I used to train people and help people get into better shape. I would get the same complaint every winter without fail.

Some People would come to me in February or March (generally not January), frustrated and confused. They'd done everything right. Counted their calories, hit the gym regularly, got their eight hours of sleep. But the scale kept climbing. Three, four, even 5 kilos heavier than they were in October. These potential clients wanted my help to get them into better shape.

I used to blame it on the obvious things. Holiday eating. Less outdoor activity. Maybe some seasonal depression driving comfort food cravings. Standard stuff.

Then I made the career shift from personal training into quantum health and light therapy, and everything I thought I knew about winter weight gain got turned on its head.

The real problem wasn't willpower. It wasn't even diet or exercise. I helped with the exercise in the gym. It was light. Or more specifically, the catastrophic mismatch between the light signals Norwegian bodies are receiving in winter and what our cells actually need to regulate metabolism properly.

The Problem Nobody Talks About: Light Timing and Norwegian Metabolism

Here's what most weight loss advice gets wrong. They tell you to count calories, exercise more, eat less, track macros, optimize your sleep. All good advice. But they're missing the most fundamental input that controls whether your body burns fat or stores it.

Light.

Not just any light. The timing, intensity, and spectrum of light hitting your eyes and skin throughout the day. This is the master signal that tells your body what time it is, what season it is, and whether to burn energy or store it as fat.

And if you live in Norway, you're getting the timing catastrophically wrong for about half the year. Sounds a little bit hyperbolic - but it's not really, it's shocking. I see it every single day in the winter!

What I Learned: Your Fat Cells Have Clocks

Here's something that would have blown my mind back in my personal training days. Your fat cells have their own internal clocks. Not metaphorical clocks. Actual molecular oscillators that determine whether those cells burn energy or store it.

Research shows this clearly. People who consume their calories earlier in the day lose more weight than people eating the same calories later, even with identical total intake. A six-year study following bariatric surgery patients found that those who ate their main meal earlier maintained significantly greater weight loss, regardless of how much they ate, what they ate, or how much they slept.

Why? Because your metabolism follows a circadian rhythm. Your body is primed to burn calories during certain hours and store them during others. When you eat matters as much as what you eat.

The signal that synchronizes these clocks? Light. Specifically, the timing, intensity, and spectrum of light hitting your body throughout the day.

The Mechanism: How Light Controls Metabolism at the Cellular Level

This isn't about willpower or motivation. We have all been there - including me. This is about cellular biology, biophysics, and how light functions as information for your mitochondria.

Let me break down what's actually happening in your cells when light hits your body.

At the Mitochondrial Level: Energy Production and Glucose Demand

Your mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells (they are actually a lot more, but to go into that would take a lot longer, they are more like a motherboard or editor). In very simple terms, they take glucose and oxygen and convert them into ATP, the energy currency your body runs on (again this is the basic high school stuff that doesn't do it justice at all, but for the purpose of this blog, it is where we will stay). But here's what most people don't know: mitochondrial function is directly influenced by light wavelengths, particularly in the red and near-infrared spectrum.

Professor Glen Jeffery at UCL has done groundbreaking work on this. His research shows that 670nm red light increases mitochondrial membrane potential and ATP production. When your mitochondria are producing more ATP, they're pulling more glucose out of your bloodstream to fuel that production.

In one study, just 15 minutes of 670nm red light exposure before a glucose tolerance test reduced blood glucose elevation by 27.7% over two hours. Maximum glucose spiking was reduced by 7.5%. This isn't a small effect. The light was literally changing how efficiently the body processed glucose by ramping up mitochondrial activity.

The mechanism includes increased oxidation rate. Your mitochondria are burning glucose more efficiently when properly stimulated by the right wavelengths. This has direct implications for weight loss, because efficient glucose metabolism means less glucose getting converted to fat for storage.

Melatonin: Not Just a Sleep Hormone

Most people think of melatonin as something your pineal gland makes at night to help you sleep. That's only part of the story.

