It’s the middle of January and the excuses for separating yourself from that pesky New Year’s resolution of sensible eating, regular exercise and cleaning the inside of your car of leftover fast food bags are getting easier to make. Time has a way easing the jump back to that ole dietary excess we know and love.

The holidays have come and gone and if you’re an average American, you may have added a pound or two. Questions abound. Is the word ‘diet’ still contaminating your head? Have you broken your New Year’s resolution in record time? Do you feel like you’re sitting down in front of a slow moving freight train buffet loaded with delicacies tempting you with its trans-fat laden charms?

That’s why you can’t turn down an invite from your buds to go binge drinking over the weekend. It’s a quandary. You already know how many drinks it will take you to forget who you were with, but more importantly, will it send your diet into a pool of fat so deep that there are not enough rice cakes to float you out of it?

You want to rip the chocolate laden spoon out of your mouth and scream to the universe “Where’s my self-control?”

I need a drink.

Hey bartender, would you make me a drink, oh, and I’d like to keep it under 400 calories, what have you got?

Thank goodness for a new US Food and Drug Administration rule which is part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets must display calorie counts on all menus and menu boards. The rules hold true for take-out food, pizza parlors, ice cream stores and bakeries as well as for alcoholic beverages that are served in restaurants.

How huge will the menu at the Cheesecake factory get when they add calorie counts? Do you really want to know the calorie count in the 37 types of cheesecake alone?

How much protein is in the cherry at the bottom of that perfect Manhattan? After a couple, you may not care.