I came up with his analogy in part due to the similarity of my credit card addiction and carb addiction. I've been credit card free for almost 6 month now but before that, I swore to lay off of the cards but ended up cheating thinking, "just one charge won't hurt, I'll just pay it off by end of the month". That lead me to a "credit card binge" and I had to finally cut off of them off, even a low interest rate card that I kept as an emergency (it's now replaced by an emergency fund). It's similar to people who think that "just one bite" won't hurt. There are people who can stop at one bite, but I don't think that most can.

I believe CNN did a poll on the New Year's resolutions in January, and found that Americans rated improving financial health to be more important than improving physical health. With the saving rate being negative now (first time since the Great Depression) Americans failed miserably in improving financial health and I'm not surprised that physical health department is going downwards since the most cannot meet the first goal.

Unfortunately, our friends in Canada seem to be heading in the same direction since their savings rate is at 0%, and their diet is becoming more "Americanized".