The New Year Diet.

You know how everyone always talks about overindulging during the holidays?

There always seems to be this focus on the amount of gluttony people can exhibit during the holiday season, so much so it is usually the fodder of nightly newscasts throughout November and December. Lots of hints on how to keep from packing on excess poundage and tips on the things that are more fattening for you, foods you should stay away from and the like.

Shortly after Christmas, newscasts shift their focus to dieting techniques because one of the more frequent resolutions people make is to lose weight in the early part of the New Year. Although I wonder if there ever has been a study about whether or not more people lose weight during January and February than any of the other months throughout the year.

Well, fortunately another holiday season is just about departed. Hooray! Or is it better put - Bah! Humbug!

As I had written a few weeks ago, I look forward to the warmer weather in any event... but I digress.

I managed not to put any poundage on during the holidays, as a matter of fact I believe I actually lost weight and it was an accidental if welcome side effect.

See, a few days before Christmas itself I awoke in the middle of the night with the most terrific pain along the left side of my face below the cheekbone. And when I use the adjective terrific, it’s not in the sense of wonderful but rather overwhelming. If you can imagine, I woke literally sometime around 3am and it hurt like all hell. At first I had thought maybe I had taken over to grinding my teeth during sleep (something that happens to a lot of people although I can’t say I ever have been known to do it).

Over the next few days, it just got worse and worse and worse and worse.

My pain tolerance level is pretty high as these things go. It’s not that I don’t feel pain, I’m just not too much of a baby about these things (as evidenced earlier this year when I picked myself up after the scooter accident and with broken leg, broken rib and serious gashes drove the scooter home and then drove myself to the hospital).

Christmas day, it was pretty bad.

Now this Christmas as these things go was a good one. I got a great gift the day before the holiday in that my car got through inspection and on the day itself my cousin got me one of the best gifts I’ve received in recent memory but I also got the worst gift in this really bad tooth thing.

Really bad in that I had an infection and I it was inordinately painful.

I haven’t had a normal dentist in a few years now and part of the problem was trying to find a new dentist that I could feel comfortable going to. The last go round I had at the dentist was horrible, I had been going to the NYU Dental School for treatment and I had gotten stuck with a stinker of a student. She was just a twit for lack of a better word and she did a really bad job that wound up causing me to lose part of a tooth.

So, I’m gun shy.

And I put this thing off because finding someone to treat you during the holiday season usually is difficult at best because everyone is on vacation and if you don’t want to incur the expense of emergency care your options are limited.

Well, rather than drone on, the upshot is I’m finally going to someone tomorrow (and starting off my New Year with a nice Root Canal... YUM!) but, on the good side if you ever want to keep the weight off or stop yourself from overindulging during the holidays? All you need is a nice abscessed tooth to keep you from eating, it works wonders.

Take my word for it.