We hit a plateau and no matter which way we turn or what strategies we use, the scale refuses to budge. For those days that threaten our best laid plans, we need our own diet cheat codes.

We weight watchers are so gullible, so naive, so desperate for relief from the drudgery and boring routine of a diet, that we clutch at any straw that promises an interruption to our misery.

Admit it, the only reason we crave recipes is to spice something up, to increase our pleasure and make the whole dieting task less painful. We can eat food plain without any fancy recipes but that would be no fun.

Approaching our weight loss efforts with a bettor's attitude, we're going to pick four sure winners in the dieting game. To improve our chances, we going to "box" our choices, meaning that they can finish in any order as long as our picks run first, second, third, and fourth.

What did our cavemen forbears bequeath as their legacy? Underfed and overactive, they willed us a body that still thinks we dwell in the primordial forest. Suddenly cut back on our intake of food and the alert is sounded through the nervous system and organs of our prehistoric physiology. "Famine coming, famine coming" our bodies shriek and immediately our metabolism slows to a crawl.

Before you run off, filled with enthusiasm for your latest, greatest, and final (you swear) weight control plans, slow down and take the time to operationalize your goals and the likelihood of your success will increase exponentially.

Where did we get the idea that bigger is better? Is it the national legacy of the depression when we swore we'd never "do without" again? Is it the speed and stress of our competitive lives that logically leads to our attacking our food with the same disregard for restraint we show in business?

We all encounter those hosts and hostesses who feel it is their duty to make us eat whatever their specialty is and generate a sense of guilt if we do not flatter their creation by stuffing ourselves with it, regardless of our weight control plans and weight loss goals.

The innocuous potato, relatively low in calories and packing its fair share of vitamins and minerals, has been transformed into a culinary weapon of mass destruction. Disfigured by saturated fat into a caloric and artery-hardening horror, the French fry may be the deadliest peril we face on a daily basis.

If we women could only learn to look at ourselves as uncritically as men do! We look in a full length mirror and instead of appreciating our assets, we groan with horror at our shortcomings.