Oh Boy, This Is the Least We’re Gonna Weigh for the Rest of the Year
Well, ladies — it could all be downhill from here. We’ve enjoyed creating clever Halloween costumes and devouring amazing fall foods like sweet and savory oatmeals, but there’s some bad news on the horizon: We may have already weighed the least we will all year.
Written in a letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Cornell University discussed findings of a new study that suggest last week *or* this week could be the time of the year that we’re all at our lowest weight. No surprise here, but researchers attribute the upcoming holidays — nice to see you again Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas — as major factors in our collective waistlines growing a few inches.
The study included nearly 3,000 participants from three countries, the US, Japan and Germany, with the US having the largest number of participants. The data was collected from wireless scales over a one-year period, and they found that in all three countries, participants’ weight increased 10 days after Christmas. Additionally, Japanese participants saw weight increase in May after Golden Week, while German participants saw a gain around the Easter holiday.
And sorry, but there’s more bad news to come. Apparently, weight gained now is even harder to get back off. Professor Brian Wansink of Cornell’s business school, who did the study in conjunction with Elina Helander of Tampere University of Technology in Finland and Angela Chieh of Withings, told The New York Times, “Anything that happens in these next 10 weeks, on average, takes about five months to come off.”
Looks like it’s time to start planning ALL of the outdoor activities and start our fall running plans, ladies. Let’s get in formation.
Tweet us how you’re keeping things healthy this holiday season @BritandCo!
(Photos via Getty)