I was having a funny discussion with my mom a week or 2 ago. She recently lost about 35 lbs over the course of 4 months. She had already been exercising every morning and staying active but the weight just wasn't coming off. She went to the Dr and found out she was pre-diabetic, and he told her she had to lose 20lbs.
Rather than scoff my mom made some tweaks to her diet and the weight just melted off. Listening to what she did, I suspect she had a gluten allergy or sensitivity of some kind, so when she cut the grains, it worked for her.
Anyway, that's not the funny part. One thing she did not give up was her nightly glass of wine, so she tailored her calories per day around that.
The main problem I see in "dieting", is that a lot of them aren't really sustainable. I see people posting here on dietbet and other places like MFP forums and such that they're completely cutting alcohol and any kind of junk out of their diets. Holy cow, I don't know about the rest of you, but there is no way I could permanently cut booze from my life. Same goes with the occasional junk food. If I cut those things out, drop to my goal weight, the pounds will just come right back when I start adding them back in. So why not do what my mom did and work with my love of delicious craft brews? I've cut back, but in no way am I eliminating.
Ok, we still haven't gotten to the actual funny part yet. It actually probably isn't funny to most, but it was between us. I always hear, once you cut certain foods from your life (pizza, fast food, etc), and you give into a craving and eat said food, you realize that this food was not as good as you remembered it being. That is soooo not true in my case. I had a couple McDonald's cheese burgers last week after a few without having them, and they were heavenly. Monday we had pizza, and it was freakin delicious. My mom agrees, and we had a chuckle over that.
So I'm not going to stress about the occasional "bad" day, and I'm not going to feel bad when I have a couple beers on Saturday from our favorite brewpub, but maybe I'll have the soup and salad instead of the burger to go with now. The weight is coming off, so I think I'm doing something right :)