This is not medical advice. General information for self-tracking only. If you are under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding, have ever had an eating disorder or a difficult relationship with food, or have diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease or another medical condition, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before you change what you eat. The numbers behind MyPlate's own targets are on the health sources page.

How much weight do people gain over the holidays?

Less than you have been told. The study that put a number on it weighed 195 adults four times between late September and early March, and collected other vital signs and health questions alongside the weight so that people would not guess what was being studied. Between mid-November and early January they gained 0.37 kg on average. The weeks before the holidays and the weeks after showed no significant change. Fewer than 10% gained the 2.27 kg (5 pounds) that is so often quoted, and 55% stayed within a kilo of their other weights, even though more than 85% said they made no effort to control their weight.1 The authors list their own limit: this was a convenience sample of mostly NIH employees, who may be more health conscious than most people.1

Other cohorts land near the same place. A study of 148 adults in Texas, weighed in mid-November and again in early January, found an average gain of 0.78 kg.3 A 2014 review by Dale Schoeller put the average across studies in Western countries at about 0.5 kg, with a large spread between individuals.2

Smart scales give a finer picture, because they catch daily weights rather than two visits. In 1,062 Europeans taking part in a weight-loss maintenance trial, weight rose by a mean 1.35% over Christmas.4 In 368 adults in Adelaide it rose by 0.65% at Christmas and New Year, and by 0.29% at Easter.5 For someone weighing 80 kg those come to about 1.1 kg and 0.5 kg. A weight taken the morning after a big meal includes food and water that will be gone in a few days, and a daily series picks that up in a way a January clinic visit does not. Neither abstract separates the two, so I would treat those percentages as an upper reading.

Then there is what people believe. The same 195 adults were asked in March how much they thought they had gained over the holidays. They said 1.57 kg on average, which is four times what the scale had measured.1 In a small Utah study, 24 of 34 adults thought they had gained weight over the six weeks. On average, their weight and body fat had not changed at all.6

A small gain that does not come back off

The bad news is in the follow-up. In the NIH study, the 0.37 kg was not lost again between January and March. In the 165 people who came back the next autumn, there was no significant further change across the spring and summer, so the year ended 0.62 kg heavier than it started. The authors concluded that the fall and winter gain "probably contributes to the increase in body weight that frequently occurs during adulthood."1 Schoeller's review says the same about the studies that also measured the whole year: in adults, the holiday weeks were the major contributor to annual excess gain. Children were the exception, where the summer holiday mattered more.2

The European smart-scale data agree. The Christmas rise "was not fully compensated for in following months".4 And in the control group of a Georgia trial, covered below, people lost 1.14 kg in the 14 weeks after New Year but still kept 57% of what they had gained.7

One detail in the Adelaide study makes me doubt that the cold is to blame. Christmas falls in the Australian summer, and the jump in weight showed up there anyway, while the city's winter brought only a smaller regain.5 That is one cohort, and my reading of it, but it points at the holiday rather than the weather.

Who gains more over the holidays?

Probably people who already have more weight to carry, though the studies do not agree as well as the reviews suggest. Schoeller's review says plainly that people with overweight and obesity gain more than those at a healthy weight.2 In the Texas study, participants with obesity had a bigger rise in body fat percentage than those at a normal weight.3 An analysis of 443 adults aged 40 to 69 found that 65% of men and 58% of women gained at least 0.5 kg over the holiday quarter, about half gained at least 1% of their weight, and men with obesity gained more than women with obesity.8

The NIH study is less clear. Large gains became more likely as BMI went up, but only as a trend (P = 0.06). When the authors defined a large gain as 3% of body weight instead of 2.27 kg, the rates were 7.9%, 11.1% and 7.5% for normal weight, overweight and obesity, with no significant difference.1 And in the Georgia control group, people with overweight or obesity gained 2.71 kg against 2.62 kg for those at a normal weight, which is no difference at all.7

Is it the food or the missed workouts?

