mainly three periods:

1. The holiday season
2. My spring break vacation
3. My summer vacation

I'll typically put on 5-7 pounds during each of those periods, then spend the rest of the year trying to burn that off.

On vacations, my kryptonite tends to be breakfast buffets. I'm always super hungry in the morning and tend to go nuts at those. Cruises are the worst for weight gain because not only do they include a breakfast buffet but you can pretty much graze all day, topped off by a four course dinner.

During the holiday season, it's not so much the big meals at Thanksgiving and Christmas that get me is much as it is all the sweets and treats. I have a particular weakness for pie and tend to eat quite a bit of it during this time of year (and if it's a fruit pie like cherry or apple, I like it with a big scoop of ice cream).

And while I'm pretty disciplined with my eating habits the rest of the year, there's also stuff like birthdays, weekend getaways, and halloween (i.e., stealing your kids candy as well as from the candy you plan to hand out). While I don't gain nearly as much weight from those events as from the above three periods, they nonetheless set me back a bit.

I'll also typically put on about a pound or two during week-long business trips. Luckily, I usually only have 3-4 of these per year and I try not to let myself go as much during those as vacations. But it's hard to get a decent workout in a hotel gym, you're often dealing with some jet lag, and it's hard to resist going out for a sit-down dinner when you're on an expense account and have nothing much else to do in the evening.

But the top three periods I listed are what set me back the most (and basically force me to be in a perpetual state of "cutting" in my day-to-day life the rest of the year).