December 1st, 2008

The Wall Street Journal recently examined the phenomenon of holiday weight gain in their Health Blog.  Here are some of the findings they reported:

- A 2006 Thanksgiving study by researchers at the University of Oklahoma weighed 94 students before and after Thanksgiving break. They found that the students gained just over one pound, on average, with only a small difference between men and women.  A more significant difference emerged, however, when they compared students who were overweight and obese versus those who were not: The overweight gained about two pounds during Thanksgiving, while those with healthy weights gained only about half a pound, an increase that wasn’t statistically significant.

- For a holiday weight gain study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000, researchers followed more than 150 people over the course of a year. During the six-week holiday period, people gained about three-quarters of a pound, on average. But most of the participants in the NEJM study worked at the National Institutes of Health, so they may be health conscious than the average American.

- The NEJM study also found that people don’t tend to lose the weight they gain over the holidays.