The food, as far as the measurements go. A Wisconsin study of 23 adults with obesity, 87% of them women, measured total energy expenditure with doubly labelled water during December. It did not change. Intake rose by an estimated 80 calories a day, which was not statistically significant (P = 0.07). People reported more meals at sit-down restaurants over the holidays, and those who felt less satisfied after a standard snack in the lab gained more.9 The authors concluded that eating more, not burning less, is the more likely cause, while being clear that their intake figure fell short of significance.9

Two other studies tested whether being active protects you. In the 443 adults, a higher energy expenditure before the holidays did not protect against gaining.8 In the Texas study, people reported exercising 4.8 hours a week on average, and exercise did not predict who gained.3 The NIH study is the dissenter: people who said they had become much more active, or much less hungry, gained least.1 That is self-reported activity set against measured expenditure, so I give it less weight. Why exercise moves the scale less than the arithmetic says is in the post on exercise calories.

The food log goes quiet at the same time

A 2025 analysis of 446 adults with obesity in a 16-week weight-loss programme, with start dates spread across the year, found the lowest food logging and the highest recorded intake in October, November and December. Age and gender changed the size of that pattern.10 So the months when people eat more are also the months when their record of it gets thinner. The same analysis found the same thing from Thursday to Sunday each week, and the post on calorie tracking at weekends covers that half of it.

Not every study found a season. In a smaller smartphone study of 31 adults, people logged more foods in January than in October, but there was no seasonal effect overall, and the clearer pattern was simply that logging fell off the longer people were in the study.11 With 31 people it is a weak counterweight, but it is the one I found.

What stopped the gain in the trials

The best of them is a British trial published in the BMJ in 2018. It randomised 272 adults in Birmingham with a BMI of 20 or more, 78% of them women, before Christmas in 2016 and 2017. The intervention group was asked to weigh themselves at least twice a week, ideally daily, write the weight down and think about which way it was going. They also got ten weight management tips and pictures showing how much exercise festive foods cost: 21 minutes of running for a mince pie, for example. Their goal was to gain no more than 0.5 kg. The comparison group got a leaflet on healthy living.12

The intervention group changed by -0.13 kg and the comparison group by +0.37 kg, an adjusted difference of -0.49 kg (95% CI -0.85 to -0.13). The share who met the 0.5 kg goal did not differ significantly, and neither did body fat.12 The authors name the limits themselves: follow-up was four to eight weeks, so nobody knows whether the difference lasted; the effect was small; and people who answer an advert for a study on winter weight gain may be more health aware than most.12

A Georgia trial went further with the scale. Its 111 adults were randomised to a control group or to daily weighing on Wi-Fi scales with a graph of their weight, and were told to try not to go above their starting weight. Over the holidays the weighing group changed by -0.13 kg and the controls gained 2.65 kg. The weighing participants with overweight or obesity lost 1.46 kg.7 The control gain is several times what other studies found, and I cannot tell from the abstract why, so I would take the size of this result with some caution even though its direction matches the BMJ trial.

The only trial I found that was about logging food rather than weight is from 1999. Fifty-seven people already in a long-term obesity treatment programme were randomised, and for two weeks over Christmas and New Year half of them got extra phone calls and daily mailings, all about self-monitoring. They monitored more consistently and managed their weight better than the others, but the authors also wrote that "both groups struggled with weight management throughout the holidays."13 The abstract gives no figures.

A 2025 systematic review pooled five adult studies of festive periods and found a difference of -0.99 kg in favour of the interventions, with a 95% confidence interval from -2.15 to 0.18. That crosses zero. The results varied widely between studies (I² = 89%), only two of the twelve studies in the whole review had a low risk of bias, and the authors rated the evidence very low certainty.14

What the evidence does not settle

Whether calorie tracking itself prevents holiday weight gain has not been tested properly. I did not find a trial that randomised people to log their food through December or not and then weighed them. The 1999 trial comes closest, it had 57 people, and its abstract reports no numbers.13 What has been tested is a scale with a ceiling, and that worked in the two trials that tried it.127

Nobody knows whether the prevention lasts. The BMJ trial stopped four to eight weeks after baseline, and the Georgia trial's follow-up was 14 weeks.127

Whether half a kilo a year adds up to the weight people gain through adulthood is an inference from one year of follow-up in one convenience sample. It is a reasonable inference, and the NIH authors were careful to say "probably".1 It is not something anyone has followed for twenty winters.

Who is most at risk is still mixed, as the section above shows. And none of these abstracts says whether weighing every day made anyone feel worse. For most people it is harmless, but if a number on a scale has a hold over you, the post on calorie tracking and eating disorders is the one to read first.

