Pound for pound

 

Do you know what the hardest part of dealing with a major holiday is? The extra goodies.

On so-called ordinary days of the year, I zero in on sweets with the tracking intensity of a smart bomb. (A two day old slice of commercial pecan pie locked inside an iron safe at the bottom of a concrete bunker would not escape me.) 

You can imagine how challenging it is for a perpetual dieter like me, therefore, to be confronted by major holidays. Surrounded on those days by dinner tables, bakery shelves and candy counters literally groaning  under loads of extra goodies.

It can make you crazy.

And there is no use pointing out that all I need to control my cravings is a good dose of will power. If that actually worked, I wouldn’t wake up the morning after a holiday,  my head throbbing, to discover a stained saw clutched in my hand and the frozen remains of a caramel fudge cake scattered around me.

Diet. One of the vilest four letter words in the English language. 

Yet for most of us, it is a word that we constantly use in even casual conversations. We openly discuss preparing for a diet,  being on a diet, recovering from a diet, or purchasing billions of dollars worth of books with titles like The Hollywood Dog Biscuit and Warm Tonic Water Diet.

Unfortunately, the warning signs of overindulgence are all too easily spotted. 

The inability to bend over in our jeans. Or do them up. Realizing the driver’s seat is already as far back as it can ever go. Pausing to check out one’s stomach profile on a bank of motion activated computers, only to see a sign pop up on the monitor which reads “continued on next screen.” 

Serial dieters confront  daily dilemmas. Brussels sprouts versus double chunk chocolate ice cream? A plain tossed salad, dressing on the side, versus five cheese lasagna with garlic bread? 

Some one actually shared with me her foolproof solution for coping with these issues.

She maintains that all she has to do is rigorously diet every single day of the year except for two hours on an official, designated, national holiday! In those two hours, she claimed she could dive into the forbidden goodies: but only for that fixed amount of time,  and only on specific holidays. 

I really think her designated holiday solution may have merit.

And may I take this opportunity, here and now, to remind everyone of the following lesser known holidays: National Tooth Decay Day (Oct. 20), Celebration of the Invention of Velcro Day (Aug. 18), International Yodelling Day (Jan. 13), Replacing Furnace Filters Day (April 16), Civic Take Down Your Christmas Decorations Day (July 27)…

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