The holiday eating season is here again

Well, all the Christmas lights and decorations have started to appear in our local malls. It’s probably the same where you live. The competition is really hot this year. Retailers have been suffering because of the credit crunch so they started the campaign to get us to spend our hard-earned dollars really early. But, of course, we first have to get through Thanksgiving. In the midst of all this consumer pressure and the expectations of friends and families, it’s easy to forget one vital ingredient — your health! In the good old days, those Pilgrims had an easy ride when it comes to weight loss. There was little food to last through each year so the idea of celebrating a successful harvest with a feast made sense. Filling up the store houses with grains and cereals really was the difference between life and death. So getting the family together was a way of boosting morale as everyone faced the hardships of the winter to come. Oh, and everyone was as thin as a rake. Today, the story could not be more different. It’s not just the turkeys putting on the pounds for the festive season. We spend the year eating just that little bit too much, not counting the calories and giving in to temptations. At best, our weight stays the same but, more often, it rises slowly but steadily. Then along comes Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone is expected to binge on more food. Social gatherings are mixed blessings. It’s good to see everyone and, when they all start eating and drinking together, it makes for a special event as we catch up with news, celebrate all the recent successes and bitch about all the problems. This hides all the hard work that went into making all the food and all the discomfort that comes afterwards — in particular that bloated feeling. There’s another sad truth. When months go by between visits, we forget each other’s look. It can be a surprise when the door opens and a slightly more overweight figure walks in. This can affect how much we enjoy the holiday. Everything about us is wrapped up in how we feel about ourselves and the others we love. The amount of energy we have and level of self-confidence we feel is dictated by how we look. It impacts the choice of clothes to wear, the places to go, and so on. A recent study by the University of Washington found an emerging majority of people do not want these extra pounds. Attitudes are changing with the overweight coming bottom on a scale of sexual attractiveness. So unless you want to feel really bad about yourself in the New Year, start an active diet right now. The world is going to expect you to overeat on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Start losing some weight now. That way, you will emerge from the binge at the same weight and not carrying even more. That means a calorie-reduced diet starting today. If you feel hungry, take phentermine, the one appetite suppressant that has stayed fit and active throughout the years. Launched fifty years ago, phentermine has seen off all its rivals as the drug most likely to keep morale high and those weight loss blues away.