CHRISTMAS is coming ..

... and the goose isn’t the only thing that’s getting fat. Well, fatter at any rate.

I’ve stopped going to the gym – but am still paying the monthly subscription “just in case” – and the last time I went to Fat School I celebrated a 4lb weight loss with chicken fried rice and two low-fat yoghurts.

Then, three weeks ago, I started being good once again, flitting from defeat to determination with the petulant swing of the moon. Two days past, I started to slide.

Now, with Christmas around the corner, I’m at another impasse.

I’m wondering, with the kind of intensity treatises are made and broken I’m sure, if I should bother being good this side of the 25th of Indulgence.

The problem with putting the good life on hold is that you – or at least weak-willed me – tend to eat for Wales during the break from calorie-counting, points-tallying, fat-weighing, carb-avoiding tactics.

Last year, as you may recall, I was on my way to having lost a whopping, eye-lash skimming (because that’s the only place I thought I could see it had gone off) two stone.

And then came The Break.

Significant (Thin But Getting Fat ‘Cos He’s Content Now) Other took me to London for a mini break.

For months I’d been weight-droppingly good, minding my calories like a nervous first-time mother of a screaming newborn, so I decided in my lack of wisdom to just act “normally” during my few days away.

Just enjoy yourself, he said. But be sensible, he said. You just need to behave “normally”, he said.

And, to quote pencil skirt-wearing Rizzo from Grease, it really was the worst thing I could do, following that sound advice.

I can’t, you see, do “normal”. Well I can, but if I do I just put on weight because normality doesn’t equate to moderation to me.

Fat and its uglier sister defeatism attacks me like it’s never seen me before, as opposed to being attached to me since I came out kicking and screaming and asking for solids before I could gurgle “more” coherently.

As soon as I take a break from calorie crunching, I put on weight. And not just a pound here or there – I’m talking half stone rather than half measures.

A year ago I’m weighing in at nearly two stone lighter – 12 months on and I’m just 5lbs lighter than when I started.

Go on, have a read of that fat fast fact again. I’m only 5lbs lighter after all that work and denial. But bloody hell, it felt good when I was being good.

To get where I am today, though, I’ve just been blind to calories and led, as far as I can see it, a normal life.

Now I maybe a bit dim to the intricacies of logic, but even I can see what’s gone wrong there.

So as the build-up to Christmas gains momentum, it’s filled with problems for me.

Should I eat, drink and be merry with the rest of the world or should I tape my mouth up and make a sacrificial pyre out of the three Advent calendars I’ve left unopened in the house?

Today I could open the lot while musing on my decision.

Well, ’tis the season to be jolly after all (but not one to be mistaken for a grumpy Mamma Claus with more chin hair, I remind myself while chomping).