Every day I wake up starts the first day of my diet. What I did yesterday doesn’t matter so much as it set up any success I will work toward today. Today could be the day I eat well and make some more progress toward getting back to my all-time lowest weight, or it can be the day I throw away any progress I’ve made and eat whatever I want. The point is, where you are today is a product of the work you’ve done to this point, but it doesn’t determine where you will be tomorrow: today does that.

I find this to be helpful to my mindset literally every day. I make the day, good or bad. I make decisions, good or bad. I will determine how much success I will realize, or how much failure I will experience all based on decisions I make throughout the day. I choose, the majority of the time, to succeed and to make progress. At a minimum, I don’t want to back-track.

Most days, I succeed. Some days, I fail.

I don’t dwell on the days I fail. I take stock of what didn’t work, I try to find what did, and move forward with the lessons learned.

My point in this is don’t beat yourself up for yesterday or last week or last month. Hell, definitely don’t beat yourself up about the times you’ve failed sticking with a diet in the past. Learn from those mistakes, feed upon the successes and what worked, make a new plan, and execute it.

Today is the first day of my diet. Yesterday is gone and done. I’ve set myself up for success; it would be a shame to lose that momentum.