Holiday dieting for dummies: Don't even try

By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer | Friday, November 4, 2005 11:32 PM PST ∞

For many of us, Halloween serves as the official kickoff.

In this, I am talking about the end-of-the-year eating frenzy, which I am starting to believe actually occurs to add pizzazz to our New Year's resolutions, which often include losing all the weight we gained from the end of October to the very second the sparkling Waterford Crystal ball drops over Times Square.

On Halloween, and the days that follow, today perhaps, we tend to get a little carried away with the candy. It's during this time that two dozen miniature candy bars are hardly enough to quench our appetite for a large bill from our dentist.

In a few weeks we'll hit Thanksgiving, a holiday crowned by a meal that makes a death row inmate's last wish seem like a plate of broccoli and alfalfa sprouts.

This is when we are sure to pile our plates with enough food to feed those in a small African village. And no matter how stuffed we are, we clean plates, bite by bite. We were actually taught to do so, a long time ago, when our parents told us about the starving children in the world.

Then we'll arrive at December, the month of the holidays ---- to remain politically correct and religiously unbiased ---- that makes people believe that it is acceptable to holler at meek store clerks, and, of course, to decorate their homes in a manner that makes the strobe lighting at a downtown city nightclub seem bland.

'Tis the season when co-workers and friends decide to bake cookies in the shape of snowmen and snowflakes ---- even though this is Southern California where many natives wouldn't know a snowflake from a lump of coal ---- and invite all to indulge.

So whether you want to admit it or not, it's a fact that most of us tend to overeat this time of year, even with the handy magazine articles, health newsletters, and advice of experts on "Oprah," providing us with tips on how to avoid the holiday season calorie binge.

The current issue of Fitness magazine is urging us to eat a slice of pumpkin pie instead of other traditional pies because the pumpkin has fewer grams of fat. But when it comes right down to it, standing before the doily-clad buffet table, many of us are likely to have a slice of every kind of pie available.

This is, of course, after we are barely able to sit up in our pants that, mysteriously, fit perfectly before we sat down to eat but now feel as though they've been shrinking in the dryer for an hour.

I realize these assertions are somewhat discouraging, especially if you are on a diet right now.

Unless you have the willpower of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you have a better chance of having to shovel snow on a driveway in the desert than losing any weight this season.

But as I stated before, all of these hedonistic tendencies do serve some purpose.

For without the added fat that comes with holiday food feasts, our New Year's resolutions would be as ho-hum as: Take out the garbage the night before trash day. Spend more time reading on the weekends. Use turn signals more often.

But thanks to the never-ending buffet of calories, which we thoroughly enjoy devouring from our first black-and-orange, foil-wrapped mini Reese's peanut butter cup to our last slice of holiday fruit cake, our New Year's resolutions are much more complex.

By ensuring that we balloon ourselves over the next few months, such self-promises for the year ahead come with fancy gym memberships, exercise videos that will remain in the shrink wrap until the summer's first garage sale, and piles of diet books that tell us, in 300 pages or more, that french fries lead to spare tires.

And while we wait for the ball to drop, why not have another peek in your child's stash of Halloween treats? I'm sure there's got to be at least one more miniature Kit Kat in the midst of that sticky candy corn.

Staff writer Louise Esola covers Oceanside schools. She can be reached at lesola@nctimes.com.