This Is The Thinnest You'll Be All Year, So Start Your Holiday Diet Plan Now

According to a recent study, there's a really good chance you feel slimmer now than you will all year.

Why? Well, according to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, people start steadily gaining weight at the beginning of the holiday season all the way through New Year's.

The worst part? It takes about five months to lose all of that weight gained in just 10 weeks. Just try not to think about that when you're sipping wine and going for seconds on dessert at holiday parties this year.

The study, led by Professor Brian Wansink at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, evaluated data collected from wireless scales of around 1,800 Americans, 800 Germans and 400 Japanese people from August 2012 to July 2013.

We have to keep in mind a few factors: The first is, everyone in this study had paid for this Withings WS-50 scale, which costs $150 in the US. This showed researchers that the participants may have had both the drive and the means to lose weight compared to those who didn't own this type of scale.

The other fact to keep in mind is, only a quarter of the American participants were obese, which is lower than the national rate of obese people.

Despite the population of the study being possibly healthier and more advantaged than the general population, Professor Wansink said to the New York Times,

Even among this diligent, almost-ideal population, there's no escaping this almost inevitable holiday weight gain.

Clearly, it didn't matter how health-conscious the participants were. They all gained weight during the holidays and were at their slimmest before the holidays started.

The timing is different for Germany and Japan based on their national holidays, but in America, we're apparently all at our skinniest in October, right around the start of Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah.

Maybe it has something to do with all the Pumpkin Spice Lattes we start drinking once fall rolls around. Oops.

This comment from Wansink actually puts all of our holiday weight gain into perspective.

He said,

Anything that happens in these next 10 weeks, on average, takes about five months to come off.

Yikes.

Let's be real, though: Is this really going to change any of our eating habits? Fall is everyone's favorite time of year because of the baked goodies associated with it. It's basically a crime not to consume at least one slice of apple or pumpkin pie during the fall season.

Wansink has a pretty brutal suggestion to help Americans avoid this weight gain:

Instead of trying to come up with a New Year's resolution to lose weight, it's a whole lot better to maybe have an Oct. 1 resolution to gain less in the first place.

He has a point, but who would actually do that?

You know what, it's OK if we all gain weight around the holidays because we're all gorging on candy apples and pumpkin pie together.

Citations: This Is Probably the Least You'll Weigh All Year. Sorry. (New York Times)