It’s a common saying that people gain 5 pounds through the holiday season – with the more exuberant claiming up to 10 pounds! Like many unchallenged sayings, this one gets strange when you think about it: at that rate, from age 20 to 50 we would gain 150-300 pounds. Something can’t be right here!
Turns out that this maxim is just flat out wrong. All the back in the year 2000 the National Institutes of Health released a study on this topic and the results were both good and bad.
The good news is, as you might have guessed by now, that we don’t gain anywhere near the weight commonly believed between late November and early January. In fact, the average comes to a single pound being added to our waist lines through this time.
And the bad news?
Even an extra 1 pound a year is enough to have health consequences.
Consider that this means from age 30 to 60 a person, on average, is carrying 30 additional pounds obtained 1 pound at a time over their annual Christmas dinner. One pound a year doesn’t seem like much until you look at it this way, as 30 pounds is clearly an unhealthy amount of weight to be carrying.
All that extra weight might be a big factor in the prevalence of obesity seen in the West. Along with obesity come several deadly consequences, such as an increased risk for diabetes and heart disease. Additionally, and something not often mentioned in such studies, is that obesity is a quality of life issue too, effecting a persons self esteem and what activities they can be involved in.
If you’re thinking that the extra pound gained at Christmas time is simply lost in the new years activities, think again. The study also showed that on average, this weight gain is permanent.
What are we to make of the results of this test?
The most important takeaway is that if cultural or health policies can shift to focus on not gaining weight in the fall and winter than we may have hit upon a previously unknown, but highly effective strategy for reducing overall obesity levels later on in life.
By Deanna Jacobs, health fitness expert and guest editor. Her most recent health piece looks at different food processor and juicer machines on the market in an attempt to find out if there really is a good combination machine, and if so, what is the best way to use it for better health.
