"Oh, yeah," she told me. "It'll be like this for another three weeks, then it'll fall back dramatically."

Not good.

New Year's motivations are running high -- for now. The test comes in finding ways to ride that wave and push the momentum into next month. The longer you can keep up new diet and exercise behaviors, the greater the likelihood you'll lock them in as new habits for the remainder of the year.

Where diet is concerned, a few simple strategies can pay off big over time. Put these on autopilot. Make a short "to do" list if that helps, but focus your efforts on a few simple goals such as these:

* Set up an at-home salad bar. Once a week, shop for enough salad material to fix one or two big bowls you can keep in the fridge and eat throughout the week. Once you buy the ingredients, assemble the salads right away. Eat salad as a meal or on the side. The more often you add salad to your meals, the fewer calories you'll consume. Good choices: crisp, mixed green salads; marinated broccoli and cauliflower florets, carrots, and mushrooms; three bean salad; vinaigrette coleslaw; Waldorf salad made with low-fat mayo; and combinations of field greens and fruit, including pears, cranberries, dried cherries, Mandarin orange slices or chunks of pineapple.

* Serve soup. Soup has a high water content. It's filling but relatively low in calories, particularly when the soup has a broth -- rather than cream -- base. Make soup an entree for dinner at least one or two times each week. Good choices: lentil, split pea, navy bean, black bean, potato, leek, minestrone and Chinese hot and sour soup. Lower the sodium content by making your own at home. If you use canned soups, buy low-sodium varieties or add more water to thin the soup a bit to dilute the sodium.

* Make fruit easily accessible. Keep a lot in plain sight. Pile a countertop bowl high with colorful, seasonal fruits such as oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, apples and pears. If you need a snack while you're watching TV, grab a piece of fruit. On your way out of the door in the morning, grab two pieces. As the week wears on, cut up older fruit to make salad or edible garnishes. Eat a minimum of two to three pieces of fresh fruit each day.

Why does this approach work? Because the foods are familiar, they taste good, and they're colorful and appealing.

The greatest barrier to this ploy: having the food on hand. Fixing salads and soup -- if you make your own from scratch -- also takes precious time. Overcome that barrier with planning -- and determination.

For those of you who master these top three diet strategies, here are two more you can add to the list:

* Bring on the beans. Eat bean chili or beans and rice (Hoppin' John, black beans and rice, Louisiana red beans and rice) for dinner at least once a week, and take the leftovers to work for lunch.

* Cereal for breakfast. It's simple but effective. A bowl of hot or dry whole-grain cereal with skim milk or soymilk is a high fiber, nutritious and low-calorie way to start the day.

Do these things without thinking. Repeat, repeat, repeat -- all the way through January and February and until they become habits that will help sustain your health.