMI is around 32. There are mostly overweight. I think that's something that you should know, but there was a mix of males and females in this study.

So again, it was a controlled crossover trial as the title of the article states, and it was testing the effects of mild cold exposure. So specifically the temperature was around 66 degrees Fahrenheit, but this was not cold water immersion. And I'm gonna explain that more in a second. Um, and they were looking at energy expenditure, appetite, and actual food intake.

So each participant completed four separate 24 hour sessions, two in cold, and then two in neutral conditions, and it was conducted in a metabolic chamber. So that's a sealed control room that measures calories burned and eaten with extreme precision. The main thing that they were looking at, you know, if you just kind of wanna know the hypothesis of, uh, the researchers, like why they were doing this.

Said, the researchers hypothesized that mild 24 hour cold exposure would activate thermogenic processes leading to increased energy, expenditure, changes in substrate utilization, and subsequent changes in appetite and energy intake. So what they did is they, like, like I said, you got two days in each, so you got.

Two, two days spent. So two full 24 hour periods spent in 66 degrees Fahrenheit, or 74 degrees Fahrenheit. And they A either preset meals to measure energy expenditures accurately or add li meals to see how much they choose to eat. So you just can eat however much you want. And they tracked basically everything, uh, caloric intake, energy expenditure, blah, blah, blah.

Let's jump to the key findings. So they're just in this room, right? They're in this, uh, metabolic chamber. This is not cold water immersion. This is not a cold plunge. They're basically keeping people in a room for 24 hours, either at 66 degrees or 74 degrees, I think were the two temperatures I just mentioned.

Yeah. 66 degrees or 74 degrees. Okay. And so that's, and they weren't allowed to like layer up. They had to wear their. Their clothing. It didn't specifically say, but it was like light clothing basically to wear at 66 degrees if that's cold for you. They weren't able to like put on a hoodie and like all these other things, it, it was light clothing.

So what they found w was that in the cold. Exposure element. People ate 400 calories, over 400 more calories per day. So they had a 400 calorie day increase in food intake during cold exposure across all macronutrients. There was no significant increase in total daily expenditure and there was no meaningful reduction in food intake the next day, meaning things didn't play over.

Sometimes that's the argument. Um, they said that the hormones changed but not strongly predicted to who would eat more. And people didn't feel hungrier. They just subconsciously ate more. So what does this mean? Well, the, the key takeaway here is cold exposure makes you eat more even when you're not hungry and it does not help you burn more calories.

Like the fat burning effect of cold is a myth for most people. Or it's overstated because when people start talking about cold exposure, you're gonna hear people start talking about, uh, brown fat activation and like all this stuff. And while that's true to some degree, like if you get to the shivering point, it looks like it's not burning a whole lot of calories, but what your body does, uh, when it goes under stress, or whenever you start messing with your energy balance, meaning how much you're burning versus how much con you're consuming, your body will find a way to counteract your efforts.

And it, it reminds me another study we did last year, which I found very interesting and also very unfortunate. And, and I don't need to point you to that podcast, I'll tell you about the study real quick, or at least the basics of it. And the, the whole idea of this other study was the fact that if you. Go, you're gonna be more active, right?

You're like, okay, um, I'm gonna go do a two hour workout. Uh, you don't normally do two hour workouts. Uh, and let's just say maybe it's running. You pick up two hours of running in the morning. You don't do that previously. Your body subconsciously is going to counteract that. By making you fidget less, move more, and want to chill out more later in the day, and you don't even really know what's happening.

And I found this very interesting, like your body fights, your changes, the changes that you're trying to apply so hard that it's at a subconscious level and, and in reverse if like, I'm wasn't very active today, but my body feels like I need to, like, I'll have, i'll, I'll fidget more, I'll move more. It's just little stuff, right?

It's little things. Uh, but your, your subconscious mind is like actually against you. Because it's, it doesn't know what's going on, right? It's trying to counteract this fight or flight. It's, it's more survival mode when these big stressors come or they happen. And so I've always found that interesting because when people are trying to do a good thing and they're trying to start a new habit, I.

It's gonna take months and months, if not years, to change how your body actually responds to these things before it becomes the new version of you. It's not a six week thing, it's in honesty, it's probably not a six month thing, unfortunately. You just have to keep at it and you have to force yourself to ultimately hold yourself to, to a higher standard.

And, and same with this. So what they found, like this isn't. Cold exposure, like cold plunging. But they're, they're kind of making those leaps. They're basically just saying, I, if you're not, if you're not shivering, if you're not really getting to that point, you're not burning much. And if you are shivering, you're probably.

Priming your body to overeat. Okay? So if you're just getting cold and you're not getting to that shiver point, which I, in all honesty, I know a lot of people who cold plunge who aren't taking it to the shiver level. You could just be increasing your body's desire for calories. Now, if you're tracking everything, it doesn't really matter, right?

