Congrats, you’ve made it through the holidays. Only a couple more days before most of you are swiping your card at the dining center for a meal wishing mom’s homemade meals would magically appear.

The media has often exaggerated the amount of weight gained between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but nonetheless it does still exist.

According to a study done by the University of Oklahoma, the average weight gained by college students over Thanksgiving Break is one pound.

Thanksgiving Break is only a week long, so you can only imagine how much that number could potentially go up over Winter Break, if students aren’t watching how much they eat or how unhealthy their diet might become.

“During the holidays, there are so many eating-centered events it’s hard not to indulge,” said Rebbecca Tunink, junior in nutritional science. “Once New Year’s roles around everyone’s resolution is to lose weight, so the curse of the holiday weight gain totally makes sense.”

One pound may not seem like all that much, but studies show most people who put on weight over the holidays don’t ever lose it, according to The New England Journal of Medicine.

The USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging did a study that showed 51 percent of the population’s annual weight gain comes from the six-week winter holiday season.

On the other hand, the weight gain that college students acquire when returning from break continues to grow, due to mindless eating.

Bob Harper, a “The Biggest Loser” trainer, explained that one of the most important things to avoid is mindless eating. To minimize unnecessary snacking, Harper advices people to stay an arm’s length away from the food at all times if not hungry.

The human brain takes about 15-20 minutes to know when it is full. Therefore, the best advice to not let the holidays weigh you down is to start the new year off right by controlling portion sizes, eating slower, and going for seconds only when necessary.