These days, it may not seem like a big deal to have a drink before dinner and a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Yet, according to the National Institutes of Health, consuming that amount of alcohol puts you in a high risk category. Rethinking Drinking, a website run by the NIH, can help you assess the risks and/or benefits of your drinking habits.You might be surprised to see how just low the threshold for "low-risk" drinking is, especially when you consider the size of a "standard" drink is just 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. The newly (or once again) popular martini drinks usually contain the equivalent of 2 to 4 servings of alcohol. What do you think? Is this too heavy-handed an approach? Are we American's showing our latent puritanism here?  Are the risks of moderate drinking being overstated? Tip: See SELF Magazine's Guide to a Healthy Happy Hour For those who are motivated to make a change in their drinking habits, the site offers tools and strategies that are consistent with the proven approach developed by James Prochaska and outlined in his excellent book Changing for Good. See also: Fitting Alcohol into Your Weight Loss Program

Q. I have heard that it is completely normal for a person's weight to vary throughout the day, but by how much does it change? Is it a sign of weight gain if I weigh over three pounds more at the end of a day than at the beginning?

A. A weight fluctuation of three to five pounds over the course of a day is completely normal and doesn't suggest that you've gained weight.  Weight can be temporarily affected by things like the amount of fluids you've consumed, the timing of your last work-out, or (how to put this?) the status of your digestive processes. In the end, it's not the daily fluctuations that matter as much as the overall trend: Are you gaining, losing, or maintaining?

Tip: Chart your progress toward your goals with SELF.com's weight, diet, and workout logs.

How often should you get on the scale?

Weight loss experts often say not to weigh yourself too frequently when you're on a diet. I guess the idea is that your progress will be easier to see if you only weigh yourself once a week. As long as you're sticking to your eating and exercise plan, you shouldn't have any nasty surprises.

If you are at or near your goal weight, you might want  to weigh yourself more often, just to stay in touch with reality. At the moment, I'm trying to maintain my current weight. But I still get on the scale about every other day. If I do put on a few pounds (it's been known to happen), I want to know right away so that I can nip it in the bud.

Does getting on the scale sabotage your diet?

Oprah Winfrey, on the other hand, says she never steps on the scale because it ends up sabotaging her waist-control efforts. If her weight is up, she gets discouraged and loses motivation to follow her diet. If her weight is down, she winds up eating too much because she figures she can afford to cheat.  Instead, Oprah prefers to use the way her clothes fit as a indicator of how she's doing.