I said Brrrr it’s cold in here……

I have never been so cold so often in my life as I have been since my gastric bypass surgery. I had my surgery in February, a few months before winter and boy I had no idea I would literally freeze my butt off through the winter.

I spent most of last winter in the air-conditioned office I work in wrapped up in layers of clothing including my winter coat, slippers, a scarf and a blanket on my lap and still some days could not get my body temperature off freezing. This year since my weight has stabilised out a bit I have got some merino thermals and I’m planning on being toasty warm.

After quite a while it occurred to me that there might be a bit more to being constantly so cold than the obvious loss of extra insulation that had happened from the previous year. I turned to Google to research it and it turns out it’s a common phenomenon after weight loss surgery.

As well as losing big amounts of weight rather quickly and so a whole heap of insulation there is a shift in your metabolic processes related to the rapid weight loss and this plays havoc with your body being able to regulate its core temperature. Your body, now considerably smaller, doesn’t consume anywhere near as much energy and uses far less energy to move you about. This in turn generates less heat as you go about your normal routines leaving you much more likely to feel a chill.

After your weight stabilises or at about the two-year point post surgery your metabolism should have caught up and should get a bit better at keeping your body running at a warmer temperature. I will certainly be on the lookout this winter to see if I cope better with the cold and I really hope I do.

It came as quite a shock to me freezing through what should have been a relatively warm environment last winter so this year I am prepared. It helps that my weight is stable enough now and my clothing size has evened out to get thermals and know they should fit all winter.

There was one huge upside to this though and that was the fact that summer was so much more bearable this year. Any overweight person knows how unbearable summer gets in the heat and this summer was nowhere near as bad as I remember. I had two or three days the whole summer where I felt I was too hot but other than that really enjoyed the warmer days and not feeling like I was frozen to the bone on a daily basis.

Have you also experienced being cold what seems like all the time after having some sort of bariatric surgery? Leave me a comment below because after all no journey through this is the same!