'Tis the season... to lose weight

With Christmas out of the way, and weeks of solid advertising preaching for the season of gluttony, it's time to feel the guilt. What sin! How could you? How could you eat two Christmas dinners and a box of chocolate? What you need now is a diet. But, don't even think about fresh fruit – no, what you need is the best in diet foods: low-fat cake, low-fat yogurt, low-fat ready meals. And don't waste time walking around the park – get a gym membership instead. New trainers, new trackies, new you. That's what you want, isn't it? A new you. A you you don't feel guilty for being. Purge away your sin and spend in the Church of Consumerism. Because you are not a person if you don't.

Every year is much of the same. Every year we are bombarded with the same message: 'tis the season. Somewhere along the line, the festive season went from celebrating love and life to celebrating stuff. Television, news, interwebs, people – everything is telling us to consume as much possible, be it food or stuff. Telling us that without such purchases, Christmas will be a disaster. Telling us not to let our loved ones down. And this line is embedded, one only has to look at the mothers among us to see the stress of ensuring everyone has the perfect Christmas.

But as soon as the day of eating too much food is out the way, the ads switch on us. The very same mediums that were telling us to eat as much as we could, now tell us we've all put on a few pounds. That we've let ourselves go and we simply must lose weight. If we don't, we're undesirable. They're making us feel guilty for doing the very thing we were so encouraged to do, but they're pretending to be on our side all the time. They're offering us guidance and a hand to help us through the difficult transition into that Better You.

In my inbox this morning I found a direct hit. LA Fitness encouraging me to 'join the new year's health resolution' (which, admittedly, I read as 'revolution' the first time. I don't know if that's my dyslexia, or if they engineered it themselves). The tagline reads: 'Start achieving your health and fitness goals today'.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was still on the 'let yourself go' part of the festive season; drinking beer and eating seconds. But it seems I'm supposed to stop eating in time for the next set of festivities: new year's. As we enter into 2013 I need to set myself some new rules for being a better person, and advertisers the world-over are promising to help.

LA Fitness isn't the only company encouraging a change of tact. The diet industry thrives off our insecurities, and this is a great time of year to hit out. It stayed quiet for a couple of weeks, giving us all long enough to eat more than we would usually, to ensure we're primed and ready to purge.

Happy holidays.

Follow Pennie Varvarides on Twitter @superpennie 

Tis The Season…

…to get stressed out. At least it seems to be that way for most people. I think it’s something to do with the expectations rather than the season itself; people want too much from a day that promises the world without the power to deliver. There are the people who walk into Christmas celebrations, expecting it to be the best day of the year. They’re expecting a happy ending and love and peace and for none of those everyday things to matter; not on Christmas. But the problem with that is, everything still matters. If you don’t get on with someone, the day of the year isn’t going to change that. If you put a bunch of differing people in a room and force that specific spirit, it’s going to end with clashes and fisticuffs. If two people can’t sit a car journey without fighting normally, what makes people think today will be any different?

So we’ve got those people expecting the world, sat trying to force feed the realists their ideology. All this is doing here is pushing those people not absorbed in the lie, that much further away ‘causing people to try that much harder to convince you to get into the Christmas spirit; to have a nice day; to love them. The wedge, just growing and pushing so those over excited people are left disappointed and stressed out after a day of trying so hard and the other people wound up and hating the season that much more.

I think our best bet when it comes to getting through the season, is not expecting a thing. Can’t be disappointed if you don’t have things falling short of that bar. Expect the worst and then be happy when things aren’t as bad as they could have been. Enjoy the awesome food (‘cause Christmas dinner is clearly the best food you get all year round for some reason) and be happy this isn’t an everyday activity. Eat until you feel sick, then use it as an excuse to go lie down/have a nap… though this obviously has it’s downfall in the fact that eating too much leaves your jeans tight and your chin doubling (and the part where you feel sick...).

I am currently sat waiting for lunch (which I am actually looking forward to!) at my grans house. I have no internet, but the happy lappy came along for the ride to keep me entertained this year, so this gets to be an afternoon/evening post (if I manage to post it today that is).

Happy Yuletide folks! If I get a chance to write you a Christmas poem I’ll post it up =p

It's Christmas Eve...

