It’s January and everyone I know is obsessed with sharing their January dieting tips.  I have friends who are fasting.  I have friends who will only eat high-fat foods. And then there are my friends who are dabbling in only eating table scraps (OK, not really, but I know it’s coming).

Mostly, everyone I know has given up alcohol — even the kind you cook with.

My gym is packed.  All the parking spots are taken. And someone is always on my favorite machine. I had to resort to going to the gym at 6 p.m. on a Sunday the other week.  

The irony of all this January dieting is that you can’t see the results of all this  effort because everyone is so bundled up. Oh, and everyone is cranky because they’ve stopped drinking and eating what they really want to eat.

People: can’t we be healthy all year long so January doesn’t have to be so crazy?

I get it.  We're all recovering from the stretch known as the “most wonderful time of the year.” But why do we have to swing the pendulum so far the other way? It seems our January abstention is as out of control as our holiday gluttony.

Don't get me wrong. I too have jumped on the winter wellness bandwagon. I'm going to follow what I did last year, when I entered into a monk-like lifestyle as I immersed myself in learning lines for the production of At Wit’s End at Geva. In preparing for the one-woman show, I decided a chardonnay fog would not serve my goals. So I gave up alcohol. (My proudest moment was ordering a hot tea at dinner.)

Guess what? I lost weight.  It was that simple. Then again, it might have been from being terrified about taking the stage again after so long — shaking in your boots can burn a lot of calories.

The show is returning in March, so I figure I’ve got two more months of eating and drinking whatever I want before I have to enter the theatrical convent.

I called it my “obvious diet.” As in: Obviously if you drink less, you’ll lose weight.

There are lots of other obvious diets.  There’s the reunion diet: when you haven’t seen your high school friends and you want them to gasp at your physique with delight. There’s the, “It’s my nephew’s wedding diet.” That event is happening in September, so I can probably wait until July to start that one.  There’s the summer bathing suit diet: but given I live in Rochester, I don’t diet for that one at all because I never wear a bathing suit if I can help it.

My husband, who just turned 57, is working on his “I’m not 60 yet” diet.  The man has never been on an actual diet.  This year, though, he discovered a diet apps.  It keeps telling him things that I have been telling him for the last 36 years. Like, try not ordering the creamy pasta or eating that chocolate bar. 

He’s even taken to getting on the scale.  But he hasn’t learned the dieter’s scale tricks including: getting on and off at least three times to see if it’s going to change. Or getting on an entirely different scale.  A few weeks ago there was a scale at a hotel I was staying at that I would have brought home if it had fit into the suitcase – its numbers were that good.

If all else fails, there’s always the most obvious diet of all: eat less, move more. 

As seen in the USA Today Network, Garnett Newspapers and the Democrat & Chronicle.