Why Gain Weight During the Holidays?

New Year’s Resolution to Lose Weight?

Start in November!

Medical Weight Loss | OPTIFAST | Weight Management

Rather than waiting until New Year’s to make a resolution to lose weight, ” it’s a whole lot better to maybe have an Oct. 1 resolution to gain less in the first place,” said Brian Wansink, Professor at Cornell University in a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Wansink and two other researchers conducted a study of 1800 Americans (and 1200 more from Germany and Japan) who have a wireless scale that records the data. They found that the Americans, specifically, were at their lowest weight on Dec. 1, and they peaked at New Years. They found that people gained weight over 10 weeks, and it took them the next five months to lose it.

The participants used to get this information were considered a “narrow slice” of the public, as they were people who owned a $150 wireless scale, suggesting that these people were motivated to keep their weight under control. He stated that even with a “diligent, almost ideal population, they were not able to escape the almost inevitable holiday weight gain.”

Only one in four of the U.S. participants were obese, which is less than the national rate of more than one in three (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). He surmised that the group studied were likely to put on less weight and lose it faster than the general population.

His suggestion was to step on the scale more frequently during the holiday season, as participants who weighed themselves four or more times a week gained less weight and dropped it all more quickly, by the end of January.

Let us help you manage your weight over the upcoming holidays by coming into Medical Weight Management Center! We have weekly support meetings at 9:30 Saturday mornings, or stop by Monday through Thursday and visit with Karen.