To me that’s a big question you might want to ponder. Why? Because it happens to a number of people during the upcoming holidays.
Now here’s something you might want to hear. Reports of your holiday weight gain have been greatly exaggerated by a number of news outlets. Media stories often suggest that the average person gains 7 to 10 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And in surveys, people “say” they gain, on average, about five pounds during this time of year.
But several studies now show that the average weight gain during the winter holidays is just one pound. Whew, I’m glad you read that. The news isn’t all good though and here’s why. Most people don’t ever lose the pound of weight they put on during the holidays, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine. That’s the problem. Just because you gain it, doesn’t mean you have to KEEP IT ON.
As you probably know the average weight gain during adulthood is about one to two pounds PER year, so that means much of midlife weight gain can be explained by your holiday eating. If you’re say 45 years old, and you’ve been adding a pound or 2 per year since you were twenty five years old, that would be a twenty pound weight gain since you started adding that extra
ONE pound. Take your age and when you started enjoying the holidays this way. I think you’ll see the correlation.
For people who are already overweight, the holiday weight news is worse. Although the average gain is only one pound, people who are already overweight tend to gain a lot more. Not what you wanted to hear right? Well stay with me. One study found that overweight people gained five pounds or more during the holidays. Yeow! That one hurts.
And there’s more. We as humans start packing on that extra pound of holiday weight early in life. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma studied holiday weight gain among college students during the Thanksgiving break. The students were weighed the day before Thanksgiving, then weighed again, about two weeks later.
The average weight gain for the 94 students was about one pound. Students who were of normal weight gained about a half a pound during the period. Students who were overweight, meaning their body mass index was 25 or more, gained about two pounds.
The lead researcher on the Oklahoma study, says Thanksgiving marks the beginning of a “high risk” time for the overweight. “I think the number of people who only overeat at the Thanksgiving meal is slim to none.”
“The holiday season doesn’t represent one day of overeating. You have this period that extends through the New Year… where there’s MORE alcohol, MORE snacks, MORE finger foods and appetizers that are energy dense.” If you want to get started on getting rid of that ONE or TWO pounds… and MORE, then talk to us about your weight loss program where we help you manage your weight the right way.