Raise your hand if you think you can lose weight during the holidays. Anybody?

Throughout my teens and twenties, the period between Halloween and New Year’s Eve served one purpose: Getting in my last licks before starting a diet on January 1^st. I’d routinely pack on 10 or more pounds in those 12 weeks. I believed that was unavoidable. I was wrong.

At age 29 I got into therapy, and got serious about losing all that weight. By Thanksgiving 1995, I’d dropped about 70 pounds. I thought I’d sail through a festive meal with my family, which rivals the Costanza clan for, um, emphatic conversation. You can guess how that went—but in the years that followed, I figured out three simple rules for losing weight during the holiday season. Yes, I said losing weight, not just maintaining. With these rules, January 1^st is nothing to fear.

Click on over to Attune Foods to read Three Simple Tricks to Lose Weight During the Holidays.

diet holidays zen