A commercial Battle Royal

It is a fight out there. Two products battling each other in an effort to control your stomach.

In one corner, we have the diet plans/pills promising you can lose weight. In the other corner, are the pizza companies, giving you a pretty good deal on pizza. Ding ding!

I might be the only one that found this amusing. With Christmas over, we lose all the jewelry adds and BEST SALE OF THE SEASON!!! commercials and with the new year, get deluged with weight loss products. I can't go a night without seeing Dan Marino pitching Nutrisystem, or see a Hydroxycut commercial or some other new miraculous-scientific-break-through-pill- guaranteed-to-help-you-lose-weight-or-your-money-back-pill.

This year seemed different though. I also began noticing the Pizza Hut and Dominos commercials as well. Toss in McDonalds touting their $1 menu and it is the Battle of the Bulge.

One side wants to help you get rid of it while the other side wants you to keep living large. Kinda like the government.

Having put on some pounds over the holidays, I knew what I would do to drop that weight. Eat sensibly and get back into working out like I used to. Not that tough. I didn't need some pill or meal plan to help me. I would rely on good old fashioned discipline.

Of course you then see the commercials and think, hey, anything to help out would be nice. So I paid attention to what they said. I also checked out some websites. In the end, I figured that my own plan would work just as well. They boast people that lost 20 pounds in 8 weeks. Or 22 pounds in 3 months (I believe that was Dan Marino's claim). I looked at the numbers and it came out to basically 2 pounds a week.

Just 2.

Hell, anyone that exercises daily and cuts back on the size of their meals can lose 2 pounds a week. You don't need to shell out big bucks to drop some pounds. Just some discipline.

And if you like pizza like I do, you need that discipline. Sure, the best pizza you will find will not come from the Hut, Papa Johns, or any other national chain. It will come from the ma&pa pie place that has a sauce that is just too good. But sometimes you want something a bit easier on the budget so you get it from a chain.

I had friends at work that would laugh at my checkbook because for a stretch I got a pizza every Monday. Check after check written out to various pizza joints. Thus seeing these pizza commercials makes it tough to keep going, but go I must.

The battle will probably continue through the end of the month. May you belly survive. Or not if that is what you want.