Weight ...Wait a Minute...

“Judge ye not...”

If you’re thin, don’t bother reading this column, just keep turning the pages till you hit some wine tasting section because you’re not going to understand any of this. Today’s column is just for those of us who battle the bulge.

Okay, gang, here we are again. Facing the holidaze. We just spent a lot of money at IGA to give away candy and get the same candy back. How dumb are we?

Now, what to do with the candy? We can’t throw it out because that would be wasteful. But if we keep it, it will call to us all day ....”Stop vacuuming... come to me.. come to me.. .”. I can hear a Snickers bar call me through six feet of concrete. I mean, it’s just a minibar... three Weight Watcher points. How bad could it be? We begin to rationalize... “I could eat five minibars and still have enough points for a skinless chicken breast and a huge salad”.

Oscar Wilde said, “The best way to dissipate temptation is to give into it.” That logic works perfectly this time of year. My trick is to limit the temptation. Throw out the second tier candy now. We all know the first tier is all the chocolate candies, then there’s the second tier stuff, Sweet Tarts, DumDums, and such. We only eat that because we’re out of the other. So, toss out the second tier stuff as soon as you can. The first tier candies only last a week at most. That leaves two weeks of sensible eating before Thanksgiving strikes. If you don’t throw out the second tier candies now, the candy will last till Thanksgiving.

Do your best till Thanksgiving and then just relax and enjoy the day. Try to eat your Thanksgiving dinner with other heavy people instead of family members. That way you can eat in peace without your family monitoring every morsel you put on your plate. What kills the joy of a feast faster than a relative pointing out that you’d save 16 calories with butter sprinkles instead of butter? And don’t you love the way they say it - like you didn’t know that? It always puts us on the defensive, which moves them into attack mode. They launch into a lecture of whatever they did for four whole days that allowed them to shake off five pounds. Then they say the stupidest thing, “You know, five pounds to me is like fifty pounds to you.” That’s like equating a stolen kiss to a rape. Thin people are as cruel as they are clueless. We know the difference between five and fifty pounds, two pant sizes. Fat does not mean stupid.

Another plus of dining with other heavy people is you can have dessert without feeling eyes on you from all corners of the room. If you dine with relatives, you can only have one sliced of pie. It has to be pumpkin, because everyone knows that’s the lowest calorie pie and therefore you are allowed one criticism-free slice. Then you get to watch everyone else enjoy the pecan pie, fruitcake and rum balls. I have an Aunt I haven’t seen in years. I avoid her because she feels perfectly comfortable demanding to know my clothing sizes. She, who has always been thin, eats more in one sitting than I do in a whole day. That seems to be the case with most thin people. Just once, I’d love to sit on one of them and squash them, as a kind of perverted poetic justice. Well... it’s the thought that counts...

Do your level best between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then enjoy Christmas dinner guilt free if you can. Thin people usually give us a break on Christmas day, but only if they get to say, “Don’t worry, you can start dieting after New Year’s.” So we take the one day pass and surprisingly to those who watch us, we don’t really eat more than anyone else does. It just stays on us longer and piles up. My goal isn’t to lose any weight over the holidaze, my goal is not to gain more. If I can just hold the line till January, I will consider it a successful holiday.

So, my dear fellow weebles (weebles wobble but we don’t fall down), do your best and don’t feel bad if you have to body slam a skinny person now and then. It provides us an emotional release and might keep us from emotional eating - which is what the skinnies warn us against anyway...