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In my eight years practicing medicine, I have read thousands of pages in other people’s diaries. No, my reading habits haven’t exposed me to scandalous secrets and hidden fantasies; these are food and exercise journals and I’m a diet doctor. What I have learned is that while no two people lose weight exactly the same way, most make the same handful of eating mistakes that foil their efforts. And they pay the price by experiencing frustrating weight-loss plateaus — or worse, weight gain.

To a large extent, weight loss is a numbers game. To lose 1 pound of body fat a week, you need to create a 3,500-calorie deficit. That means cutting 500 calories a day out of your diet or cutting 250 calories and then burning an extra 250 calories through exercise (or any combination totaling 500). To lose half a pound a week (still a very respectable number), you could cut 250 calories per day or diet away 125 calories and exercise off 125 more (the equivalent of a 30-minute daily walk for a 140-pound woman). And so on.

On the flip side, however, if you eat just 100 extra calories per day (one more cookie, one extra slice of bread) you will gain about 10 pounds a year. Looking at it that way, America’s “obesity crisis” becomes less of a mystery. Small changes can really add up and result in big weight loss — or, more commonly, gain.

I ask all my patients to write in their journals daily, and I review the results with them every week until weight loss is steady, and then every other week. We continue the journaling until their weight loss is consistent. If they hit a plateau, I ask them to restart the journal again so that we can identify the little mistakes that are creeping in. Here are the five most common diet slip-ups that I see:

1. YOU DRINK YOUR CALORIES. We all know that many of the beverages that we consume contain calories, but what you may not take into account is how quickly those calories add up over the course of a day, a week or a month. The two biggest culprits I see are coffee drinks and wine.

At 240 calories, a large latte (with 2 percent milk) every day adds up to 1,680 calories a week — or more than a third of a pound gained. Cutting back to a small size can save you 630 calories a week. And those two glasses of wine a night (125 calories each) add up to almost 1,800 calories a week, or about half a pound of fat if you make no other adjustments to your diet. Cut back to one glass a night or limit yourself to one or two glasses on weekends only and you could save 900–1,500 calories a week.

So just by cutting back on coffee drinks and wine you could lose almost two-thirds of a pound a week without making any other changes to your diet.

2. YOU FAIL TO WATCH DIETARY FAT. Sure, everyone knows that fat contains more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrates (more than double, for those who aren’t sure exactly how many more). However, many of us don’t take into account that small amounts of added fat throughout the day can add hundreds of calories to our daily intake.

Salads are prime offenders in this area: By the time you’ve added nuts, olives, cheese and dressing on your lunchtime lettuce, you’re probably on par with the fat calories in a cheeseburger! And while you do need healthy fats from olive oil, nuts and avocado for optimal health, it is important to watch portions very closely. Don’t double up on fats — choose a sprinkle of chopped nuts or cheese, but not both. Pay close attention to oil-based dressings. Act like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally and modify a dish as extensively as you need to in order to reduce its fat calories.

3. YOU CHOW DOWN ON “GOOD” FOODS. All foods — no matter how healthful — contain calories; you need to pay attention to portion sizes. A petite woman does not require a 5-ounce chicken breast for lunch and dinner; 2–3 ounces for lunch and 4–5 ounces for dinner is more than enough. Those extra 100–200 calories add up over time.

And just because fruit is loaded with antioxidants and fiber does not mean it is calorie-free. Fruit has about 2.5 times the calories per serving as most vegetables. So, again, if a petite woman eats a banana, a large apple and a bowl of grapes every day in addition to a balanced diet, those extra calories will contribute to slowed-down weight loss.

4. YOU TAKE TWO STEPS FORWARD — AND ONE STEP BACK. Let’s say you eat perfectly Monday through Thursday. Then the weekend comes and it’s a no-holds-barred 72-hour food frenzy. Granted, it’s difficult to be “perfect” all the time, but try to choose your indulgences wisely!

For example, on Friday night treat yourself to two glasses of wine and split a dessert with your husband on Saturday. But make smart meal choices the rest of the time (lean protein and vegetables are almost always a great option unless they’ve been buttered).

And make an effort to get more exercise on weekends. Walk for most of your errands. Build social activities around sports or workouts. Do whatever you can to burn a few more calories so that if you do indulge a little you won’t undermine all the hard work you put in during the week.

5. YOU OVERCOMPENSATE FOR EXERCISE. If you are exercising frequently, you tend to eat more regardless of hunger levels. And while it’s true that active, muscular women do need slightly more calories, it’s also easy to eat more than your level of activity warrants. In other words, you overestimate your calorie burn and underestimate your calorie consumption — and the result is stalled weight loss. After walking for 40 minutes on the treadmill, if you eat a 200-calorie nutrition bar that you normally wouldn’t have had, you probably negated the effect of your workout.

Working with my patients, I’ve noticed that women rarely are successful at losing weight from exercise alone. You need to reduce calories, too. Don’t splurge on Saturday night because you went for a long hike during the day. Treat yourself to a little something, but don’t completely wipe out the calorie deficit you created during the day!

Being a cheesecake-and-french-fry-eating couch potato may be the most obvious barrier to weight loss, but by no means the most common. As you can see from the five little mistakes above, simply being more vigilant about the small things over time means you can permanently achieve a healthy weight — and have a life too! Just remember the old adage, “small changes add up,” and you will stay fit and healthy!