Study Says This Is Probably the Least You’ll Weigh All Year

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We’ve got some good or bad news for you. (It depends on how you look at it.) Here goes: According to recent research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, right about now, at the beginning of October, is when you’ll probably weigh the least all year long.

But it’s all downhill — and up on the scale — from here. As the New York Times reports, the research also found that from here on out, Americans’ weights tends to make a steady climb, peaking around New Year’s. Because holiday parties and pecan pies and all the cocktails so you can deal with your extended family for days on end, probably.

The research, led by Brian Wansink, a professor at Cornell’s business school, used data from Withing’s wireless scales to track the weights of over 3,000 individuals, most of them in the U.S., with some users in Germany and Japan, over the course of a year. They found different annual weight low points and peak times for different countries, but one thing that remained consistent no matter the country was that weights tended to go up in the 10 days leading up to major holidays (because, again, holiday parties).

And more good or bad news (again, it depends on how you look at it): Americans were able to erase their holiday gains by April. Yeah … it takes some time.

The data is limited in that it was confined to individuals who purchased a wireless scale, meaning they probably cared about their weight in some way, shape or form, so it may not be truly reflective of the average American waistline, but Wansink tells the New York Times that this just goes to show that “Even among this diligent almost-ideal population, there’s no escaping this almost inevitable holiday weight gain.”

Now, excuse us while we go look up healthier pecan pie recipes on Pinterest.

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