Many dieters have an interesting sabotaging thought: "Because I wasn't perfect on my diet just now (i.e., because I just cheated), I may as well give up (and start again tomorrow)." It's a cleverly hidden excuse.

Dieters who have read The Beck Diet Solution (or one of the other books) may also have a sabotaging thought about the program contained in it. "Since I'm not following the program perfectly, I may as well stop following it altogether."

But these ideas really don't make sense. After all, if you found you had made a mistake in balancing your checkbook, would you stop balancing it at all? If you forgot to call a family member on his birthday, would you not call at all? In what other context of life would you postpone or even abandon a goal that's important to you, just because you made a mistake?

I think what's really going on with dieters, when they eat something they shouldn't, is the idea, "I don't want to hold myself in check. I want to give myself permission to continue to eat." After all, dieters know that there is a huge difference between eating an unplanned piece of cake (which is maybe 350 calories that won't even show up on the scale in a few days) and eating the cake and ice cream and pretzels and chips and cookies-and anything else they desire-and starting again (at best) the next day. Just think, if every time in the past when you made a mistake, you limited it to one piece. You wouldn't still be struggling with your weight after all these years.