Work by Dr. Russel Reiter and optical engineer Scott Zimmerman has shown that your mitochondria produce melatonin locally, in quantities that far exceed what your pineal gland produces. This mitochondrial melatonin doesn't necessarily follow your circadian rhythm or enter your bloodstream. Instead, it's produced on demand in response to oxidative stress and near-infrared light exposure. It is also produced during exercise due to the oxidative stress that is occuring.

Here's the fascinating part: when you exercise outside in sunlight, your mitochondria produce melatonin in response to the near-infrared portion of sunlight and the exercise potentially increasing the beneficial melatonin release. Studies show that during intense outdoor exercise, plasma melatonin levels can spike to 200 pg/mL within 20 minutes and stay elevated throughout the activity. This isn't coming from your pineal gland. It's your mitochondria responding to the combined stress of exercise and NIR light exposure by producing protective melatonin locally.

This matters for metabolism because melatonin is a powerful mitochondrial protector. It neutralizes free radicals, protects mitochondrial membranes, and helps maintain the redox state that allows efficient energy production. When your mitochondria are functioning optimally, they're better at burning fat and glucose rather than letting it accumulate. That is great in the Norwegain summer.... but not so much in the winter. That is why I use red light therapy (red and NIR) before I train in the gym during winter. Not only am I protecting and preparing my skin for the harsh blue light in the gym by using the red light, I am also improving the melatonin output and improving blood flow and recovery. WIN WIN!

The Circadian Synchronization System

Light doesn't just work through direct mitochondrial stimulation. It also works through your eyes to synchronize your entire metabolic system.

Light hits specialized photoreceptors in your eyes, melanopsin-containing retinal ganglion cells, that send signals to your suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This is your master circadian clock. The SCN then coordinates peripheral clocks throughout your body, including in your liver, pancreas, muscle, and critically, your fat tissue.

When you get bright light (over 500 lux) in the morning, you're signaling to every cell: "It's daytime. Burn energy, process food efficiently, be active." When you're exposed to bright light at night, or insufficient light in the morning, you're sending conflicting signals. Your SCN says one thing, your peripheral clocks say another. This circadian misalignment is what drives metabolic dysfunction.

Recent research has even found high levels of melanopsin in fat cells themselves. Your adipose tissue is directly light-responsive. This calls into question the old pineal-centric model of how light affects metabolism. It's not just about melatonin from your pineal gland at night. Your fat cells are reading light signals directly and adjusting their metabolic behavior accordingly. Think about that in your very warm environments where you are in shorts and t-shirt in your living room in winter wearing your blue light blocking glasses and thinking you are protected.

Fat Cell Thermogenesis: The Creatine Cycling System

When your adipose tissue circadian clocks are properly synchronized with light-dark cycles, your fat cells engage in thermogenesis, the process of burning calories to generate heat. This happens through creatine cycling and other mechanisms.

Studies in mice show that animals fed during their inactive period gain significantly more weight than those fed during their active period, even with identical calorie intake. The timing misalignment disrupts their adipose tissue clocks, reducing thermogenesis. The fat cells literally stop burning stored energy as efficiently. 

In humans, the pattern is similar. Early eaters maintain lower body weight than late eaters with the same total intake because their fat tissue clocks are better aligned with their feeding patterns. Do you know of any one that is constantly cold - how are their eating patterns? If you are cold all the time, think about your eating and lighting patterns. Could you make a simple change and see change?

Hormonal Coordination: Cortisol, Leptin, and Ghrelin

Light timing also affects the hormones that regulate hunger, satiety, and fat storage:

Morning light exposure helps maintain a healthy cortisol rhythm (high in morning, low at night). Evening light disrupts this, leading to elevated nighttime cortisol, which promotes visceral fat accumulation and insulin resistance.

Leptin (satiety hormone) and ghrelin (hunger hormone) both follow circadian rhythms. When your circadian system is disrupted by poor light timing, leptin signaling becomes impaired and ghrelin increases. You feel hungrier and less satisfied after eating, which drives overconsumption. This has also been shown to actually change how sweet you perceive a food!! Think about this and be aware of it next time you have disturbed sleep, that drive to overconsume is an evolutionary tactic because it was meant to refuel or fuel you to outrun predators that had obviously stopped you sleeping the night before. Chances are you haven't done that now, so be mindful and eat your normal diet.

