Staying focused while dieting

1. Find some new coping techniques. Seriously.
2. Don't let yourself get hungry.
3. Don't buy junk food. Not even snack sized junk food.
4. Make exercise obligatory. "I'll visit the gym" or "I'll go running" is too amorphous and won't cut it. Sign up for a weekly dance class. If you have to pay for the classes, even better.
5. Seriously, make your meals ahead of time; don't leave your diet up to fate.
6. Make yourself 100 calorie snacks. Good ideas: cheese stick, banana, apple, yogurt, 100 calories of nuts, 100 calories of those little flavored rice cakes. Let yourself indulge in multiple of these snacks if you get hungry.
7. Focus on the stuff you did right. "Yeah I ate too much dinner, but I didn't eat dessert." "Yeah I had more carbs than veggies today, but I did my exercises that I really, really, really didn't want to do."
8. Planned candy. I let myself have a couple pieces of chocolate per day. This takes care of my sugar cravings while keeping the chaos at bay. This way I don't get so deprived that I binge, and I also don't feel guilty for eating candy because it's *planned*.