Weight Loss - New Year's Resolution For 2011?

Weight loss, not baseball, should be America's national pastime.  Unfortunately, that's not the case, as a quick trip to the mall, or a drive down any street will tell you.  Americans just keep getting fatter and fatter on average.  On TV and in the movies, of course, this isn't the case - TV and movie stars are much thinner and fitter than the average American.  Even the people in the ads for fast food and soda pop are skinny!  Next time you stop for a hamburger at one of the national fast food chains, look around you and see how many of your fellow customers resemble the people in the ads for the chain.  It won't be very many.  America is rapidly becoming the Land of the Couch Potato and the Home of the Morbidly Obese.  Of course, millions of Americans are going to "do something" about being overweight.  And what does "do something" mean for many of them?  Making a New Year's resolution to lose weight.

Every January 1st, there is a huge spike in interest in losing weight.  The sales of weight loss products and fitness equipment goes up.  Gyms and health clubs sell more memberships.  People do more searches for "lose weight" and "weight loss" in the first couple weeks of January than any other time of the year. Books about losing weight are brisk sellers both online and in brick and mortar book stores.   If January 1st, 2011, would be the first time this phenomenon occurred, it would be cause for hope, signifying that people are fed up with being fat, and are finally going to do something about it.  Of course, that's not the case at all.  This has been happening for decades, and Americans just keep getting fatter and fatter.

So what's the answer?  Who knows?  But one thing we do know is that New Year's resolutions to lose weight are most definitely not the answer.  For all our good intentions at the turn of the calendar page, few of us seem to make any real progress toward losing weight when we start on January 1st.  So this year (and every year from now on), why don't we try something different?  Different, as in not waiting until January 1st to start getting in shape and losing weight, just because it's the trendy thing to do to make a New Year's resolution.  Instead, why not start getting in shape and doing what it takes to lose weight right now, no matter what day you're reading this?  And then, come next New Year's Day, instead of making a resolution that you know in your heart you probably won't keep, you can celebrate all the weight you actually did lose in the previous year.  

Greg McDivitt is the proprietor of Weight Loss Blog.