Hi everyone I'm Monica Reinagel and you're listening to the nutrition divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

And as the year draws to a close, I thought it would be fun to take a look

back at some of the best and worst ideas about nutrition to make the rounds this year.

One thing I'd really like us to leave behind in 2012 is the idea of the cheat day, at least the ridiculous version of it that's taken hold in some circles lately.

As I like to say, it's not

not how you eat on your best or your worst day but how you eat most days

that really matters.

And if relaxing your dietary restraint one day a week helps you stick to your healthy eating plan the other six days,

I've got no problem with that.

I've even talked about the potential benefits of calorie cycling, which is alternating between higher and lower calorie days.

But this idea has been taken to absurd extremes lately.

One celebrity author in particular has perpetrated the ridiculous notion that

binging on junk food one day a week will somehow speed weight loss. He actually

suggests that failing to pig out on fried foods and sweets once a week will impede

your progress towards an awesome body. Please ignore this message and all the

junk science used to justify it.

Eating unhealthy foods is not a way to improve your body or your diet.

Bad idea number two, water that does more.

Frankly, I thought we'd already see... water that does more.

Frankly, I thought we'd already seen the peak in this trend,

but 2012 brought even more varieties of bottled water

tarted up with flavors, essences, vitamins, herbs, and other baloney.

...