The Norwegian Winter Problem: A Perfect Metabolic Storm

Now let's talk about why this is particularly catastrophic here in Norway.

From November through to February, we're living in metabolic darkness. Oslo gets minimal daylight. Tromsø? Even on the sunniest winter day, if you're indoors during working hours, you're getting maybe 200-300 lux of illumination from office lighting.

Research shows that 500 lux is the minimum threshold for meaningful circadian effects. Outdoor light on a cloudy day provides over 1,000 lux. But how many of us are getting 20-30 minutes of outdoor morning light between November and March? Almost none, unless you have been watching my videos for the last 5+ years, then hopefully you are!

Meanwhile, we're flooding our evenings with LED lighting that's heavily blue-shifted. These lights contain almost no red or near-infrared wavelengths. As Professor Jeffery points out in his research, LED lighting is blue-dominant and red-starved. This is the opposite of sunlight, which has a natural balance between blue and red wavelengths.

Before the 1990s, we had incandescent lighting, which provided a spectral distribution similar to sunlight, including plenty of red and infrared. That lighting supported mitochondrial function. Modern LEDs do not.

The consequence? Your mitochondria are energy-starved. Your circadian clocks are desynchronized. Your fat cells don't know whether to burn or store. Your body defaults to storage mode.

No wonder weight creeps up every winter.

What Actually Works: The Light Timing Protocol for Norwegian Winter

So what's the solution? You can't change the sun's position or add hours to the day. But you can optimize your light exposure patterns to support, rather than sabotage, your metabolism.

Morning Light: The Foundation

Get bright light exposure as early as possible after waking. Ideally within 30 minutes to an hour of opening your eyes.

The goal is at least 500 lux, but more is better. Outdoor light, even on a cloudy winter day, provides 1,000-10,000 lux depending on conditions. Indoor lighting typically provides only 200-300 lux, which isn't sufficient.

Practical strategies:

• Take a 10-20 minute walk outside right after waking, even if it's dark. Yes, even in December. Whatever ambient light exists is better than staying indoors. 
• If it's truly pitch black when you wake (those of you north of the Arctic Circle), you need to understand that your life doesn't suit your environment. Now we have that out of the way. I tend not to use SAD lamps and would opt for a full spectrum light if possible, potentially even a reptile lamp. 
• Open curtains immediately upon waking to get whatever natural light is available.
• Consider a dawn simulator alarm clock that gradually increases light before you wake (again, in winter in Norway, this doesn't always work).

The Northwestern University study that first identified the morning light-BMI connection found that people with earlier mean light exposure times had significantly lower body mass index. The effect was independent of total light exposure, physical activity, caloric intake, or sleep duration. It was specifically about timing.

Morning light does several things:

• Synchronizes your SCN master clock
• Advances your circadian phase, making you naturally tired earlier in the evening
• Optimizes cortisol rhythm (high in morning, low at night)
• Improves insulin sensitivity throughout the day
• Reduces evening hunger and late-night cravings
• Enhances the thermogenic capacity of your adipose tissue

Red Light Therapy: Direct Metabolic Stimulation

This is where my approach differs from generic advice about "getting more morning sunlight." Morning bright light through your eyes is essential, yes. But adding red and near-infrared light directly to your body provides an additional metabolic advantage.

I use a red light therapy panel for 10-15 minutes each morning, targeting my torso and areas where I want to optimize metabolism.

The wavelengths that matter are around 660nm (red) and  around830nm (near-infrared). These penetrate through skin into adipose tissue and muscle, where they interact directly with mitochondria. In an ideal world it would be sunrise first and then red light if needed. However, that isn't always possible... so we make the best of the situation.

Professor Jeffery's work shows that these wavelengths don't just improve vision or skin health. They fundamentally change glucose metabolism. When you expose tissue to 670nm light, mitochondria ramp up ATP production. This creates glucose demand. Your cells are literally pulling glucose out of your bloodstream and burning it for energy instead of letting it convert to fat.

