First, I ask myself if I really regret it. Because there are pros and cons to every choice. The right choice at a given time is not necessarily the obvious diet choice. I'm not doing penance, and life & happiness can't be saved up for tomorrow.

If I do regret the choice, I think about what I learned from it, so that next time, I don't want to make the same choice (or at least, it gets easier), rather than feeling deprived and forcing myself to knuckle down to something I'm not fully on board with.

Either way, the next thing I say to myself is just to continue on with the next choice.

I love the stairs analogy, for one. And then my usual self-talk goes like this:

I messed up a little just now. I ate something I shouldn't have. But that's in the past, now. There is no way I can go back and un-eat it. It was a step backwards along this path, for sure. But is continuing to step backwards going to get me toward my goal? Hells no. Think of it this way, self - you've already turned 21, 22, and 23 while being overweight and hating it. You can't change that. But you're going to turn 24, 25, 26 and beyond, whether or not you lose the weight. Would you rather look back and say, I was fat until I was 25? 30? You can't change the past - but you can create, right now, the past that you're going to have to look back at in a few years. Don't let one misstep extend this fat-time any longer than you have to.

My new mantra?...perhaps!

I am with those who don't feel guilty. Like Mandalinn says, I may say to myself "Oh, well" but that's about it. Life goes on. I am not dieting as strictly as most people here. I am alive only once, and if I want to have a pizza, I will have a pizza. I am trying to limit my "not so good" choices but really, to me it is not about red tag popping up at anything at the grocery store saying "You can't have that", "You can't have that, either", etc. I am in not perfect and quite frankly, I don't try to be. I live my life as best as I can without guilt and shame - they just not part of my "vocabulary". I try to see the bigger picture.

If I eat something I didn't plan for and I feel that "oh well screw it" attitude coming on, I just stop and ask myself, "will another (insert food item) make this situation better, or worse?"

I really just don't get down on myself about going off plan when it happens. I like the stairs analogy as well.

When you are driving down the road, and you make a mistake and drive off the shoulder a bit, what do you do? Hopefully, you bring the car back into the lane and keep driving. You don't drive over the cliff. I think I am like many people with "food issues" in that I frequently use a little swerve as an excuse to drive over the cliff. No guilt with car swerving; no guilt with food swerving. Stop driving over the cliff!

First thing I do when I fall off the wagon, is to look at how I fell. Did I fall by going for the slice of cheesecake as dessert? Or did I fall by sitting in front of the TV with the handful of of potato chips? If it's the cheesecake, then no, I do not feel guilty. It was a choice that I made, and like a previous poster said, I did not get fat because of one dessert. If it's the potato chips, then yes, I do feel guilty because behavior like that IS what got me fat.

I am proud of myself when it happens. Strange but true. I decided to look at as how are you going to handle these situations during maintenance. Someone left us a box of chocolates as a thankyou- the boys opened them and low and behold there were chocolate covered caramels in the box- my favorite. I tried to control myself then decided to eat one- put the box back and then decided what the heck I am going to eat two because I will just go back and eat another later. I started to feel guilty and then I thought "are you going to avoid chocolate covered caramels for the rest of your life?" No that is not realistic. How do you manage it at maintenance? How do "regular people" manage it? I journaled that I ate it, I compensated by cutting back a little bit on other calories during the day (cut out 1 yogurt) and did an extra 30 min on the recumbent bike. So I looked at it as preparation for how I am going to handle the rest of my life.

As someone said to me, "Stop being so mean to yourself."

If it's really serious, I'll "debate" myself. I'll write down the things I'm thinking and then write down an argument for each thing.

When I go off plan I make myself weigh in the next day and that shocks me enough! I do more exercise and fill up on salads and veggies and it soon comes off again but it sure does make me feel bad for a while, especially seeing the scale go up.