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We don't mean to ruin the single-best U.S. eating day of the year… but as you prepare for your Thanksgiving feast, a new report that the meal may stay with you longer than you think.

MedPage writes that “Around the world, weight gained from holiday feasting takes months to lose.” In fact, the weight may last until summer.

The information comes from a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine from researchers in the U.S., Finland, and Russia. One author is Cornell's Dr. Brian Wansink, whom we have previously cited here and here.

The authors begin: “Different countries celebrate different holidays, but many such celebration periods have one thing in common: an increased intake of favorite foods. How do holidays — such as Thanksgiving in the United States, Christmas in Germany, and Golden Week in Japan — affect weight gain in those countries? The use of wireless scales to measure weight patterns could alleviate some of the limitations possibly seen in traditional studies, such as demand characteristics,1,2 and provide useful insights regarding holiday weight gain.”

MedPage reports that “In each country, sharp spikes in weight gain were seen around their major food-forward holidays.”

“Thanksgiving, for example, was another holiday tied to weight gain in the U.S., with Americans putting on an additional 0.2% of their weight (P<0.001). Golden Week and Easter served up the same for the Japanese (0.3% gain, P<0.001) and Germans (0.2% gain, P<0.001), respectively.”

“Moreover, people took much longer to shed the added pounds than it took to gain them. Americans in the sample continued to gain weight until May, then grew thinner until late October, when pumpkin-flavored lattes and mounds of chocolate begin to make their rounds again.”

In the NEJM, the authors conclude: “In these three prosperous countries, weight gain occurs during national holidays. Although this population sample may be wealthier, better educated, and more motivated toward weight loss than average, it still provides insights for practice. Advising a patient to have better self-control over the holidays is one approach. Yet given the weight-loss patterns shown in Figure 1, it might be better to advise patients that although up to half of holiday weight gain is lost shortly after the holidays, half the weight gain appears to remain until the summer months or beyond. Of course, the less one gains, the less one then has to worry about trying to lose it.”