With the onset of winter, all animals show a tendency to stock pile food.
Before the advent of fridges and freezers, our nomadic forebears had no alternative but to overeat and build up their internal fat stores.
That primeval urge persists today.
Studies carried out by Prof.
John de Castro of Georgia State University, Atlanta have shown that people tend to eat ten per cent more calories in the run up to Christmas.
Those extra two hundred or more calories a day leave many people with overstretched waistlines, long before the orgy of Xmas eating and drinking begins.
From October onwards the food industry routinely steps up its advertising to make the most of this atavistic urge.
Anyone wanting to maintain their health should take steps to avoid being caught up in this seasonal pandemonium.
They should not be tempted when they enter food stores decked with bright lights and holly, where festive carols are playing in the background, and all the incentives are to stockpile food.
Not for them the two-for-one offers.
They will buy what they need, and not be tempted to overload their trolleys with excess food which will either go to waste or waist.
Studies have shown that overweight people are particularly sensitive to the sight, smell and availability of food, which means the more often they go to food stores, the more they're tempted to buy.
So anyone with a weight problem should cut down their visits to supermarkets in the pre-Xmas period, drawing up a shopping list in advance to avoid the temptation to impulse buy.
Substitutes can be made if necessary, but nothing should be bought which isn't on the predetermined list.
If it hasn't been tabled, it isn't needed.
Supermarkets know that by positioning food in certain positions - notably at the end of the aisle or by the check-out counter - they can achieve a five-fold increase in impulse buying.
So particular care should be taken at these points, where the stores tend to display high-profit items which are generally low in nutritional values and rich is fats and sugar.
Even the grossly overweight can benefit from these pre-Xmas weight control measures.
One American lady weighed well over twenty stone.
Ashamed of her condition, when she caught sight of herself in a shop window, she decided to pay a return visit to her favourite health resort.
She started her stay with a private session with the hydro's psychotherapist, who studied her life style and immediate saw that she needed to be more active.
'What's your favourite form of exercise?' he asked.
This was not what she expected, because she'd come to the resort to be pampered as she had been in the past, not to work out in the gym.
For a while she couldn't think of a single thing she enjoyed which was even remotely energetic.
The only activity which gave her pleasure, she finally confessed, was shopping.
Seizing on this small gleam of hope, the shrink invited her to do a deal.
To help her lose weight, he got her to promise to walk once round the perimeter of her shopping centre before she went inside and made a purchase.
By following this simple instruction she shed three-and-a-half stones in five months.
This may seem hard to credit, but the loss is easily explained for she usually visited the centre four times a week, and the trip round the perimeter of the block was a mile and a half long.
Maybe that's an idea the major food stores should foster in 2012, by building a pedestrian circuit around their car parks.
Before the advent of fridges and freezers, our nomadic forebears had no alternative but to overeat and build up their internal fat stores.
That primeval urge persists today.
Studies carried out by Prof.
John de Castro of Georgia State University, Atlanta have shown that people tend to eat ten per cent more calories in the run up to Christmas.
Those extra two hundred or more calories a day leave many people with overstretched waistlines, long before the orgy of Xmas eating and drinking begins.
From October onwards the food industry routinely steps up its advertising to make the most of this atavistic urge.
Anyone wanting to maintain their health should take steps to avoid being caught up in this seasonal pandemonium.
They should not be tempted when they enter food stores decked with bright lights and holly, where festive carols are playing in the background, and all the incentives are to stockpile food.
Not for them the two-for-one offers.
They will buy what they need, and not be tempted to overload their trolleys with excess food which will either go to waste or waist.
Studies have shown that overweight people are particularly sensitive to the sight, smell and availability of food, which means the more often they go to food stores, the more they're tempted to buy.
So anyone with a weight problem should cut down their visits to supermarkets in the pre-Xmas period, drawing up a shopping list in advance to avoid the temptation to impulse buy.
Substitutes can be made if necessary, but nothing should be bought which isn't on the predetermined list.
If it hasn't been tabled, it isn't needed.
Supermarkets know that by positioning food in certain positions - notably at the end of the aisle or by the check-out counter - they can achieve a five-fold increase in impulse buying.
So particular care should be taken at these points, where the stores tend to display high-profit items which are generally low in nutritional values and rich is fats and sugar.
Even the grossly overweight can benefit from these pre-Xmas weight control measures.
One American lady weighed well over twenty stone.
Ashamed of her condition, when she caught sight of herself in a shop window, she decided to pay a return visit to her favourite health resort.
She started her stay with a private session with the hydro's psychotherapist, who studied her life style and immediate saw that she needed to be more active.
'What's your favourite form of exercise?' he asked.
This was not what she expected, because she'd come to the resort to be pampered as she had been in the past, not to work out in the gym.
For a while she couldn't think of a single thing she enjoyed which was even remotely energetic.
The only activity which gave her pleasure, she finally confessed, was shopping.
Seizing on this small gleam of hope, the shrink invited her to do a deal.
To help her lose weight, he got her to promise to walk once round the perimeter of her shopping centre before she went inside and made a purchase.
By following this simple instruction she shed three-and-a-half stones in five months.
This may seem hard to credit, but the loss is easily explained for she usually visited the centre four times a week, and the trip round the perimeter of the block was a mile and a half long.
Maybe that's an idea the major food stores should foster in 2012, by building a pedestrian circuit around their car parks.