Ladies, if you could please put down that eggnog and second slice of fruitcake for just one moment, I have some exciting news for you:

    Self Magazine has named Orange County the “Most Fit” region in the nation on the 2007 list of the “Best Places for Women.”

    How about that? I just want to thank all those energetic, self-sacrificing gals out there – sisters united – who got up at the crack of dawn to sweat it out at boot camp, and ran 2 miles a day on their treadmill and fought rush-hour traffic to get to their evening aerobics classes on time (sorry I cut you off!) . . . so I didn’t have to. See? It doesn’t matter that I have been a real sloth this last year, sitting mostly on my butt in front of a computer because you’ve worked hard enough for all of us sloths – about 1.5 hours a week dedicated to pure exercise, says the study -- to make Orange County so terrifically toned.

    Researchers credit year-round beach visits as the reason we are so motivated to stay fit. I think it’s just our morbid fear of growing old. Either way, we were miles of bike trails ahead of Huntington, West Virginia, voted the least fit region in the nation.

    To read the survey in more detail, log on to self.com

    And who eats fruitcake anymore, anyway??