OK, so you just indulged over the Thanksgiving table and now when you look at your reflection, you flash on one of those mirror scare scenes (I'm stuck on "Poltergeist" where the guy looks in a mirror and rips off his face). If you don't like what the naked you looks like and would like to drop some of your extra weight before Christmas and New Year's Eve, we suggest you take a break from these foods. Sure you can try moderation, but if you're looking to drop and drop fast, why not pledge to stop eating these things for just two or three weeks? And for those purists who feel compelled to remind us that for weight loss to be permanent, it requires a change in lifestyle -- yeah, well, we see your lips moving but aren't hearing you at the moment. This is Desperation Season for those who just need to get a dress zipped up by New Year's and we promise to deal with lifestyle changes on Jan. 1. We remind everyone that safe weight loss averages about two pounds a week; and we promise that if you lock your jaws to these foods, you can do this:
1) Bread.
We love bread. We love it hard-crusted, toasted, with rosemary and a million other ways. We love onion bagels and garlic bread sticks. With the exception of tasteless white bread, we love pretty much every glorious chunk of bread that ever passed over our lips and went straight to our hips. The problem is that bread doesn't love us back. Those annoying carbs it carries are just the enemy of weight loss. White bread has minimal nutritional value and turn rapidly into sugar. So you may as well just eat a cupcake (no, don't do that either!) Truth is, there is just no such thing as moderation when it comes to bread, says Heather Bauer, co-author of "Bread is the Devil: Win the Weight Loss Battle by Taking Control of Your Diet Demons." As she told WebMd, "When you're hungry, tired, or stressed, you tend to reach for bread products, not carrot sticks. Problem is, the more you eat bread, the more you want." Cold turkey, my friends, cold turkey.
2) Wine, beer, eggnog and other alcohol drinks.
Yes, we are proposing heresy: Going through all those holiday parties without imbibing a little. Booze has sugar. Booze also has the nasty habit of encouraging us to drop our guard. We munch while we sip because we don't want to get too much of a buzz on and then before we know it, we are munching on stuff that is bad for us and we've lost track of what we have eaten. If you want to be able to zip up your party dress on New Year's Eve, try delaying that champagne until, well, New Year's Eve.
3) Cheese.
Now, if you are anything like us, bread, cheese and wine are the three staples you'd most want if stranded on a desert island, so the idea of forgoing them pretty much cuts like a knife -- a cheese knife. Cheese is the one dairy product that just hasn't quite nailed it in the fat-free equivalent category. While fat-free milk may have replaced cream in our coffee, fat-free cheeses just haven't posed a plausible alternative to the real stuff. Cheese? Cheese is a gift from God that perhaps shouldn't be tampered with. That said, it should be dropped from your diet during the next few weeks if you want to see some weight loss.
4) Fried food.
Fried food, loaded with fat and calories and zero nutritional value, should probably be banned from your diet year-round. But guess what gets pushed in front of us at holiday parties? Fried crab cakes, deep-fried asparagus, fried potato latkes, etc. Sure it tastes good and other guests may stare at you for munching on the celery sticks instead, but who needs greasy fingers anyway?
5) Sugar.
"Is HuffPost crazy?" you may be asking yourself about now. Go through the holidays without eating all the chocolates and pastry treats brought into offices, served at parties, dished up wherever you go? A tough one, we know. You will thank us for it later. Sugar and high fructose corn syrup are the epitome of anti-fitness food. Nothing will destroy your weight-loss progress, expand your waist or plummet your energy levels more than sugar.
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