After looking in the mirror one day, Stella decided that she didn't like what she saw, and we're not talking about gray hair here. 

Stella did all the right things at the beginning of her diet.  She found a diet plan to suit her current lifestyle, one that allowed for favorite snacks, one with enough calorie and fat allowances that she didn't feel deprived by eating less, and a diet plan that incorporated a moderate amount of aerobic activity.

Stella did fantastic on her diet plan!  .....until the holiday rolled around. Tossing her diet to the wind, she woofed up three large chunks of Aunt Martha's famous pumpkin cheesecake.  Since she had already 'goofed' she continued to blow with the direction of the wind during lunch and dinner, including all day snacking.

She was so full of food that she thought she might explode, but even so, it was good to feel full again.  She promised herself that come morning, she would jump right back on her diet plan.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  Blame those tempting leftovers, on tiredness over enjoying too much happy-time, or the fact that Stella was simply sick of dieting, nonetheless, her diet ended.  And she had done so well, losing half of the weight that she needed to ditch.

So what went wrong with Stella's diet plan?

Stella left out one of the most important parts of a diet plan - a BACKUP diet plan.  Just like your computer, if your hard drive bombs out, unless you have a backup of your files, all is lost.  And it's the same way when dieting.

Another element that would have helped Stella would have been incorporating satisfying foods into her diet plan - foods that tend to stick around for a long time so that she didn't feel deprived or hungry.  Examples of such foods include: beans and oatmeal.