The New Year Diet Advertising Blitz

It never fails.

After a couple of months of holiday excess, the media bombards a nation primed to follow through on those stereotypical resolutions to get fit and lose weight in a grand ol' American tradition...

Telling you what you want to hear.

With as little effort and inconvenience as possible, you get to eat the foods you want, you get to exercise just minutes a day or even better, you get to introduce a number of pills, powders or liquids masquerading as "supplements" into your body that will supposedly get you that body you want without doing any real work or sacrifice.

A body, I must add, that the media creates with loads of editing and photoshopping as possible.

So come January 1st, when everyone starts to feel a little guilty they ate too much and gained a little weight and look even *further* away from that image as possible, the media changes gears and promises us things we want to hear in order to sell a product.

They tell us there's real fruit in Pop Tarts, fiber in Fruit Loops and now they're giving us "The Taco Bell Diet".

Really?

If you want to know why the world sees us as a bunch of lazy, fat boneheads it's because we buy into this lie year after year after year after year.

They pour it out, and we lap it up.

We spend millions of dollars for those pills, powders, liquids and gizmos to get those amazing results they advertise - consistently overlooking that little fine print at the bottom of the screen that says... for EVERY single person who testifies how great the program is... "results not typical".

If those weight loss results aren't typical, no matter how large or small the number, it has to make you question what results are typical.

I'll tell you.

We get fatter. No one is getting any skinnier. Not for the long term.

The amazing part of this whole marketing broughaha is that every year as a nation our waistlines widen in line with diet industry's profit margin.

And no one blinks an eye. Which just goes to prove that we as a nation are so willing to hear what we want to hear that we ignore fact and reason to buy whatever bull sounds the best.

Which might explain how we had eight years of Bush, and why so many are bitching about what Obama hasn't done in his first year of his term.

We want what we want when we want it, and we want to give as little time, effort and money to get there. Gimme a pill! How bout a surgery? Anything that means I don't have to get a little self control and discipline!

If you really want to lose weight, here's the only piece of advice you need. And it's free.

Are you ready?

Stop eating junk. Move your body more.

There is no All Twinkie and Yoo Hoo Diet that will yield the results you want, sorry. You know what you need to do, you know what you need to give up. That doesn't come in a book, you don't have to pay a monthly fee or buy special prepacked food. Reach for an apple instead of Snickers. Cut down on the fatty meat and eat more veggies.

Stop trying to put a band-aid on the dam with temporary things like diets. Nothing makes someone more obese than yo-yo dieting. You've probably seen the new Nutri-System commercial where a gal recites that common refrain from most overweight folks, "I've tried every diet since I was 9!"

Which is a sad statement of our culture and how we condition our girls to get on that crazy self destructive carousel to begin with, even before their bodies have stopped developing.

But most fat people will tell you they've tried EVERYTHING.

And that means that they've stopped relying on the lies of the diet industry and started lying to themselves.

You haven't tried everything.

Eat less junk, move your body more.

We all know that when we do this we lose weight, but as lazy, fat boneheaded Americans we figure there's some other way where we can use less effort and sacrifice, and get it a whole lot quicker than the 1-2lbs a week we're naturally capable of losing.

A better resolution than "lose weight" is "stop lying to yourself". Stop giving these yahoos your hard earned money year after year, ensuring your own failure and your further dependence on their products.

They're getting richer while you're getting fatter.

Hello?! It's not working!

Do yourself a favor. Just for the month of January stop eating junk and move your body more. And if you feel you really, absolutely have to pay money to someone to help you lose weight, I take Paypal.

After an extended hiatus

For the last few months I've had a hard time accessing blogger, which turned out to be an ISP problem. Now that we've switched it, I can now post.

Which means your vacation from my political and social rants has now ended.

I bring it back with a bang thanks to the incomparable Hal Sparks, who was sweet enough not only to take my call this morning while he filled in on the Stephanie Miller Show, but also gave me a national plug.

This totally rocks, and I'm totally grateful.

So I'm back... bigger than ever.

Figuratively speaking.

Check out my call in to the show at 50 minutes in, which introduces an interesting and unexplored new analogy on the issue of gay marriage.

Enjoy!