If you're just, if you track every single thing and you know exactly what your macros are and you're tracking all that stuff, then, then it's not a big deal. But this is. Another kind of like punch in the face for cold exposure, just saying, Hey, when your body gets cold, it really doesn't burn all that, all that much more in calories and it really just causes you to want to eat more.

Like that's, that's not where you want to be. Right? And so like cold water immersion being cold in general, it has recovery applications and I've covered those and that's mainly post competition or heavy eccentric training or when recovery is really important. But if you're using cold for discipline or fat loss, know the trade off.

'cause it might cost you more than it gives. Like I, and I always bring this up when I'm talking about cold exposure. 'cause I'm not anti cold exposure. I just, I think it's a tool. It's just not like the end all be all right. Like I, I did cold. Cold plunging so much. My body just got used to it. I, I grew so accustomed to it.

I didn't really see a huge mental benefit anymore, which I think a lot of people get. And then I do think from a mental capacity, just getting in cold water when you don't want to, like builds a lot of mental toughness, a lot of grit. I. You know, that's just kinda lost in today's world. But when we are talking about actual physiological changes in health benefits, that's what I'm becoming more interested in because sometimes it can get overhyped with companies that sell these products and they're not really looking as much science.

Right? And so while it might be a good thing, you know, in, in some instances it looks like when your body gets cold, it just wants to eat more. That's it. Trying to counteract what's going on. So this is, to me, this is, so this was just like, this was air temperature, right? Ambient air temperature. So making real big leaps to, uh, cold.

You know, I don't know if you can necessarily do that, but I do know, and if you've done a cold plunge, you probably feel the same way, especially if you get to the shivering point or close to it, you're cold for a long time after that, I mean much colder than being in a room where the air temperature is 66 degrees, and so there is definitely something.

Going on there with your body temperature being lower and maybe that making you want to eat more. And so just something to note, something to have in the back of your mind. This isn't some alarming, like, oh, cold plunges, debunked, or anything like that. It's just trying to equip you, the athlete with as much knowledge as you can possibly have on all of these things if you're implementing them and if you're, if cold plunging is a part of your hack for fat loss.

That might not be it. It might be a bad strategy. It may actually stimulate appetite without burning meaningful calories, and so it's gonna be driving this unconscious overeating. So when, if you're doing cold plunge and you're also trying to lose weight, just keep that in mind that being cold could make you want to naturally eat more.

And so you're either gonna have to track your calories and macros to make sure that you know you're not, or you're just going to have to deal with the fact that this could be possible. So that's basically it for this one. I found it very interesting. Uh, just something to put in the back of your head with cold.

I think that a lot more research is gonna be coming out over 2025 and into 2026 on cold exposure. Like I said, it's, it's funny to see how, uh, the scientific community can kind of go after things. It always takes them several years, right? I mean, studies take time, all this stuff. It takes them several years to come back, and then we're always like, oh, that's.

Not as good as we thought or not as bad as we thought. Like there it always goes this direction and it's really funny just to see this play out again. It's happened a lot in the nutrition world, uh, and now it's happening with these, uh, heat exposure. The good news overall is ultimately, and I I mentioned this in a recent podcast as well, like heat exposure still seems to be winning.

So I'll end with just kind of like the aspect of each one of these things. And what you can expect from cold exposure or heat exposure, something like a sauna. So energy expenditure, meaning how many calories you burn during cold exposure is pretty, pretty negligible. And unless you're extremely cold or it's extremely prolonged heat exposure, your energy expenditure is slightly elevated.

Now, appetite cold exposure in this case increases average 400 calories a day. Heat exposure suppresses your appetite a little bit. Now we're going to fat loss potential. Cold exposure. It's undermined by overeating heat exposure, a slight aid via energy balance shift. Now, recovery use, cold exposure does have acute benefit, but blunts adaptation, we've talked about that with hypertrophy.

Heat exposure may improve recovery without any trade-offs. Comfort cold is miserable, right? Most people hate cold heat exposure. We can withstand as humans a lot better, generally enjoyable in all honesty. Now cold exposure. What are the overall health benefits? Unproven beyond acute recovery? And then heat exposure is emerging evidence for cardio and metabolic health, meaning it's just good all around.

So heat is better because it slightly raises energy expenditure. It may reduce your appetite. It's sports recovery without hurting gains, and it's generally more sustainable and pleasant. So if you are choosing a recovery modality or wanting to get one of these things. Forever and always I will be, uh, recommending heat exposure unless the science changes on that.

But something like Asana done daily or a few times per week seems to be way more effective and better than cold exposure. So just something for you to note as an athlete. Alright, that's it for this one. If you wanna be part of our training, go to garage gym athlete.com. Sign up for a trial. We'd love to have you.

For all of our athletes out there training and keeping it up, we really appreciate each and every single one of you. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.