Can You Hear the Weight-loss Engine Starting?

Right about now, the weight-loss industry is ready to go, but is holding off. Can you hear them? They are on the other side of the Holiday season. Engines are revving. The copywriters have turned in the last emotional-button-pushing phrases, the photographers have finished digitally retouching their “rock-hard-abs” spreads, the publishers are shipping the newest diet books, and all the news services have readied reports on gyms/gurus/diets.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the roar, the rumble, the racing engines. Like a great traffic jam of drag racers, they wait for the lights to go from Holiday red to green.

For the untempted, the Holidays are joyous and serene. For the weight-loss challenged, we can barely hear the carols with all that noise coming from around the corner of 2008.

My plan is my ear plug. I’m thinking so far past the revving engines that I’ll hardly notice as they race by. As the entire world has to wade through the magazine dieting billboards at every shopping market checkout stand, I’ll be ignoring the scale, the fat calipers, and the tape measure. I’m the one walking by with my gallon of water, the rested visage, and the ipod in my ear.

But right now I look like this