Valentine's Day, Meltdown Style!

T minues two days and counting. It's Valentine's Day and amour is in the air, everywhere. This zine is devoted to help you enjoy the well-deserved sybaritic pleasures of Valentine's Day without destroying your goal of shedding those excess holiday pounds to get ready for bathing suit season. With El Nino upon us, that day of reckoning will be here even sooner. 

For the curious, Valentine, a single priest, was a champion of love and marriage. In the third century A.D. the Roman emperor had him beheaded for conducting marriage ceremonies which the government had outlawed. Valentine lost his head on February 14. 

Centuries later, the Romans began a cruel ritual in their conquered territories. The soldiers put the names of the area's adolescent girls in a box every February 14. Each Roman soldier drew a name. The young woman selected had no choice but to service the gentleman until the next year's drawing (unless her father and brothers managed to overthrow the conquerors.) These "tickets" were called Valentines. 

Thankfully, the tenor of Valentine's Day has changed. Today, Valentine's Day rituals center around food. Heart shaped boxes of chocolates will disappear from retailers shelves in honor of the big day. Try to get a restaurant reservation at this late date! It's virtually impossible to diet on Valentine's Day. 

So, Meltdown rule #1 is: Don't. Splurge! Cheating is integral to the Meltdown weight loss plan. Our research has shown that if you cheat every fourth day you will not derail your weight loss success. In fact, I encourage cheating because it makes toeing the line the other three days sooooo much easier. Savoring a contraband substance on Valentine's Day should encourage you to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables along with your lean protein on Sunday. So, just do it! 

However, Meltdown defines cheating as crossing the line in moderation. It doesn't mean inhaling the whole cake. If you are going to share a bottle of wine with your beloved over dinner, you'll have to pass on dessert. If you've been drooling over that chocolate mousse torte you saw on the dessert cart, order a piece of fresh fish sans sauce as your entree. 

After dinner, the menu usually calls for love. Unfortunately for many women, the sex drive just isn't there. That's especially true for perimenopausal women, those females ages 35 to 52. Once a woman celebrates his 35th birthday, her body slowly begins to get ready for the cessation of menstruation. The cumulative effects become ever more noticeable as the female reaches her late 40's. 

Hormone levels taper off, for one. This includes the hormone testosterone, which controls libido levels in both men and women. (Men make testosterone in their testes; women manufacture it in their adrenal glands.) That's why women are a lot more interested in sex at 29 than 49. 

Fortunately, this is a very easy problem to fix. Just train your body to make more! Meltdown offers two nutritional supplements which address the testosterone problem. 

The first product is Perform. Perform is a mixture of wild oats (avena sativa), nettles (a member of the artichoke family) and saw palmetto, a swamp plant. These natural substances encourage the adrenal glands in females and the testes in men to produce more testosterone. More testosterone = more sex drive. 

This product is a nutriceutical spray. You simply spray two spritzes on your tongue and take a deep breath. The capillaries in your cheek absorb the spray, which is directed to the pumping side of your heart. It will be coursing through your bloodstream in 60 seconds, literally. 

The second product is called Adreno NSF and its goal is to stimulate your adrenal glands. If your sex drive is flagging, you can bet your adrenal function is low. Guess what else that means? Your metabolism is slow, too. Adreno NSF will help you "get hotter," metabolically and sexually. 

So now you have the tools to have a divine Valentine's Day. Now if I could only get a date !