Always Cold and Gaining Weight After 40? Why My Cousin Wears a Cardigan in July, and Where Her Body's Heat Went

Dana R., contributor — Comfort & Ease Co

If you're always cold and gaining weight after 40, if you're the one in a cardigan at the Fourth of July cookout while everyone else is fanning themselves, I want to tell you about my cousin Tammy. For two years she treated those as two separate problems. One was "I'm just cold-natured." The other was "I'm just getting older." It turns out they may have been the same problem all along.

Tammy is 49. She drives a school bus in a small town outside Dayton, which means she's up at 5:15 and out in the dark on winter mornings warming up a forty-foot vehicle. She has always run a little cold. But somewhere around 47 it changed. Her hands went white at the fingertips in the grocery store freezer aisle. She started sleeping in wool socks in August. Her husband bought his own blanket because she kept the thermostat at 74 and he couldn't sleep.

And in those same two years, she put on eighteen pounds. Not from eating more. She'd actually cut back. Smaller lunches, no more soda, a salad most nights. The scale kept climbing anyway, and almost all of it went to her middle.

Why being cold and gaining weight can go together after 40

Here's the part I didn't understand until Tammy and I started digging. Your body is always making heat. That warmth in your hands and feet isn't free. It's fuel being burned, every minute, just to keep you running. When everything is working, a good share of what you eat goes straight into that fire.

But after 40, a lot of things shift at once. Estrogen starts to fall, and it plays a part in how and where we store fat. We tend to lose a little muscle every year, and muscle is one of the biggest heat-makers we have. Sleep gets choppier. Stress hormones run higher. Put all of that together and, for many women, the body seems to quietly turn its own thermostat down. It burns less to keep you warm, and it holds on to more of what you eat, mostly around the waist, the way a house with a weak furnace stays chilly while the oil tank stays full.

That's why "just eat less" backfires so often for women like Tammy. Eat less, and a body that's already in save-everything mode can turn the heat down further. Colder hands. Same jeans getting tighter.

What she tried before

• Getting her thyroid checked. The most important thing on this list, and I'd tell any woman with these two symptoms together to do it first. Hers came back normal. In a way that was the frustrating part.
• A "metabolism booster" from the drugstore. Mostly caffeine. She felt jittery on the bus route by 9 a.m. and wide awake at midnight, and the scale didn't care.
• Cayenne on everything. A video said spicy food "melts fat." It made her eyes water and gave her heartburn.
• Eating less and less. Smaller lunches, skipped snacks, salad dinners. The cold got worse. So did the afternoon crash.

Every one of those might help somebody a little. But every one of them was trying to force the body to burn, either by jolting it with caffeine or starving it. None of them did anything about why the furnace had been turned down, or why the fuel kept going into storage instead of into the fire.

The driver in short sleeves

The turning point happened at the bus depot, of all places. There's a woman there named Gloria who's been driving for twenty-two years. She's 56. And on a raw morning in early October, with Tammy in a fleece, a scarf and the heater on high, Gloria walked across the lot in short sleeves carrying her coffee.

Tammy actually asked her if she was sick. Gloria laughed. She said she used to be "the cold one" too, the one with the blanket in the driver's seat, and that two winters ago she'd been where Tammy was: cold all day, gaining all year, eating like a sparrow. Then she opened the little cooler she packs her lunch in and set a small bottle of drops on the hood of Tammy's car.

It was called Thermo Ignite. Tammy's first reaction was mine would have been. "Drops? I've tried the pills." But Gloria said the thing that made her listen. "The pills tried to make me burn faster. This is about where my fuel was going."

Tammy reads labels the way she checks her mirrors, slowly and twice. Right there in the depot lot, she read this one. Here's what's in it and why it made sense to her:

• L-carnitine. The carrier that helps move stored fat into your cells so it can be burned for energy instead of sitting where it is. "So that's how the oil gets from the tank to the furnace," she said.
• Green tea extract. Catechins that support the body's own calorie burning, without the caffeine-pill jitters that had her rattling on the route.
• Chromium picolinate. A mineral that helps the body handle blood sugar, the thing behind her 3 p.m. crash and the trip to the vending machine.
• Gymnema sylvestre. A plant traditionally used to quiet the pull toward sweets.
• African mango seed extract. Traditionally used to support fat metabolism; the company describes the formula as made for a mature metabolism.

She showed it to her doctor before starting, since he's the one who'd checked her thyroid. The directions call for about two full droppers twice a day. Tammy takes one in the depot parking lot before her morning route and one before supper.

What changed, week by week

• Week 1. Nothing she'd swear to. She did notice she forgot her gloves one morning and didn't go back for them.
• Weeks 2 and 3. The 3 p.m. crash got softer. She walked past the vending machine at the depot without feeling like she was walking past an old friend.
• Month 1. Her husband pointed out she'd turned the thermostat down to 71 on her own. She hadn't noticed. Her feet were warm enough under the covers that the wool socks came off at night.
• Months 2 and 3. Her uniform pants stopped digging in when she sat in the driver's seat. Not dramatic. But that's eight hours a day of feeling it, so she felt it.

Why does it take that long? Because nothing in here is a jolt. You're not cranking the heat for a few hours the way a caffeine pill does. You're supporting how your body moves fuel and what it does with the fat it's been saving, and that's slow work after years of the furnace running low. The company says some women notice changes in appetite and energy in the first few weeks, but it recommends 30 to 90 days of steady use. That's why Tammy's second order was the larger supply. Results vary, and she'd tell you so herself.

Who it's for, and who should skip it

It may fit you if you're over 40, you run cold more than you used to, the weight has crept onto your middle even though you're eating the same or less, and caffeine pills and crash diets have only made you jittery or hungrier.

Skip it, or talk to your doctor first, if you've never had your thyroid checked (do that first), you're pregnant or nursing, you take medication for blood sugar (chromium and gymnema work on the same thing), you have a heart rhythm problem, or you're on or coming off a weight-loss shot. And if your hands and feet turn white or blue in the cold, mention that to your doctor too.

The guarantee

The company's page shows a 60-day guarantee: if you're not impressed, you write to them within those 60 days and they refund you. Tammy made herself a deal. Sixty days, and an honest look at the thermostat and the uniform pants at the end.

P.S. Last Sunday at the family cookout, Tammy showed up in a t-shirt. My aunt actually asked her if she had a fever. She just smiled and handed her a burger. If you're the one reaching for the cardigan right now, here's what Gloria keeps in her lunch cooler.