It’s very important that you begin your healthier lifestyle with an understanding that there will be days when you will stray from healthy eating and exercising. You will not be perfect in your diet and exercise program, nor should you be. Try this experiment: Being rigid is similar to holding your breath, keep holding it, don’t blow it out yet, hold it, okay, now blow it out. You probably blew it out with a lot of force because you held it for longer than you felt comfortable. Rigid dieting and exercise are like a tightly wound spring that eventually has to release.

Before you begin a diet and exercise program, tell yourself that no matter what happens, rather than abandoning your new lifestyle, you’ll resume your healthy habits as soon as you can. You do not have to wait until the following Monday, the first day of the next month or next year. You don’t even have to wait until the next day; start again with your next meal. You always have a fresh start to get back on track with your healthy habits.

It is equally important that you feel confident, not guilty, about doing so. Whatever the temptation or obstacle is, keep in mind that it’s not wrong or bad to eat fattening foods once in a while or to miss a workout. Just remember to resume your healthy lifestyle as soon as possible afterwards. If you keep moving forward and you don’t let guilt and discouragement stop your program all together, you’ll eventually have improved eating and exercise habits - with great results and success in your weight loss and health goals.

With this approach, there is no such thing as "cheating." When we feel we are cheating, we often punish ourselves; we make ourselves feel guilty, frustrated and defeated. We also get into the perfectionist thinking. We can’t have this or that ever again and if we stray, then we’ve blown it. Replacing the negative concept of cheating with the idea of "straying temporarily from healthy habits" takes away the all-or-nothing emphasis of right and wrong. If you treat every deviation from your plan as a failure, you won’t get very far. Substituting the idea of a brief straying away from your plan instead of feeling guilty, and learning to return more and more quickly to healthier habits, is more realistic. It’s also easier and more enjoyable - today and in the long-run.

If you do anything in an all or nothing mode, you don’t practice moderation and balance. Healthy habits of diet and fitness are most success when you don’t think of them as success or failure. It is progress and not perfection. Practice healthy habits more times than you don’t. Think in terms of the 80/20 guidelines. 80% of the time, you eat according to your healthy nutritional program and are active; 20% of the time, you relax your guidelines. This allows for balance and living your life in a healthy, easier mode of moderation.