Tip

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=460><TBODY><TR><TD align=left>Made a Mistake? Make a YOU-Turn</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Have you enjoyed a few forkfuls of a coworker's cake or picked at your friend's fries? That's OK.

You're going to make wrong turns. You're going to be tempted by not-so-good-for-YOU foods. Does that mean you should steer off the dietary cliff and fall into the fatty crevasse of destructive eating? Of course not. Instead of falling into a defeatist mentality by drop-kicking healthy eating the moment you make one bad choice, confront it. How? By repeating the YOU Diet Mantra:

"At the next available moment, make an authorized YOU-turn."

Say it three times, put down the tub of cookie dough, and get back on the right road.

More: What kills any regimen of healthy eating isn't the occasional brownie or slice of pizza; it's the cascade of behavior that happens after the initial indulgence. Use the YOU Diet Mantra to steer yourself back -- and understand that you can make mistakes, but that you can correct them with some nonjudgmental coaxing. Why does it work?

• It gives you a mental crutch to carry when you're faced with difficult eating situations.
  
• It reminds you to be confident, to be positive, to know that the harm isn't in the first mistake, it's in not figuring out how to deal with it.

Reference: YOU: On a Diet. Roizen, M. F., Oz, M. C., New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.