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Finally the madness has ended. The tree is down, the non-stop parties have finally come to an end, and the guests have parted. After too many rich meals and decadent desserts, our jeans feel a bit snug, and the scale is once again the enemy, reminding us of our failures and shortcomings.
Sound familiar? We have all heard the statistics about holiday weight gain. I heard one doctor say the average person packs on seven pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s! So what is the truth, are we really gaining five to seven pounds every December? Well, there is both good news and bad.
According to a 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine the average American will notice about a one pound weight increase as they pack away the last of the holiday decorations. For those who are already heavy it may be more significant. That is the good news. One pound isn’t a whole lot, and in reality isn’t that difficult to lose. Cut out the cookies, log a few more hours on the treadmill and that pound could be gone in a week!
Great, you’re thinking, one pound, no biggie…hey, are those leftover snickerdoodles?? Well, this is where the bad news matters. Most of us gain weight slowly, about one to two pounds per year. That’s ten to twenty pounds in ten years, twenty to forty pounds in twenty years…you get the picture. Unfortunately, our over-indulgence during the holidays can lead to a lifetime of weight struggles. The problem is not that we gain a pound, the problem is that once January roles around we don’t lose it.
Sales of diet books, exercise equipment, and gym memberships will skyrocket this month. Each ching of the cash register representing the hope of change. However, the resolutions of January quickly become the broken hopes of March. Is there any chance of real change, change that matters and lasts?
Yes. But it does not come packaged with bows and whistles; it does not have a money back guarantee, and the message would not make a bestseller. It is a decision. A decision that YOU matter, that your health and peace of mind are not disposable aspects of your life. The pound that many of us gain in the last weeks of the year is not a matter of life and death. You can lose it, and you can keep losing. One pound, one workout, one meal, one decision at a time. Make this the year that the hopes of January become the success of December.
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