Can Valentine's Day be healthy ... and sexy? Tips for a healthier holiday.(Marilu: eye-opening discoveries on health and fitness)

I always think of February as official sweetheart's month because of Valentine's Day. It's the perfect opportunity to tell the person you love exactly how you feel. Eve always been a little bit boy-crazy, so, for me, February 14 is more important than my birth-day. My tradition goes way back to second grade, when I gave Tommy Donovan a heart-shaped box of chocolates to leave no doubt that he was the one. And it worked! He told me that I was nice and walked me home from school that day. (That's pretty much a long-term relationship in second grade terms.)

I have taken advantage of more than 40 Valentine's Days since (and a few more Tommy Donovans), but Eve learned to swap the chocolates with smarter, healthier, more direct artillery, such as lingerie.

Most adults, however, are still clinging to that "sweets-for-my-sweet" mentality on this holiday. Perhaps the biggest misconception is that gifts for your valentine should focus on naughty dietary indulgences such as calorie-rich dinners, chocolates and alcohol. We tend to connect bad food and bad habits with romance and sex. And that's fine if what you really care about are candy, booze and cheese fondue. In reality, those wicked treats clash with activities under the sheets. How enthusiastic are you for being intimate when you're bloated, tired, wired or crashing from a sugar high? Being cranky doesn't jibe with hanky panky. (I've got a million of 'em!)

We're always bombarded with images from magazines of what looks cool and sexy. We see people smoking cigarettes and drinking. Ads work hard to make things like smoking and drinking look sexy. What else do these vices have to attract you? It's hard to push a product based on its harmful physical and emotional effects, so why not link it to a sexy image? This is the reason we connect smoking, drinking and bad food with sexiness.

So, perhaps you skip the romance on Valentine's night because you're too full, tired, gassy-or you just lose the mood. You wake up the morning of the 15th with an upset stomach that's been gurgling all night from the combination of excess sugar, alcohol and too much dairy.

But instead of feeling bad about missing a night of passion, you're actually in search of more sugar because you've already hopped aboard "the sugar treadmill." If you had the willpower to say, "OK, I'm going to indulge just this one day and then stop," that would be flue. But you can't stop, can you? You've already activated all those pleasure pathways in your brain that are addicted to sugar. Those chubby little Umpah Loompahs are already partying big time at your synapses, and there's no stopping them.

You just have to keep that huge box of Godiva chocolates your sweetie gave you (to show how much he "loves" you) around for a couple more days, until every piece is gone. And right after you've finished it, you're out searching for another box.