The ubiquitous presence of seasonal staples like peppermint bark, peanut brittle, gingerbread houses and sugar cookies makes this time of year the easiest time of year to put weight on. A 2000 study done by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that the Christmas season is indeed the season for weight gain, as the average person puts on about two pounds of weight. That might not seem like much, but when the same study finds that this weight rarely comes off, that’s a problem.

Why?

Because as anyone familiar with creeping obesity will tell you, two pounds of weight can quickly become five or seven pounds, and then those piddling pounds aren’t so piddling anymore: they’re prime contributors to heart failure risk.

This might sound like alarmism; after all, gaining five to seven pounds of weight is hardly noticeable to the naked eye. But according to doctors from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, just seven pounds of excess weight dramatically increases one’s risk for developing heart failure, which claims about 300,000 lives on annual basis in the United States alone.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s discovered this “flab flub” at the conclusion of a study of theirs, where approximately 21,000 doctors’ health status were followed for 20 years. Over that two-decade period, about 1,100 of them developed heart failure. When the researchers looked at the health statistics of these doctors and compared them to those who didn’t contract symptoms associated with heart failure, they found a correlation between average weight gain over those years and the likelihood of developing the killer disease.

For instance, they found that doctors who gained just seven pounds of excess weight equated to about an 11 percent increased risk of developing heart failure, the risk increasing for every pound of weight gained in excess of healthy weight levels.

What defines “excess”? The Body Mass Index does. The BMI is essentially a mathematical equation that takes someone’s weight and height and spits out a number. If that number is above 30, that person is considered obese. Anything between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal.

So, if we know that weight gain – even a little bit – increases one’s risk of heart failure, is there anything that decreases its risk? You guessed it: exercise does.

Similar to the pittance of weight gain that equated to a significant increased risk, a pittance of exercise equated to a significant decreased risk. The researchers found that doctors who exercised as little as one to three times a month were 18 percent less likely to develop heart failure.

The importance of a regular exercise regimen and keeping one’s weight levels in check cannot be overemphasized. It may seem like a difficult balancing act – staying within a certain number of pounds so as to avoid heart health risk – but it’s no more difficult a task than the juggling act of life the average mom or dad performs every day (maintaining a healthy marriage, happy kids, rewarding experiences at work, socializing with friends, healthy financial status, etc.).

The juggling act of health is made easier by staying true to two fundamentals: consuming those things that are all-natural and maintaining those motivating factors in your life that propelled you to start exercising in the first place. If those two things are adhered to, heart health will be the least of your concerns.