Studies on red light exposure to adipose tissue show:

• Temporary pore formation in fat cell membranes, allowing stored fatty acids to be released
• Enhanced mitochondrial ATP production in fat cells, enabling thermogenesis
• Improved local blood flow and lymphatic drainage to mobilize released fatty acids
• Reduced inflammation in adipose tissue

One randomized clinical trial in overweight women found that 45 minutes of morning bright light at 1,300 lux for three weeks reduced body fat percentage, body mass, and appetite. When combined with exercise, a six-week study using 5,000 lux morning bright light showed significantly greater body fat reduction compared to exercise alone.

Red and near-infrared light adds another layer by directly targeting mitochondrial function in your fat cells, independent of the circadian synchronization through your eyes.

Scott Zimmerman's work is relevant here. Near-infrared light from sunlight penetrates deeply through tissue. It travels through cerebrospinal fluid, blood vessel walls, and multiple tissue layers. This isn't just surface-level skin treatment. The photons are reaching your internal organs, your deeper fat deposits, your muscle tissue.

Eight hours outdoors can deliver over 1000 J/cm² of deep red and NIR into your body, even through light clothing. A home red light panel can provide 30-100 J/cm² in a 10-20 minute session. It's not a replacement for sunlight, but during Norwegian winter when sunlight is minimal, it's a way to provide your mitochondria with the wavelengths they're starving for. Remember that you are not trying to replace the sun or summer. Winter is different, you are just adding supplementary light to assist the light that your current living environment is not particularly optimised for.

My protocol: 10-15 minutes on torso soon after waking. If I can use small dim lights, then head outside and get a little cold (not suggesting this is what you do) then come in and do the red and near infrared therapy .This combines both the circadian signaling through the eyes and the direct metabolic effect on tissue.

I also often combine this with grounding during my morning routine. The electron transfer from earthing affects cellular voltage and mitochondrial function in complementary ways to red light exposure.

Meal Timing: Align Eating with Your Light-Dark Cycle

Once you've "optimized" (relative to others and in your latitude) your light exposure, the next step is aligning your food intake with your circadian rhythm.

The research is clear: eating earlier in the day produces better weight loss outcomes. But this isn't about arbitrary rules like "no carbs after 6 PM." It's about eating when your body is primed to process food efficiently.

Practical guidelines:

• Eat your largest meal within a few hours of your morning light exposure, when insulin sensitivity is highest and thermogenesis is most active.
• Restrict your eating window to daylight hours as much as possible. If you're doing time-restricted eating (which research supports for weight loss at least in part), align it with the light-dark cycle.
• Avoid eating within 2-3 hours of bedtime. Late-night eating when melatonin is rising is particularly problematic for weight gain. You will find this easier if your lighting is on point. Excess blue in the evening, along with things like social media reprogram appetite and cravings.
• If you must eat in the evening, keep it small and prioritize protein over carbohydrates. Your glucose tolerance is lowest in the evening.

A study in women with metabolic syndrome found that consuming a high-calorie breakfast versus a high-calorie dinner resulted in greater weight loss and improved metabolic markers, despite identical total daily calories.

The mechanism comes down to circadian-regulated processes: diet-induced thermogenesis (the calories you burn digesting food) is higher in the morning than evening. Your body literally burns more calories processing the same meal at 8 AM than at 8 PM.

Evening Light: Protect Your Melatonin

While morning light is about signaling "wake up and burn energy," evening light management is about protecting your metabolic recovery overnight.