What calorie tracking can see over the holidays, and what it cannot

A calorie tracking app can only count what reaches it. A photo of a plate gives an estimate of that plate. It cannot see the second trip to the buffet or the leftovers eaten standing at the fridge, and those are the entries that go missing first. The restaurant meals the Wisconsin study found more of are their own problem, and the post on meals you didn't cook covers how good any estimate of them can be. Drinks have a post of their own.

MyPlate has a specific blind spot here, and I would rather you heard it from me. The Analytics tab averages the days that have something logged. A day with nothing in it is left out, not counted as zero and not counted as a big day. So if you stop logging on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, the December average describes the days you did log, and it will look better than December was.

The app also does not know it is December. Logging a weight does not change your calorie target, so a target set in October stays the same through the holidays until you change your goal yourself.

The scale picks up whatever the log missed, and both prevention trials were built around it.127

How to keep calorie tracking going through the holidays

Decide before mid-November whether you are still trying to lose or just trying to hold. Holding is a real goal, and it is the one the BMJ trial set: no more than 0.5 kg up.12 If you choose to hold, change the goal in the app rather than going over a weight-loss target every day and feeling bad about it. MyPlate's weight-loss target is 15% under its estimate of your maintenance calories, and maintenance removes that gap. For a woman of 40, 165 cm and 70 kg on the moderate activity band, that moves the target from about 1,805 calories to about 2,124. How to find and trust a maintenance number is in the maintenance calories post, and a planned stretch at maintenance in the middle of a diet is what the diet breaks post is about.

Weigh yourself at least twice a week, as the BMJ trial asked, and pick your ceiling from an average of a few mornings before the holidays rather than from one good day.12 Expect a high reading the morning after a big meal. Judge the trend over a week. A line that keeps rising is the sign to tighten up, and one high morning is not.

Log the big meals roughly rather than skipping them. A photo of the plate before you start is enough, and a second photo for a second plate. If you forgot, log it the next morning: MyPlate lets you add a dish to an earlier day. A rough entry for Christmas dinner is worth more than a perfect record of the 23rd, because the days when logging falls off are the days intake goes up.10

Do not pay it back with a crash diet in January. If the scale is a kilo up, going back to your usual target will deal with it. MyPlate will not set a target below 1,200 calories a day for women or 1,500 for men, which is the top of the low-calorie ranges in the NIH obesity guidelines (1,000 to 1,200 for women and 1,200 to 1,600 for men).15 Do not go below that without a clinician. Why a slower pace is the one people tend to keep is in the post on fast or slow weight loss.

If tracking is making you anxious, if you are skipping the meal with your family to "save" calories, or if a number on a screen is deciding how you feel about yourself, stop and talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian. Eating more than usual at a holiday table is normal.

Common questions

How much weight do people gain over the holidays?

About half a kilo on average, not the 5 pounds that is often quoted. The best-known study measured a 0.37 kg gain between mid-November and early January, and fewer than 10% of people gained 5 pounds or more.1 A review put the average across studies at about 0.5 kg, with a wide spread between individuals.2 The problem is that the gain was not lost again over the following year.

Is holiday weight gain just water?

Not all of it. Part of a high reading the morning after a big meal is food and water that leaves within days. But the gain in the NIH study was still there in March and the following autumn, and the control group in a Georgia trial still had 57% of theirs 14 weeks later.17 A Texas study measured a small rise in body fat percentage over the holidays.3

Should I keep counting calories to lose weight over the holidays, or switch to maintenance?

Either is reasonable, and holding your weight is a legitimate goal. The prevention trials aimed at not gaining: one set a ceiling of 0.5 kg above starting weight, and another asked people to stay at or below it.127 If you pick maintenance, change the goal in your calorie counter so the target matches what you are actually trying to do, and switch back in January.

Does exercise prevent holiday weight gain?

Not in the studies that measured it. People exercising 4.8 hours a week on average gained as much as anyone else, and a higher measured energy expenditure before the holidays did not protect people against gaining.38 A study using doubly labelled water found expenditure unchanged during December, and pointed at eating more as the likely cause.9 That is no reason to stop exercising. It just did not stop the gain in these studies.

