Forget eating perfectly. Embrace your mistakes.

I love Bridget Jones's Diary. The narrator is so feisty, funny, and frank. She's endearingly imperfect with a strong dash of sass. The first chapter, January -- An Exceptionally Bad Start, simultaneously cracks me up and sends shivers of uncomfortable recognition down my spine. That list of hers, minus the alcohol, looks a lot like what I might have eaten regularly in the old days.

Fortunately, around the time I decided to kick binge eating, I had a realization that slowly changed my food journal from Jonesian to cheering. As it turns out, the main reason I had such a lack of restraint was my guiding principle. It was, Eat perfectly.

Perhaps you're familiar with this mantra. It involves dining on whatever you consider to be healthy, morning, noon and night, even when out with your friends, in the middle of winter, when you're starving, or plain sick and tired of the monotony of no-salt, no-butter, no-cheese, no-chocolate meals. And when you give in to the voice in your head whispering "Just have one (insert your forbidden food of choice)," which you invariably will when you're hungry, tired or bored enough, you say to yourself, "That's it. I've blown it. Now, I'm going to eat as much of the good stuff as I can, consequences be damned. I'll get back on track tomorrow."

In my case, when tomorrow came, I would wake up stuffed, mournful and ill-tempered. One lapse in self control would lead to at least another day's worth of unbalanced eating as I gave myself the gears for being such a glutton and moped about my expanding waistline. Sometimes, the episode would trigger weeks' worth of nutritional carnage, particularly when I thought about how little I wanted to go back to a lifetime's worth of bland and boring food.

So, what did I realize, and how can it help you? Just this. Eat perfectly is a terrible mantra. It's utterly unrealistic. No one eats perfectly all the time. No matter how good your eating habits, you are still going to make nutritional choices you wish you hadn't. It's natural, normal, and completely human. Since this is the case, why not accept it? Forget eating perfectly. Instead, aspire to eat well, and turn your nutritional mistakes into learning opportunities.

The next time you have a minor food fiasco, have a chat with yourself. What did you do that you wish you hadn't? Be calm and curious. Say to yourself, "That's interesting. I wonder why I made that choice." Then, think about the choice you wish you'd made instead. What could you do next time to act and eat in a way that will keep you healthy and happy?