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We think that everybody loves a good buffet. Unfortunately, most people have trouble controlling the urge to—well, basically to eat everything. Even I have a problem with buffets—I end up eating things I don't want to just because it's there. And so I'm eating waffles and the salad and the bread and the croissants and the desserts—it doesn't make any sense.Gayle King, host of Oprah's All Stars 

Dr. Oz: Buffets make it hard to do the right thing. And unfortunately, as much as I love to splurge, it's not, you know, rocket science.

What I love the most about the whole experience, is that you recognize that if you’re given the option to choose all the things that might drive you in the wrong direction, you’ll make all those wrong choices. There's no GPS that's going to point out the right ones.

Strategies to avoid stress eating at the holidays and beyond

The food you ought to eat should look the same when it comes out of the ground as when you put it in your mouth. That's what real wholesome food is about. I understand [those foods] and you will too if you think about it. And they're not involved in that buffet unless you look carefully.

The other thing is, you can never ever exercise away the food you eat by itself. It cannot be done. You'd have to exercise for 24 hours to burn off those calories. It is impossible. What you've got to do is both: Be smart and thoughtful about your exercise, and combine that with smart decisions about how you eat—and that is the marriage that makes you live a long time.

Gayle King: So, Dr. Oz, are you telling me that when I splurge—Christmas, Thanksgiving...— then if you say, "I'll just do an extra workout" or "I'll work out longer or harder," that really doesn't do any good?

Dr. Oz: It does do a lot of good. As soon as you work out, if you can work out within a couple minutes of eating—just a little bit, some simple exercises—you open up the muscles to the sugar. So the muscles, which are a metabolic furnace, take the sugar into them and they burn them off. But you'll only burn off a couple hundred calories.

Next: Why do I have a third nipple?
As a reminder, always consult your doctor for medical advice and treatment before starting any program.