Few experiences seem so fraught with danger for my female friends as the prospect of mixing the early phase of a dating relationship with an ongoing weight-management program.

While men seem to have only one simple rule to worry about — "don't order the spaghetti on a first date" — women, as usual, seem to have a far more complex situation on their proverbial plate.

On the one hand there's the issue of how to maintain a weight-loss program while going out socially — without appearing to be picky, hard-to-please, or, worse yet, on the road to an eating disorder. On the other hand, there's the issue of how to enjoy food with gusto without appearing to be someone who doesn't care about her appearance.

How do you strike a balance between having a good time in a social atmosphere and staying committed to your waistline — which doesn't let you overlook your bad behavior at the buffet?

This is when all that spiritual, new-agey advice about "just being yourself" is about as welcome as Monica Lewinsky at a Hillary Clinton fund-raiser. You want answers and you want solutions, and you want them now. Before the doorbell rings.

In dating and dieting, like so many other areas of life, a little preparation and planning go a long way toward making life easier.

• First of all, remember the 80/20 rule (sometimes known as the 90/10 rule, depending on how strict your superego is). It goes like this: What you do 80 (or 90) percent of the time is what makes the difference in the long run. Translated to weight loss, it means that going out for a special Sunday brunch date that involves pancakes and bagels is probably not going to undo everything you've worked for — if you've worked for it most of the time. If the "brunch detour" is only taken 10 percent of the time, it might knock a few apples off the apple cart but it won't turn the whole cart upside down.
• Second, don't starve yourself in anticipation of the big dinner date during which you're sure you're going to overeat. Arriving hungry is a definite recipe for disaster. Here's why: Skipping meals, or undereating, during the day is perceived by the body as starvation, and it primes the fat-storage enzymes for an "emergency" situation. Since you arrive at dinner starving, you're far more likely to overeat, which in turn triggers both high levels of insulin release and lots of activity on the part of the enzymes that store fat. A much better strategy is to eat small, sensible meals during the day and arrive at the dinner date just hungry enough to be able to eat but not starving enough to eat the bread basket.