Summer holiday survival guide

Stay healthy and have fun

One last snag on the barbie? Can’t get your eyes off the pudding? Christmas weight gain is no myth, with the average person gaining 0.48kg at Christmas, according to The

New England Journal of Medicine.

While this isn’t significant in the short term, the bad news is that this weight isn’t lost in the following 11 months – and Christmas remains a significant contributor to later-life obesity, the authors concluded. “Christmas is a danger period for weight gain as most of our festive activities revolve around food, parties, celebratory drinks and edible presents,” agrees Dr John Jorgensen, the Director of Bariatric Surgical services at St George Private Hospital.

“So, allowing yourself to eat endlessly from the beginning of December to the middle of January, and then vowing to take it off ‘come the New Year’, is actually much harder than people realise.”

He says this is because the body tends to recognise its weight “set point” as the highest it has been.

One recent study in the Obesity Research Journal identified that 13 of 14 contestants on reality TV show The Biggest Loser regained most of their pre-show weight (some even more) a few years on, with the authors concluding “the metabolic adaptation persists over time”.

“Many other studies confirm this finding,” says Dr Jorgensen.

“The brain is programmed to have a very good survival instinct, so when we diet, the brain will sabotage all our efforts to lose weight and revert to its highest set point. In fact, once you reach … severe obesity, the success rate of diets and exercise is documented in the best medical studies to be about 2-4 per cent.”

He says when there is a severe weight issue and concurrent diabetes, problems are further compounded. That is why the World Health Organization and dozens of other medical bodies have noted bariatric surgery as the new paradigm of treatment for obese people with diabetes. “This is because unlike diet, the surgery is ‘metabolic’. It doesn’t just shrink the stomach, it changes the brain’s hunger drivers,” says Dr Jorgensen.

What about for people who are not severely overweight or just want to lose 5-10kg? “For people who are only slightly overweight, the brain’s hunger drivers are not as aggressive as someone who is carrying an extra 40, 60 or 80kg,” he says. “Certainly, diet and exercise will work to shed those stubborn last 5kg. However, once these people stop eating healthily, they will put weight on again.

“The best bet is just to avoid weight gain in the first place, and this goes double for younger people, because being heavy at a younger age sets you on a heavy trajectory for life.”

The best bet is just to avoid weight gain in the first place