Heather N. Kolich, ANR Agent, UGA Extension Forsyth County
From Thanksgiving to the first week of January, people tend to gain more weight than at any other time of the year. Holiday celebrations, social get-togethers, and an abundance of sweets and desserts cause a pile-up of calories. At the same time, holiday stress and the longer dark period of winter days make us hungrier and less active, so we’re consuming more and burning off fewer calories than normal.
Holidays are a significant contributor to annual weight gain. A study published in 1998 found that study participants gained 500% more weight per week during holidays than they did during non-holiday weeks. Studies over the past couple of decades found that most people gain between 0.4-0.8 kilograms (0.88-1.76 pounds) between the end of November and the beginning of January; however, people who are overweight or obese (OW/OB) gained 1-2.3 kilograms (2.2-5.1 pounds).
Hanging on to those extra pounds year after year – and adding more with each holiday – has negative health effects. But what if we could avoid gaining weight and still enjoy the holidays?
In 2018 researchers from the UGA Foods & Nutrition and Psychology departments recruited participants for a holiday weight management study. Recruits included undergraduate students; graduate students; university faculty, staff, and retirees; and other, non-university adults.
About half of the study participants received an intervention while the other half, the control group, did not. The intervention was simple: weigh each morning for four days to establish the pre-holiday baseline weight, set a goal to maintain that weight, and weigh every morning throughout the holiday season. Intervention participants were issued a wi-fi scale that relayed their data to the research app and displayed graphical feedback (GF) to the participant that showed weight trends from day to day. Neither the intervention group nor the control group received weight management instruction or advice from the researchers.
Sometime during the week after New Year’s Day, the intervention group participants were told that they could stop daily self-weighing (DSW), but they were allowed to keep the scales for 14 additional weeks, after which the study ended with a final weigh-in and the scales were collected.
The study revealed differences in weight gain between the control group and the intervention group, as well as differences related to sex and initial body mass index (BMI) of the participants.
The good news – Although there were holiday-related fluctuations in weight, intervention group study participants, both males and females, who weighed daily and received GF on weight trends did not gain weight during the holidays, nor in the 14 weeks after DSW was no longer required. The pattern of weight fluctuations showed that weight trended down in the week before Thanksgiving (during the initial week of DSW), increased in the week of Thanksgiving, then went back down until mid-December. Body weight rose again from the week before Christmas and continued to rise through New Year’s Day, but final weight did not exceed the baseline weight at the start of the study.
Within the DSW group, those who started the study with normal body weight (NW) did not lose weight, but those who started the study with OW/OB, lost weight throughout the study – even during the holidays. OW/OB participants who weighed themselves daily ended the study with lower body weight than they had at the beginning.
The bad news – All participants in the control group, males, females, NW, and OW/OB, gained 4-7 pounds (2.09-2.71 kg) during the holidays. In the post-holiday weeks, some male participants dropped around 95 percent of their holiday weight gain, but female participants kept over 75 percent of the weight they gained. Participants in the control group who started the study with OW/OB gained weight throughout the study period.
How can we use this? The researchers concluded that DSW and visually monitoring weight fluctuations might be an effective approach to preventing weight gain during and after holidays. Seeing weight fluctuations on a graph might stimulate people to self-regulate food intake due to the constant exposure to the consequences of eating behaviors.
Because it takes a lot of exercise to burn off calories, reducing caloric intake is more effective than physical exercise in maintaining or losing weight. We don’t have to give up all the delicious food temptations that come with holidays (or vacations, another documented weight-gain event). But in managing weight amid festivities, rigorous weight monitoring might the ounce of prevention that literally is a pound of cure.