It's that time of year again. When we run to Weight Watchers because we had an extra serving of stuffing at Thanksgiving. For 17 years, come January, I was on some kind of diet: Counting exchanges, drinking diet shakes, low-fat, high-fat, low-carb, eat only their (processed) food, and of course my very first diet which commanded me to eat nothing but Melba toast, rice cakes, ice milk and healthy choice TV dinners. (To this day if I see Melba Toast, I scream.) For most of those 17 years of yo-yoing and ping-ponging from diet to diet, I thought that I was the one who has been doing it wrong. That I was the one who couldn't hack it. That I was a failure.

It didn't occur to me that no matter which diet plan I was doing, I was following a low-calorie diet. It is the essential logic of all diets that fat people must be fat because they eat too many calories. So they must be put on a reduced calorie diet (and when I say that I mean below the caloric intake of what "normal" people eat) either by eating less or making the stomach smaller. No matter which diet I was following, I was not eating enough to sustain my body and I suffered the side effects of it. (In the medical world, that situation is generally referred to as "starvation" or "malnutrition," depending on the particulars.)

Side effects of a low-calorie diet include fatigue (I was always tired), hunger (yep), low self-esteem, (yep) thoughts about food (all day and all night), gallstones (thankfully no), cardiac disorders (yep), high cholesterol (yep), anemia (so far no), diarrhea (yep), hypotension (thankfully no), pain (yep), cramps (yep), and sudden death (thankfully not yet).

The diet industry makes about $40 billion a year all with little success. Actually, that's a misnomer--the industry is exceptionally successful at marketing diets, but a dismal failure at getting people to lose weight and keep it off while remaining healthy. At any rate that's $40 billion every single year that we could be spending on literally anything else, say, feeding hungry children. This is an industry that thrives on repeat business; those who run it know that the social pressure to be thin is intensely strong; that fat is considered so unhealthy (read: "just plain ugly") that you will be back again and again trying to lose weight that genetically is nearly impossible. Dieters gained more weight annually then non-dieters. The Federal Trade Commission reported that "there is very little published evidence that most people maintain [weight loss from dieting] for any significant time." They also reported in a 2002 report titled "Tipping the Scales" that "The Review of 300 ads that ran during 2001 found that many made claims promising more than the product or service could deliver." They also found approximately 55% of diet ads contained at least one false claim.

Make no mistake, this industry doesn't want you thin. They don't get paid if you stay thin. They don't care if you get healthy. They want your money plain and simple and they will happily, frequently lie to get it.

So I am asking again this year that people give up dieting. Make January 1 (or actually in most cases Jan 2, as on Jan 1 we'll probably still be eating leftovers from New Year's) just an ordinary day. There are 52 million dieters in the U.S.A., so let's get that number down! Now I'm not suggesting you eat junk food all the time. Everyone by now should know to eat your vegetables and play. I'm talking about ending the dieting mentality. No more "I had cheesecake, I need to go on a cross country run!" No more diet cokes or low-fat anything. No telling yourself you don't need it if you are hungry. We should be happy that we have food, not everyone does.

I hope everyone has a great holiday!