The Health Journal column in the Wall Street Journal (July 1, 2008) pointed up the ongoing controversy about the advice we've heard so often: Drink eight 8 oz glasses of water a day—to speed weight loss, and for overall optimal health.

Among the research cited by the WSJ column was Dr. Heinz Valtin's (Dartmouth Medical School) 2002 review of studies on drinking water in the American Journal of Physiology. Dr. Valtin found that there was no concrete scientific evidence to prove that 8 glasses a day achieves either of the above-mentioned results.

One thing experts do agree on though, according to the Health Journal column, is that individuals need different amounts of water depending on the physical activity they are engaged in. For example, it goes without saying that if you are exercising, you'll need to drink more water than if you are sitting at your desk doing paperwork.

Weighing in with a different slant, Weight Watchers recommends that dieters drink 6 glasses of water a day, specifically to take the place of snacking. Others in the dieting field also think that drinking water helps people feel full. And some people just seem to feel better when they drink more water.

Try this
What about you? What evidence do you have that drinking a certain amount of water each day leads to speedier weight loss or contributes to your overall health? Do some research (on yourself) and see the outcome. Does it match the skeptics or the converted?

You had it right when you got back on again after going off your weight-loss plan. You kept your slips as slips. Once you didn't get back on your weight-loss plan, you had what clinically is called a relapse. In other words, you went back to your old eating habits.

Don't give up. Slips, even relapses, believe it or not, provide a great opportunity for developing better dieting skills. We are taking the broad view of weight loss when we say this, where losing the weight is not simply about following a food plan, but a way of changing a lot about yourself as well.

What are these new skills that you can learn from falling off your dieting plan? They are the skills that everyone who is trying to break from an unwanted habit has to learn. In a nutshell, they are recognizing high risk emotional situations and getting yourself ready to safely negotiate them. In other words, you can learn how to cope with the feelings and thoughts that certain social and personal situations bring up for you.

Is this what you were up against when you kept seesawing, going on and off your dieting? What did you have to cope with that was throwing you off balance? Was it one thing or many? Can you list these triggers for your dieting slips? And what was it finally that threw you off your weight loss plan and kept you off? Was it the same old thing, or something new? It's important to find the answers. You need to be able to identify and understand high risk situations.

Once you discover the triggers, you can then see if you have the skill it takes to cope with these triggers. If not, you'll need to develop the skill. This takes time, so it may be best to avoid these triggers until you are better prepared to deal with them.

Take the case of a woman who repeatedly eats snack food off her weight loss plan at night. Is there something about nighttime that's a trigger for her? Or is it the end of another long day where she's been under the strain of having to prove herself over and over? Does she then revive herself with emotional eating? Unless she can manage this high risk state of affairs, she is fated to being out of control, having unwanted dieting slips, and perhaps to eventual relapse into old pre-dieting patterns.

So take heed. Discover what's up and then do something about it. If you need weight-loss support, go right to the Find Your Issues link below. You'll find plenty of weight-loss help and dieting information. There is a lot to read about slips, relapse, high risk situations, and what to do about all of them.

The big goal is to lose the weight, so you start dieting. What will get you to achieve that big goal is not just the decision to start dieting. It is a set of smaller decisions that will add up and translate into weight-loss success. Taken separately, they may seem inconsequential. But put them together, and they will result in high performance dieting.

Here is a list of decisions you can make that will greatly strengthen your dieting.

1. When I have too much to do, I’ll ask for help.
   This is a problem for many women when life gets crazy. If things get too much for you, delegate responsibility instead of turning to food.
    
2. I will spend more time with people who are supportive.
   A supportive network is a big factor in helping people who want to change.
    
3. I will clean out the pantry of my high risk foods.
   Not tempting yourself is such an easy thing, but it makes it so much more likely that you’ll stick to your plan.
    
4. I will keep my diet foods on hand.
   This is a must. Have the right things to eat all ready for you.
    
5. I will remind people close to me about what I’m trying to do.
   Making your intention to lose the weight public gives it more power, more substance, and makes it harder for you to go back on your word.
    
6. I will spend less time with people who contribute to my overeating.
   Don’t hang out with friends who are stuck in their weight problems and bad eating habits―it will hinder you.
    
7. I will not hang around the kitchen in between meal and snack times.
   So simple, yet important. Get away from the food and you’ll up your chances of not blowing it.
    
8. I will reward myself for sticking to my diet.
   Rewarding yourself for steps you take toward your goal is imperative. Positive reinforcement will keep you going.
    
9. I will not give up when my weight reaches a plateau point.
   Dieting plateaus are necessary and need to be accepted. Decide to ride them out.
    
10. When I know there is a special eating situation coming up, I’ll make a plan to deal with it.
    Being prepared is key in a situation that may be hard for you. Usually it doesn’t take much, just some minor planning beforehand.
     
11. I will not be in a rush to lose the weight.
    Relax, be patient. Expecting to lose all the weight by a certain time will throw you off course.
     
12. I’ll keep in mind that no one is perfect.
    You’ll need to accept cheating as a part of dieting. The trick is not to punish yourself, but to pick yourself up and go on.
     
13. I will pay close attention to how much better I feel not overeating.
    Take note of how you feel eating less and losing the weight. The positives will keep you motivated.
     
14. I will not eat secretly.
    Keeping your eating a secret perpetuates dieting failure. Eat out in the open. The more up front you can be about it, the better.
     
15. I will act in ways that make me feel good about myself.
    Your self-esteem definitely affects your dieting. Do things you can feel proud of.
     

Decisions such as these are critical when tackling the problem of staying on a diet and losing the weight. As you can see, some of these decisions have to do directly with eating and some do not. Taking a new attitude with regard to these kinds of issues is what it’s all about. There may be other decisions you wish to add, and some of those listed here may not relate to you, but you get the idea.

There is no magic solution to losing the weight. There is no quick solution to dieting success. Losing the weight and keeping it off requires small steps, little changes in your thinking and your behavior. That is what will make your dieting effort different from previous attempts where you might have failed.

So, here’s to your dieting and all the little decisions that will insure your ability to do it.

Research on long-term, successful weight-loss maintainers paints a very different picture. Do you qualify as a successful, long-term maintainer? If so, it's clear that people who maintain a weight loss for two years are much more successful at staying at their ideal body weight for good.

If you've come as far as you have in successfully maintaining your weight loss, you've changed your behavior a lot. Overeating and engaging in those behaviors that kept you overweight probably used to be automatic for you. In order to maintain your weight-loss success for so long, you must have activated new automatic settings in yourself. The things that are automatic to you now are things that are keeping you right at your weight-loss goal. That's a very good place to be. When you reach this stage of weight control, you should have every confidence about staying there.

Keep the faith.

If you set your goal at learning how to do something rather than setting a goal of performing well, you are likely to be have more weight-loss success.

There's a way to translate this idea into an effective weight-loss plan. You could set your weight-loss goal as this: "I will diet and lose 20 lbs." Or—you could say this to yourself: "I will figure out what things throw me off my diet, and then learn how to deal with those things differently."

The second goal, the learning goal, is more likely to bring you the weight-loss success you are after.