Despite your best intentions to eat healthy foods in small, regularly spaced out portions throughout the day, life just sometimes gets in the way. The sins of not-so-healthy eating happen to everyone at some point or another, but this doesn’t mean that you are destined to a life of transgression. When you happen to fall off the wagon (and you probably will), here are six strategies to help you find nutritional salvation.

The Sin: The Café Catastrophe

Your morning meal is a giant latte and a huge banana-nut muffin — nearly 1,000 calories (most of them from fat). That's almost two-thirds of your daily caloric allotment before 10 a.m.

Your Salvation: A lunchtime turkey sandwich on whole wheat with as many vegetables as you can squeeze between two slices of bread.

Most breakfast muffins are deficient in fibre, leaving you far short of the 25 grams you need a day. Eating whole wheat bread and stuffing it with lots of vegetables will increase your fibre intake by 3 to 5 grams. Since the muffin and the latte already provide enough fat for two meals, this low-fat sandwich will balance things out. When choosing vegetable trimmings, go with a dark leafy green lettuce like romaine instead of the water-based and nutrient-low iceberg, and add cucumbers, sprouts and tomatoes for more fibre and nutrients. Eat fruit if you need a side, but try to keep the calories low at lunch.

The Sin: The Unhealthy Graze

Toast for breakfast, a handful of M&M's at noon, a few cookies, an apple, Doritos, two cups of coffee — in other words, lots of calories, but not a lot of fiber and nutrients.

Your Salvation: A low-carb, high-protein dinner.

The good news is that you probably don't feel overstuffed since you ate only small quantities throughout the day. The bad news is, through grazing, you tend to consume more calories and fat than you may realize by day's end. So even if you feel like you've had nothing to eat, you can't indulge in a big meal. Chances are you grazed on grains and starchy carbohydrates, so leave them out of your one real meal. Instead, heap a salad-size plate with lean protein like chicken or fish and vegetables to fill in the nutritional blanks without adding too many calories. Grill or bake your protein and skimp on sauce to make the meal low in fat and calories.