When you expose yourself to bright light, especially blue-enriched light, in the evening, several metabolic problems occur:

• Melatonin suppression reduces overnight metabolic efficiency
• Cortisol rhythm flattening promotes fat storage
• Glucose intolerance increases (studies show evening bright light raises peak blood glucose)
• Hunger increases (evening light exposure raises subjective hunger ratings)
• Fat cell thermogenesis rhythms are disrupted

Practical strategies:

• Dim your lights after sunset. Aim for less than 100 lux if possible.
• Use warm-toned bulbs in the evening (2700K or lower) rather than cool white LEDs.
• If you must use screens, use blue-blocking software (f.lux, Night Shift) or wear blue-blocking glasses.
• Consider replacing some electric lighting with candles after 8 PM. Firelight is heavily red-shifted and has minimal impact on circadian rhythms compared to electric light.
• Avoid bright overhead lighting in the evening. Use lamps positioned at or below eye level.

One study found that participants exposed to three hours of blue-enriched light in the evening had higher insulin resistance and higher peak glucose compared to dim light exposure. In the morning, the same light improved alertness without the negative glucose effects. Timing matters.

The Real-World Results: What Happened When I Stopped Training Like It Was Summer

Let me tell you what happened when I implemented this with clients after leaving personal training.

One woman, mid-40s, had been stuck at the same weight for two years despite training hard. We implemented this protocol:

• 20-minute outdoor walk every morning, regardless of weather or darkness
• Bright light before/during/right after breakfast (she used a box which isn't ideal, but there we are) when outdoor light was insufficient (I don't sell these, but they're useful)
• 10-15 minutes of red light panel targeting torso after morning walk
• Largest meal of the day within 2 hours of waking
• No eating after 7 PM (She had two young kids at the time so meal times were earlier anyway).
• Dimmed evening lights, blue-blocking glasses after 8 PM
• Grounded sleep using grounding sheets

Same calorie intake. Same exercise routine. Same sleep duration. We only changed the light exposure patterns and meal timing.

In eight weeks, she lost four kilos. But more importantly, she reported:

• Dramatically reduced evening hunger and cravings
• Better energy throughout the day, especially mornings
• Improved sleep quality and waking feeling more refreshed
• Less bloating and water retention
• More consistent body temperature (she'd been cold all winter previously)
• Better recovery from workouts

The weight loss was almost secondary to the improvement in how she felt. Her metabolism was finally functioning properly instead of fighting against contradictory signals all day.

Beyond Weight Loss: The Broader Metabolic Benefits

While I've focused on weight loss because that's what most people care about, optimizing your light-dark cycles affects much more than just your waistline.

Studies show that proper circadian alignment:

• Reduces risk of type 2 diabetes
• Lowers cardiovascular disease risk
• Improves lipid profiles (cholesterol and triglycerides)
• Enhances insulin sensitivity
• Reduces inflammation markers
• Improves mood and cognitive function
• Enhances athletic performance and recovery

One large-scale study found that misaligned eating patterns (late mealtimes, eating outside the normal window) increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and even certain cancers.

This isn't just about vanity. This is about fundamental metabolic health that affects your risk for chronic disease over decades.

What This Means for You

If you're struggling with weight gain during Norwegian winter, or if you've tried everything and can't seem to lose weight, light timing might be the missing variable.

You could be eating perfectly, exercising consistently, and sleeping eight hours a night. But if you're waking up in darkness, spending your day in dim indoor lighting, and then flooding your evenings with bright blue-enriched LED light, you're fighting against your biology.

The solution isn't always more willpower. It's aligning your light exposure patterns with how your metabolism actually works.

Get morning light. Use red light therapy to support mitochondrial function. Eat earlier in the day. Dim your evenings. Let your circadian system synchronize.

Your fat cells have clocks. Your liver has a clock. Your pancreas has a clock. These clocks need the right signals to function properly. When you provide those signals, weight loss becomes easier because you're working with your physiology instead of against it.

The Bigger Picture: Beyond Calories In, Calories Out

From a quantum biology perspective, what I've learned since leaving personal training is that weight loss isn't just about energy balance. It's about information and signaling at the cellular level.

Light is information. Different wavelengths carry different messages to your cells. When 660nm red light hits cytochrome c oxidase (the terminal enzyme in your mitochondrial electron transport chain), it's not just "heating" tissue. It's providing photons that drive electron transport, changing the redox state of mitochondria, altering the voltage across cellular membranes.

