(MEDFORD, Mass.) – No food was served on campus until 5 p.m. Sunday, but a new study suggests that, after Thanksgiving, college students could stand to skip a meal.

Holly Hull, an exercise physiologist at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, conducted research last year that showed that the average college student gains 1.1 pounds while going home for Thanksgiving break, the Associated Press reported on Nov. 22.

Hull and her colleagues weighed 94 students twice, once the week before Thanksgiving and again 12 days later.

Gaining slightly over a pound in less than a week translates to an extra 320 daily calories, “which would be about a slice of pumpkin pie per day,” Hull told AP reporter Marilynn Marchione.

Several Tufts University students were not surprised, one having even conducted an informal experiment of his own.

“I weighed myself before Thanksgiving morning and Thanksgiving night, and [I gained] seven pounds,” sophomore Alex Schmieder said. “I was having a little competition with some friends.”

Schmieder, who said he lost the competition to a friend from home who gained 11 pounds, thought that 1.1 pounds was a reasonable estimate of how much students gain over break.

“I’m sure I didn’t maintain seven pounds … [1.1 pounds] is probably relatively accurate,” he said.

But there are skeptics. “I don’t know if it’s possible to put that much [1.1 pounds] on in three days,” sophomore Lauren Gelmetti said. “I would not be surprised if most people put on some weight over break, though.”

The cause of the weight gain may not be purely a result of all the turkey and potatoes eaten on Thanksgiving Day, these students said. They arrived at their houses to find home-cooked meals and snacks made by their parents, a step up from the cafeteria food they have been eating this semester.

“We had, like, three days of massive feasting,” Gelmetti said.

“[My parents] made muffins, cake and cookies,” Schmieder said.

Not all hope is lost, however. Eighty-four of the 94 students in Hull’s study were weighed again mid-January. For students that were a normal weight to begin with, the Thanksgiving pound had almost completely disappeared.