Spring is here, and many of us are fighting to shed those five pounds we picked up over the winter. Fortunately, there is a sensible way to avoid those excess calories that wreak havoc on the battle of the bulge. Simply follow these rules, which have been passed down by calorie counters through the generations:

• Anything eaten in small increments has no calories. If someone in your office brings in a box of cookies and you only nibble each time you pass by, you do not have to count those calories.
• Anything eaten standing up or off someone else’s plate does not count.
• Gulps count, sips don’t.
• Whatever you purchase from a street vendor has fewer calories than the same item consumed at home.
• The calories in hard candy or gum are too minuscule to bother with. Eat as much as you want.
• Whatever you eat that was prepared by your child (no matter how old the child) does not have calories.
• Neatness cancels calories. If you take an extra bit of cake to even off the slice, those calories do not exist. Ditto for evening off a pint of ice cream.
• Anything you cook yourself has reduced calories because of the huge amount of energy you expended preparing it. - Judith H. Dobrzynski in New York Times

Reader’s Digest, April, 1997, p. 146