So, I decided to
do a scan of the nutrition research literature to see what I could find. I was
surprised that there is almost no research in this area. I found one well
designed study on holiday weight gain from the New England Journal of Medicine, but it was published way back in
March of 2000.
This was a
simple study conducted at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda , Maryland
At first I was
surprised by the results, and then they made more sense. The average weight
gain between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day was about 1 pound, which was the
surprising part. However, 10% of the subjects gained 5 or more pounds. As the
subject’s starting weight increased, there was a trend of an increased risk of
gaining at least 5 lbs. In other words, if you were overweight at the start of
the study, your risk of gaining 5 lbs was higher than those with a normal
weight, and if you were obese, the risk was even higher than that.
A disturbing
finding was that by the following September, the one pound weight gain remained.
So, if you gain a pound every holiday season and don’t lose it, you’re looking
at 5 lbs. every 5 years. This, obviously, can really add up and become a
problem.
While this is
just one study, it was very well done. It appears that most of us don’t gain
much weight at all during the holidays, but we never seem to lose the pound or
so that we do gain. The overweight and obese have a higher risk of gaining
significant weight. Generally, we don’t
average the commonly referenced 7-10 pound holiday weight gain, but we do add a
little and all need to be especially vigilant now that January is here!
New England Journal of Medicine 2000; 342:861-67
No comments:
Post a Comment