And in the spirit of Christmas I figured it was time to share my thoughts on the season. I think Christmas lost it's magic a while back, somewhere in between learning the value of money and discovering the truth about Santa. When you're a child the concept of a big fat man breaking into your house isn't nearly as disturbing... it's magical and fascinating and fills you with Christmas. But then you start to wonder, how fast does he actually have to be moving to hit all those houses in time? And how fat must he be after all those cookies and pies? And I wonder if Muslim kids get presents too? Oh and what about those kids that don't get chimneys? Maybe there's some sort of correlation between chimneys and good behaviour in children... after all Santa sells Christmas to kids for good behaviour and if you know he can't pay you a visit anyway, what's the point?

I remember finding this aeronautical engineers report on Santa when I was younger (after I found out it was all a lie) that I'm going to share with you. Check The Truth Out Here for the maths behind why Santa doesn't make it. Turns out he has to be travelling at 650 miles/second with a grand total of 0.001 seconds to get out the sleigh, get in the house, leave presents, eat and drink the goodies, fill the stockings, get back up and get off. But hey, if magic's possible, breaking rules of time and speed shouldn't be a problem! Oh and if you're sat there wondering about how fat he must be (which I know you're just bursting to know) that answer is worked out for you too! The friendly fatty would have consumed almost 3000 tons by the end of the evening, which I imagine would be hard to stuff down a chimney...

On the topic of Santa, I do find his story a good one. We start off in the 4th century with a nice old bishop of Myra: Saint Nicholas. Nick was famous for giving poor folk generous gifts, most notably these three daughters of a Christian bloke who were given dowries so they wouldn't have to turn to prostitution and start selling their souls on the street for grub. Turns out German paganism influenced our Santa in those early attempts to hold on to their traditions through the painful Christianisation. Apparently Santa and Odin have a few things in common - 13th century literature tells us Odin rode an 8 legged horse that could pretty much fly which is kinda similar to the reindeer... ok that's not that great a comparison, but Odin had a long beard too... Kids would leave boots full of carrots or straw for Odin's flying horse near their chimneys and as a reward Odin would replace the snacks with gifts. That sounds familiar to me... Oooh oooh and Odin's horse is called Sleipnir which sounds a little like sleigh to me, though that could just be the way I'm reading it! There's loads more I could say on the subject but you're not here for a history lesson - one last point I'd like to point at would be the red. Yes, if you don't already know Santa was given his red suit by CocaCola to help sell Coke! Ok that might not actually be true, but it's something I heard out on the grapevine. I asked the mighty minds at CocaCola (meaning I had a look online) and they say it was some guy called Thomas Nast who made Santa red and they just used his interpretation... believe what you want.

Moving more to the Christmas part, I do find it all a bit fake. From the forced family time to the over stretched materialism beyond ones ability to survive in our cheery Capitalism. But even when we're all broke and in debt, spending money we don't have on Christmas presents no one ever really appreciates is what Christmas has become. I'm not big on the Christmas cheer, not because I'm a scrooge, but rather more to do with the fact that I hate being forced to love. It's all a load of - expletives - and you know it! If I love someone why should I wait for birthdays and Christmas to show them and shower them in gifts and attention? Why not do it all year round? Nobody appreciates things they're given when they're expecting, people are far more pleased with love and gifts on any other day of the year.

Before the Christians stole the day, it use to be a celebration of Solis Invicti or "unconquered sun". Basically celebrating any of the sun gods pre Jesus - everything is just on repeat with a different name. There are no new stories or ideas, just old ones shuffled for a new audience. Winter festivals were always everyones favourite, probably something to do with not having to do much work any more seeing as farming in snow is pretty pointless. When it was time for things to change the Pagan Winter Solstice was pushed out and replaced with Christmas, but we still decorate trees and give each other gifts. I am curious as to when Christmas will be pushed out and replaced by whatever comes next, but maybe that's just what all this mainstreaming of the holiday is about. Buy buy buy!! This is our new religion; over here in the West at least.

So to sum up, my thoughts were along the lines of buh humbug but with a few historical references. Let's see if my three ghosts pop up and answer some questions for me, hey?

Happy almost tomorrow chaps =] hope you all ('all' not referring to many people, but an important bunch nonetheless) have an awesome holiday season whatever it is you're celebrating. And if you're not into the celebrating I hope you enjoy not having to work or the snow or even just reading this, 'cause you've got to try to enjoy things otherwise it all just takes longer to troll through!