I ate too much at a party -- again. What can I do about it?

I'm typing this post the morning after a dinner party with two of my closest girlfriends. As you might imagine, we had a great time together. Today, however, I'm suffering the consequences of feasting like a half-starved medieval peasant. And believe me, I was not half-starved, nor do I look it. Thank goodness foodie souls of self control like Mireille Giuliano -- the wise and witty woman behind French Women Don't Get Fat -- can't hear me or see me now!

Slight hangover? Tick. Overeater's remorse? Tick. In whose world is it okay to treat food, my mental disciplinarian asks me severely, as if it were a cure-all? What am I doing eating with abandon whenever the social opportunity arises? Is it not possible for me to host or attend dinner parties without spending the next 48 hours in purgatory, followed by a week of flawless behaviour to erase the effects of my rampage? (This math doesn't work anymore, by the way, since I have the great good luck to be eating with friends and family more often than once a week.)

So I made a muck of things last night. What can I do about? And if you've got the same problem, what can you do about it?

Admit that you ate more than you wanted to, then move on. You've just eaten enough to feed a sumo wrestler? It may not be easy, but you need to let go of it. Sure, it wasn't a great decision, and it moved you away from your goal of health and well-being, but it's not the end of the world. It's in the past now, and no matter how long and hard you beat yourself up for it, you won't be able to time travel back to change it. Not anytime soon, anyway. But you have the present with and the future ahead of you, and you can make better decisions starting now.

Try again, right away. And be kind to yourself. Instead of slouching through the day wrapped in a blanket of self-pity or stomping about your business with a storm cloud over your head, treat yourself and your near and dear ones with love. Eat a healthy breakfast. Get to that yoga class, or go for a walk or a run. At work, focus on moving your team's project ahead, not what you didn't do right last night.

Get to know your triggers, then come up with strategies for avoiding them in the future. (Caveat: You may need to come back to this step over and over again until you fill your tool kit with tricks that work.) Here are a few of my triggers:

• Post-party cleanup
• Tiredness
• Hunger
• Alcohol

In my next post, I'll share some of the strategies that work for me.