If you live in Atlantic Canada, you know that from November to April, the weather is essentially a personal attack. It’s damp, it’s windy, and it cuts right through you.
The natural human instinct is to hide. We crank the thermostat to 22°C (72°F). We start our cars ten minutes early to warm the seats. We bundle up in Gore-Tex armor just to walk to the mailbox.
We are addicted to thermal comfort.
But as I’ve rebuilt my metabolic engine over the last few months, I’ve started doing something that makes my friends look at me like I’ve lost my mind. I’ve stopped hiding from the cold. In fact, I’m actively seeking it out.
I don't do it because I’m tough (I’m not). I do it because I’m an optimizer. I’ve learned that cold is not just a weather condition; it is a powerful metabolic switch that turns my body from a storage unit into a furnace.
Here is the science of Hormesis and why I’ve learned to embrace the chill.
Part 1: The "Good" Fat (Brown vs. White)
To understand why I walk around Point Pleasant Park
White Adipose Tissue (WAT): This is the "storage" fat. These are the "balloons" I wrote about in
"Inflated with Emotion" . Its job is to store excess energy. It is metabolically lazy. Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT): This is the "utility" fat. It is dark in color because it is packed with iron-rich mitochondria (the power plants).
The Magic of BAT: Brown fat has one job: Thermogenesis. It takes energy (sugar and white fat) and burns it to create heat.
When you were a baby, you had a lot of BAT to keep you warm. As adults, because we live in climate-controlled boxes, our BAT goes dormant. It atrophies from disuse.
My goal is to wake it up.
Part 2: Hormesis (What Doesn't Kill You...)
This concept is the backbone of my resilience strategy. Hormesis is the biological phenomenon where a mild stressor triggers a beneficial adaptation.
Exercise is stress that builds muscle.
Fasting is stress that builds metabolic flexibility.
Cold is stress that builds heat-generating capacity.
When I expose myself to cold, my body panics for a second. It says, "Temperature dropping! Deploy countermeasures!"
If I just shiver, that’s muscle contraction. It burns calories, sure. But if I expose myself to cold consistently, my body adapts. It recruits more Brown Fat. It increases my metabolic rate not just during the walk, but for hours afterwards.
More importantly for my heart health, cold exposure has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity. Brown fat sucks glucose out of the bloodstream to fuel the furnace, lowering blood sugar levels naturally.
Part 3: The "Halifax Protocol" (How I Do It)
I’m not jumping into a hole cut in the ice (yet). My approach is practical and sustainable.
1. The Thermostat War I keep my apartment cool.
Daytime: I don't overheat the room. If I’m chilly, I don't turn up the heat; I do ten pushups or put on a sweater.
Nighttime: I sleep in a cool room (around 18°C / 65°F). As discussed in my
Sleep post
2. The "Under-Dressed" Walk When I go for my daily 2 km walk or my 15 km weekend ruck, I dress for the second mile, not the first.
I wear one fewer layer than I think I need.
The first 10 minutes are uncomfortable. I feel the bite.
By minute 15, my internal furnace kicks in. I am generating my own heat. I finish the walk invigorated, not sweaty and suffocated.
3. The Cold Finish This is the hardest one. At the end of my shower, I turn the handle all the way to "Cold" for the last 30 seconds. It is a shock. It wakes up every nerve ending. It forces a deep inhale. But stepping out of the shower feeling essentially "warm" because my body is radiating heat is a feeling of total vitality.
The Takeaway
We have engineered comfort into every second of our lives, and it has made us metabolically fragile.
By reintroducing the cold, I am reminding my body of its primal job: to regulate itself. To burn fuel. To stay alive.
So, when the Nova Scotia wind cuts across the harbor, I don't turn my back to it. I zip up my (light) jacket, I smile, and I let my mitochondria do the work they were designed for.
I don't pay the power company to keep me warm. I pay my metabolism.
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