--- title: Holiday Weight Gain: The Annoying Truth About Gaining Weight description: People gain about a pound over the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Here's why that weight gain can be a problem canonical: https://time.com/4587800/holiday-weight-gain-diet-sugar/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-01T20:23:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:05:33.030Z article:section: Health og:title: The Annoying Truth About Holiday Weight Gain og:description: And how to avoid it og:url: https://time.com/4587800/holiday-weight-gain-diet-sugar/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfaa8798ec451b4a7/6988b046bc6cfc1d1b3df7a1/gingerbread-man.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4875 og:image:height: 2742 og:image:alt: Gingerbread man og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Annoying Truth About Holiday Weight Gain twitter:description: And how to avoid it twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfaa8798ec451b4a7/6988b046bc6cfc1d1b3df7a1/gingerbread-man.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Annoying Truth About Holiday Weight Gain > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 1, 2016 8:23 PM UTC  Getty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 1, 2016 8:23 PM UTC Holidays have a way of making you see optimism everywhere you look, including on your plate. Gingerbread cookies include ginger, which basically renders them health food. Eggnog? No problem: you [read somewhere](http://time.com/4536939/egg-white-yolk-cholesterol/?iid=sr-link5) that eggs are pretty much the world’s most perfect food. Before you know it, you’ve excused away weeks of unhealthy eating. Trouble is, the extra weight you might have noticed isn’t going anywhere. Holiday weight gain is a well-studied phenomenon, and researchers have found that [people gain about a pound](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4336296/) from November to January. That might not sound like much, and it certainly is less than people _think_ they gain (about 5 pounds). But that extra pound lingers. In the same study, researchers found that people don’t tend to shed that winter weight by the next year. After a few sugary Christmas seasons (plus the year’s other indulgent holidays, birthdays and anniversaries), those pounds add up. Unfortunately, that’s a problem for many Americans. About 70% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and gaining weight in adulthood is a risk factor for all kinds of bad outcomes, including type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Once it’s on, losing weight can be incredibly challenging. New evidence suggests that once you gain weight, [your body will work against you](http://time.com/4314053/biggest-loser-weight-loss/?iid=sr-link1) to keep it there. And in scientific weight loss studies, only about 25% are successful at keeping the weight off long term, says Jennifer Kuk, associate professor at York University’s School of Kinesiology and Health. Even exercise—for [all of its health merits](http://time.com/4474874/exercise-fitness-workouts/?iid=sr-link1)—is not an effective way to drop weight, and may even add to weight gain through new muscle mass or a revved-up appetite. Kuk’s research has shown that weight loss can be more complicated than the typical recommendation: “eat less, exercise more.” In her [recent study](http://time.com/4125083/why-losing-weight-is-hard/?iid=sr-link2), she and her team found that even if a person in today’s age exercised and ate the same amount as a person in 1988, they’d still be heavier. The researchers don’t know exactly why yet, but suspect that several factors—including pesticides, pollutants, medications, erratic eating schedules and changes in the gut microbiome—may somehow be altering human metabolism. The best advice, of course, is to try to avoid holiday weight gain in the first place. “The less one gains, the less one then has to worry about trying to lose it,” write the authors of [new research](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1602012?rss=searchAndBrowse#t=article) on the topic in September’s _New England Journal of Medicine_. But when you can’t resist indulging: * Pick your very favorite dessert, Kuk suggests, but eat only the amount that it will take for you to be satisfied. * Try your hand at mindful eating. Some evidence suggests that focusing on how your body feels, through a short [body scan meditation](http://time.com/4306564/mindfulness-diet-meditation/?iid=sr-link1), can help you tune in to how hungry you really are and adjust your sweet-eating. * Maintain a consistent aerobic exercise routine. It may not make you lose weight, but it may help [offset some of the inflammation and blood sugar spikes](http://time.com/4579232/prevent-holiday-binge-eating/?iid=sr-link1) that accompany overeating. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4587800/holiday-weight-gain-diet-sugar/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4587800/holiday-weight-gain-diet-sugar/"},"headline":"The Annoying Truth About Holiday Weight Gain","datePublished":"2016-12-01T20:23:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T02:05:33.030Z","description":"And how to avoid it","url":"https://time.com/4587800/holiday-weight-gain-diet-sugar/","keywords":["Diet & Nutrition","fat","Exercise","Weight loss","Sugar","eggs","holiday","weight gain"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfaa8798ec451b4a7/6988b046bc6cfc1d1b3df7a1/gingerbread-man.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfaa8798ec451b4a7/6988b046bc6cfc1d1b3df7a1/gingerbread-man.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Gingerbread man","caption":"Gingerbread man","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/dietnutrition/","name":"Diet & Nutrition"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4587800/holiday-weight-gain-diet-sugar/","name":"The Annoying Truth About Holiday Weight Gain"}}]}] ```