When most people diet, they take a fairly all or nothing approach. They expect 100% perfection and any slip up, no matter how minor, tends to derail their dieting efforts. Of course, the statistics show that most people will fail on a diet, regaining all of the lost weight and frequently more. That alone suggests that the type of extreme (let’s call it rigid) approach to dieting does more harm than good. But research also suggests that flexible dieters, folks who take a more relaxed approach to their eating habits tend to weigh less and have less binge eating episodes; they do better in the long run. A Guide to Flexible Dieting explains how the types of typical extremist approaches to losing weight do more harm than good. It explains how being more flexible, and how deliberately breaking your diet, can actually make it work more effectively in the long run. A Guide to Flexible Dieting is not a diet book in the typical sense. Rather, it deals with some behavioral strategies that can help make your diet work more effectively.