We're in the final stretch! With just one more week until the big day, we have brought you a round-up of our newest waist-watching tips. Making these changes and substitutions in your holiday dining will go a long way in helping you have a healthier season. Plus, when you find out how easy these tactics are, why not make them permanent changes? These are the kinds of changes we can stick to, and if we do, we'll reap significant results in the long run. Good luck and happy holidays!

You're running late, flying out the door. You might skip breakfast: the cereal box is empty, and the milk's gone sour. Forget taking lunch: there's peanut butter in the jar, but you are out of bread. Exercise before work? You've got to be kidding. It's a typical hectic morning, at the beginning of a typical jam-packed day. What happened to those resolutions to exercise more, eat healthier, lose weight? It's easy for them to get lost in the daily shuffle.

In a perfect world, we could accomplish all this by the time our busy day starts:

• Jump out of bed by 6:30 (or earlier).
• Get a good chunk of exercise, 20 minutes or more.
• Eat a satisfying but healthy breakfast: fresh fruit, high-fiber cereal, low-fat milk.
• Brown-bag a wholesome lunch: more fresh fruit, low-fat yogurt, whole-wheat bread, homemade vegetable soup (maybe that you prepared last night).

Americans trying to lose weight have plenty of company. According to a 1995 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), tens of millions of Americans are dieting at any given time, spending more than $33 billion yearly on weight-reduction products, such as diet foods and drinks.

Yet, studies over the last two decades by the National Center for Health Statistics show that obesity in the United States is actually on the rise. Today, approximately 35 percent of women and 31 percent of men age 20 and older are considered obese, up from approximately 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively, in 1980.

The words obesity and overweight are generally used interchangeably. However, according to the IOM report, their technical meanings are not identical. Overweight refers to an excess of body weight that includes all tissues, such as fat, bone and muscle. Obesity refers specifically to an excess of body fat. It is possible to be overweight without being obese, as in the case of a body builder who has a substantial amount of muscle mass. It is possible to be obese without being overweight, as in the case of a very sedentary person who is within the desirable weight range but who nevertheless has an excess of body fat. However, most overweight people are also obese and vice versa. Men with more than 25 percent and women with more than 30 percent body fat are considered obese.