This matters but might be quite boring for most: Dr. Gilbert Ling's work on the association-induction hypothesis challenges the conventional sodium-potassium pump model of cellular function. His research suggests that cellular water structure and protein states are fundamental to metabolism. When near-infrared light interacts with cellular water (what Dr. Pollack calls EZ water or the fourth phase of water), it's changing the biophysical properties that allow nutrients to enter cells and waste to exit.

When morning blue light hits melanopsin in your retina, it's not just making you alert. It's synchronizing thousands of genes throughout your body that control metabolism, setting the phase of oscillating processes that determine whether you burn fat or store it.

The work coming out of various  institutes is showing that these aren't separate systems. They're integrated networks where light is the primary input coordinating everything else.

Your adipocytes (fat cells) aren't defective. They're responding rationally to the signals they're receiving. Change the signals, and you change the response. Sometimes it really that simple. I remember a quote that is so simple but so precise that said

"Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes"

It is so right - a simple change can start a cascade. But if you don't change something, nothing will change

This is why Professor Jeffery emphasizes in his interviews that you don't necessarily need expensive equipment. Going for a walk outside, getting natural sunlight exposure (even on cloudy days), provides the full spectrum your body needs. The issue is that in Norwegian winter, that natural exposure becomes nearly impossible for much of the day.

That's where targeted interventions become useful. Not as replacements for natural sunlight, but as ways to provide your cells with the wavelengths they're starving for during the months when nature isn't providing them.

Getting Started: What I Wish I'd Known as a Personal Trainer

If I could go back and tell my former personal trainer self what I know now, here's what I'd emphasize:

1. Start with morning light exposure. This is non-negotiable. Get outside within an hour of waking  and see the sunrise whatever the time.  Even 15-20 minutes makes a difference.

2. Add red light therapy to target metabolism directly. 10-15 minutes per day on your torso. The red light panels I offer emit the research-supported wavelengths at therapeutic power levels. I also provide personalized protocols based on your specific goals.

3. Shift your eating window earlier. Largest meal within a few hours of morning light exposure. Your glucose tolerance and thermogenic capacity are highest then.

4. Protect your evening. Dim lights after sunset, reduce blue spectrum exposure, no eating within 2-3 hours of bed. Let your melatonin rise naturally.

5. Be consistent. These are signals your body needs to receive repeatedly to entrain circadian rhythms properly. One morning of light exposure won't fix months of misalignment.

6. Consider grounding. I keep coming back to earthing products because the electron transfer affects cellular voltage and supports mitochondrial function in ways that complement light therapy.

But more than selling equipment, I want you to understand the biology. When you understand how light affects metabolism at the cellular level, you make informed decisions rather than just following rules you don't understand.

The issue is that Norwegian winter makes that nearly impossible for large parts of the day. That's when targeted light therapy becomes a practical tool, not a replacement for nature, but a way to provide your cells with what they need when nature isn't providing it.

Conclusion

Weight loss isn't solely about willpower. It's about providing your cells with the signals they need to function properly.

In Norwegian winter, those signals get disrupted. Morning light disappears. Evening LED light invades. Your circadian system loses synchronization. Your mitochondria become energy-starved. Your metabolism shifts into storage mode.

You can fight this with extreme calorie restriction and excessive exercise. That's what I used to recommend as a personal trainer. Or you can work with your biology by optimizing your light exposure patterns and meal timing.

Get your light timing right, and weight loss becomes easier because your body is finally getting the information it needs to burn fat instead of storing it.

Your ancestors lived outdoors. They saw sunrise every morning and sunset every evening. They were exposed to the full solar spectrum, including abundant red and near-infrared light, all day. They ate during daylight hours and fasted overnight. They were exposed to warmth and they were exposed to cold. Their fat cells knew exactly when to burn and when to store.

Your biology expects these inputs. When you provide them, even in the middle of Norwegian winter, your metabolism functions the way it's supposed to.

Take care of yourselves, and remember: it's not just what you eat or how much you exercise. The light signals your body receives might be the missing piece of your weight loss puzzle.