NO NEED TO DIET IF YOU
LIVE IN THE NORTH COUNTRY!

Every time we turn on the TV these days we are bombarded by “weight loss challenges,” or “getting the skinny on dieting” or some other “new” diet or exercise nonsense that rates right up there on the enjoyment scale with self-flagellation. If you recall, during the holiday season every single TV show was about making and eating highly caloric dishes with absolutely no regard to the fact that with amazing speed this decadent food lands on our thighs and breeds cellulite. Now that it’s January, it’s as if the entire country is surprised that we’ve gained weight and now we must punish ourselves. They have the timing all wrong!

This is New England where it’s so cold in the winter that four layers of clothing provides marginal warmth…and that’s in the house! This morning we had a twenty-below wind chill factor courtesy of the wind screaming 45 mph. On the way to the garage, my breath crystallized and while thawing and scraping off my truck I shivered off at least two pounds. So this is the time we’re supposed to lose weight? I don’t know about you, but I need every bit of insulation I can get right now, and from personal experience, I know that body fat is a terrific insulator. I plan to hang on to every ounce of fat until spring when I won’t need it anymore. I think it is high time we protest and bail off this binge and purge post-holiday diet bandwagon. We northerners can afford to do so with no consequences because come spring those unwanted pounds will melt off without even trying.

Last night the high winds dumped at least a hundred small branches all over our expansive lawn. Guess who will be doing a hundred “waist bends and pick-ups” in the spring? Not to mention the wheelbarrow trek to our backwoods to their final resting place. Right now I’m looking at two giant rhododendron bushes that became encased in ice when it rained and our temperature suddenly plunged 40 degrees. This frost kill will mean countless hours hacking away dead branches in the spring and hauling them away for disposal. I can feel the pounds melting off already.

Winter has been hard on our garage, so it will need sanding and a new coat of stain. Ditto for the entire house. We also have over fifty hosta plants that will need to be split and transplanted come spring. This means that for each plant I will have to stand on the spade, jump up and down to sever the root, use brute strength to wrestle these Sumo-rooted plants from their dearly beloved spaces …and it won’t be pretty. Past experience has taught me that splitting and transplanting a yard full of hostas is good for at least five pounds, three blisters, two tubes of Ben Gay and one chiropractic visit.

And that’s just the beginning. I will also have to thin out and transplant the perennial beds and plant multiple trays of annuals. When the task is completed, I will have poked over two hundred plants in the ground. Every single spring I drop anywhere from six to ten pounds without turning the page of a diet book or ramping up my workout schedule. I don’t know about you, but as for me, I’m going to light the fireplace, curl up with a good book and a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy hibernating every minute that I can.