Do Cold Showers Burn Fat?

But do they really work?

Do they burn fat?

Do they assist with weight loss, or promote overall health?

In this guide, I’ll be taking an in-depth look at cold showers and their potential health benefits.

What Are Cold Showers? Why Do People Do Them?

Cold showers are an ancient practice that’s been revamped in modern times.

Within the last decade, cold showers have exploded in popularity — they’re promoted by psychologists, spiritual gurus, and health-nerd iconoclasts like “The Iceman,” Wim Hof.

Why all this newfound popularity?

Perhaps it was triggered by the premise that cold showers can supercharge fat burning and sculpt six-pack abs out of thin air.

While cold showers really do have proven health benefits, somewhere along the lines, things got blown a little bit out of proportion.

As I’ll be getting into next, cold showers probably aren’t a silver bullet.

They shouldn’t be used to compensate for a bad diet or workout routine.

The truth is that cold showers can and do burn fat — just not as much fat as you might think.

They work by forcing your body to ramp up its metabolic rate (don’t forget, metabolism is a type of slow burn that produces heat).

Think of your body like a log cabin.

You should probably put more wood on the fire when it's colder outside, right?

Wood, in this case, is an analog for calorie burn.

Your body’s internal furnace is ‘switched on in response to cold.

And cold showers may be the best way to trigger this physiological response.

That’s because they target a specialized type of fat, called brown adipose tissue, located throughout the dermal tissue in your beck and back.

This mitochondria-rich fat is essentially ‘awakened’ when cold water hits it. And with this awakening comes the opportunity for plenty of calorie burn. (Source)

Do Cold Showers Help You Lose Weight? Do Cold Showers Burn Fat?

Weight loss is probably the most sought-after benefit of taking cold showers.

Ask 10 random cold shower-ers why they’re giving the practice a try, and 6-8 of them will probably say weight loss.

A growing body of research shows that regular cold showers can convert your body’s white adipose tissue (WAT) into more metabolically active brown adipose tissue (BAT).

While WAT’s function is fat/energy storage, BAT’s function is fat/energy burning.

BAT cells can burn other types of body fat to generate body heat.

How much of a difference in calorie burn are we talking about?

I outline more about this below.

How Many Calories Does a Cold Shower Burn?

Some studies demonstrate that two ounces of extra brown fat can help your body burn a whopping 500 extra calories daily. Per week that’s 3,500 calories, corresponding to one pound less body fat. (Source)

It remains unclear, however, how long it takes for a cold shower routine to trigger two ounces of brown fat production.

Until your body gets really good at producing brown fat, don’t expect to burn those full 500 extra calories per day.

Some studies show that it takes 60 hours (10 days of six hours of mild cold exposure) to increase your body’s brown fat levels tangibly.

Another study showed that cold immersion at 57℉ temporarily increased one’s metabolic rate by an incredible 350%. (Source)

And yet another study found that 2 hours of very mild cold exposure at 66℉ burned 410 calories.

Cold exposure even works on people who are already at a healthy weight.

One 6-week-long study found that 2 hours/day at 66℉ led to a 5% reduction in body fat.

Other Benefits Of Cold Showers

Cold showers may improve body composition in other ways, too.

One of its many ‘side benefits’ is hormone-drive appetite regulation.

It’s hard to overeat when your appetite is lower than usual! (Source)

And then there are the mental benefits.

Cold showers are uncomfortable, especially at first.

Moreover, they’re uncomfortable in a way that most of us in the Western world aren’t used to experiencing.

The fact that cold showers are uncomfortable makes them great for your mind.

The discipline gleaned from cold showers can translate to so many other areas of life, including:

• Your diet/way of eating
• Your meditation routine
• Your work/business goals
• Your exercise/fitness routine

As Mike Tyson has said on his podcast:

discipline is doing what you hate to do — but doing it like you love it.

You might hate cold showers at first, but don’t despair.

The opportunity to push through the pain is part of what makes them so effective!

Anecdotal reports hint that cold showers may also have an anti-addiction quality.

More than a few adherents say that taking cold showers has made it easier for them to quit smoking, drinking, binging on sugar, or otherwise damaging their health.

Other potential benefits of cold showers can be seen below.

Related: Check out supplements that help circulation.

Cold Shower Alternatives

Not into cold showers, even after hearing about their many physical and mental health benefits?

No worries — you may be able to come close to matching said benefits in other ways.

• Turn down your house temperature. See if you can handle 70 degrees one week, 68 the next, 66 the next, etc. Don’t forget that 66℉ is enough to see many BAT-related improvements!
• Wear fewer clothes, even when it’s cold out. The Fall season is a perfect time to get used to this. See if you can keep on that T-shirt as the temperature drops to 60, then 50, then 40 degrees. (It’s perfectly fine to keep your hands, feet, and head insulated.)
• Place an ice pack on the back of your neck. In adults, most existing brown fat is located in the upper back and lower neck. ‘Awakening’ this fat may not even require full-body cold exposure! It’s possible that upregulating your metabolism is as simple as cooling down this particular part of your body.
• Wear an ice vest. This allows you to experience the same benefits as method #3…even more easily.
• Drink very cold water. This is one of the techniques former NASA employee Ray Cronise famously used during his weight loss journey. Cronise and many others have had the most success drinking cold water in the morning. It’s said that you can lose over 10 pounds a year just by drinking half a gallon of ice-cold water per day.
• Work out in the cold. Running, hiking, cycling, or martial arts in cold weather allows you to burn more calories than normal. Moreover, it allows you to burn more fat calories, as brown fat cells ‘switch on’ and start burning white fat cells for fuel. Ray Cronise lost 27 pounds in just 6 weeks doing daily ‘shiver walks’ wearing a T-shirt, gloves, and earmuffs in cold weather.
• Combine cold exposure with intermittent fasting. Both practices upregulate fat-burning and lower blood sugar, so why not combine them? If doing so makes you overly cold you can always sip on some hot bulletproof coffee or tea.

Temperatures above 66℉ are unlikely to have any effect on BAT or weight loss…unless, that is, you go super hot.

Sauna use may have a fat-melting effect that rivals what you’d see from cold showers.

It appears that temperature extremes in either direction can cause your body to expend more energy staying at homeostasis, leading to improved body composition.

Do Cold Showers Burn Fat?

Taking cold showers consistently may allow you to burn up to an extra 500 calories a day!

You’ll need to break through initial pain and discomfort, but I think you’ll find doing so more than worth it.

Consider combining your cold shower routine with other thermogenic practices — sipping cold water, wearing less clothing, going on chilly-weather walks — to really supercharge your fat-burning.