What makes a good food tracker for weight loss over the holidays?

One that is quick enough that you will still log a buffet plate, lets you add a meal to an earlier day when you forget, and lets you switch your goal to maintenance. No trial has compared apps over the holidays, so nobody can honestly name a best one. MyPlate does those three things, but a photo scan is an estimate, it has no barcode scanner, and its averages leave out days you did not log, so keep weighing yourself as well.

Hold the line, then pick the deficit back up

The average holiday gain is about half a kilo. It is smaller than the myth, and it tends to stay.1 The trials that stopped it used a scale and a ceiling, and the one that tested logging food is small and old.1213 So keep weighing, and keep logging even when the entries are rough. If you would rather hold steady than lose through December, make that your goal on purpose and set the app to match.

Sources

  1. Yanovski JA, Yanovski SZ, Sovik KN, Nguyen TT, O'Neil PM, Sebring NG (2000). A prospective study of holiday weight gain. New England Journal of Medicine, 342(12):861-867. Read on PubMed →
  2. Schoeller DA (2014). The effect of holiday weight gain on body weight. Physiology & Behavior, 134:66-69. Read on PubMed →
  3. Stevenson JL, Krishnan S, Stoner MA, Goktas Z, Cooper JA (2013). Effects of exercise during the holiday season on changes in body weight, body composition and blood pressure. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 67(9):944-949. Read on PubMed →
  4. Turicchi J, O'Driscoll R, Horgan G, et al. (2020). Weekly, seasonal and holiday body weight fluctuation patterns among individuals engaged in a European multi-centre behavioural weight loss maintenance intervention. PLoS One, 15(4):e0232152. Read on PubMed →
  5. Maher C, Ferguson T, Curtis R, et al. (2023). Weekly, seasonal, and festive period weight gain among Australian adults. JAMA Network Open, 6(7):e2326038. Read on PubMed →
  6. Wagner DR, Larson JN, Wengreen H (2012). Weight and body composition change over a six-week holiday period. Eating and Weight Disorders, 17(1):e54-e56. Read on PubMed →
  7. Kaviani S, vanDellen M, Cooper JA (2019). Daily self-weighing to prevent holiday-associated weight gain in adults. Obesity, 27(6):908-916. Read on PubMed →
  8. Cook CM, Subar AF, Troiano RP, Schoeller DA (2012). Relation between holiday weight gain and total energy expenditure among 40- to 69-y-old men and women (OPEN study). American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 95(3):726-731. Read on PubMed →
  9. Bhutani S, Wells N, Finlayson G, Schoeller DA (2020). Change in eating pattern as a contributor to energy intake and weight gain during the winter holiday period in obese adults. International Journal of Obesity, 44(7):1586-1595. Read on PubMed →
  10. Ross KM, Swanson TN, Arroyo KM, Shetty A, Shankar MN, Krukowski RA (2025). Within-week and within-year patterns in self-monitoring of dietary intake in adults with obesity participating in a behavioral weight loss program. Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine, 13(1):2485476. Read on PubMed →
  11. Pellegrini CA, Conroy DE, Phillips SM, Pfammatter AF, McFadden HG, Spring B (2018). Daily and seasonal influences on dietary self-monitoring using a smartphone application. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 50(1):56-61. Read on PubMed →
  12. Mason F, Farley A, Pallan M, Sitch A, Easter C, Daley AJ (2018). Effectiveness of a brief behavioural intervention to prevent weight gain over the Christmas holiday period: randomised controlled trial. BMJ, 363:k4867. Read on PubMed →
  13. Boutelle KN, Kirschenbaum DS, Baker RC, Mitchell ME (1999). How can obese weight controllers minimize weight gain during the high risk holiday season? By self-monitoring very consistently. Health Psychology, 18(4):364-368. Read on PubMed →
  14. Guerrero-Magaña DE, Urquijo-Ruiz LG, Ruelas-Yanes AL, et al. (2025). Interventions for the prevention of weight gain during festive and holiday periods in children and adults: a systematic review. Obesity Reviews, 26(1):e13836. Read on PubMed →
  15. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH (1998). Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. NIH Publication 98-4083. Read the guidelines →

The formulas and limits behind MyPlate's own numbers, with their citations, are on the health sources page.