Excuses, Excuses Are you an expert at finding reasons to fudge the diet guidelines? That puts you in the company of a large percentage of dieters. There's always a good excuse for eating a candy bar just this once, or for piling up the pork loin so it overflows the plate, or for going with white rice instead of brown. You're in a hurry, the pork would have been wasted, the store was out of brown rice, and so on. Excuses sabotage your diet. It's important that you learn to recognize when you're making them, and steer yourself off that path immediately. Get a piece of paper and a pen and write down all the excuses you use to eat what you shouldn't. Keep the paper and pen handy because you'll surely come up with new ones as the days go by. Then, alongside each excuse, list a way to address it that makes sense for the way you live. If your excuse for eating a toaster waffle in the morning instead of the prescribed Sonoma Diet breakfast is that you don't have time, write next to that excuse, "Get up 15 minutes earlier." If your excuse for adding sugar to your coffee is "That's what I'm used to," write down "Get used to artificial sweetener or unsweetened coffee." True, writing down solutions is no guarantee you'll carry them out. But when you see in black and white how easy it can be to overcome your excuses, the solutions will be harder to ignore. Try it. Members Get More! Sign Up Now!