I think its finally set in that I relapsed into poor, emotional eating, over eating...
Since May or so, I've pretty much maintained. Yes, I wanted to lose, but I was happy to see I was living a lifestyle that did not cause gaining.

I think it crept up about 2 weeks ago when my son was in the hospital. Nothing super serious, they just wanted to start IV antibiotics for 24 hours on something before switching to oral. Then a week later we moved, and the obvious degrading of my eating was becoming apparent.
Then 1 week later, still buried in boxes, with the stress of needing to finish emptying out the old place by Sept 1st (which is still looming) we had this hurricane coming!!
OMG, I just slipped into "survival" mode, which can be easily confused with "eat til you drop" mode.

So, today, as I hovered somewhere between watching my diet and eating as much of what ever I wanted, I realized fuuuuuuuu-dgsilces, fat free of course, I'm eating like my old self. This is a problem because ONE, although I've been maintaining, I will definitely start to gain if I keep this up, and TWO, since January I have dedicated myself to becoming a runner. And I've really come to love it. I'm doing a 5K in October, but I've already been seriously considering doing a half marathon in the spring. Except it seems the more I weigh the HARDER it is to move my bady at better speeds, and the less I weigh (I've noticed as I've lost) it gets easier and I get faster. I know if I can get these last 15 lbs off, my running will improve. Besides, its hard to get a good run when all I'm eating is junk food.

So I came to grips with the fact that I've relapsed, and I need to be here now, more than ever. I need to go back on a food plan. Which I didnt want to do. I've been eating intuatively over the past few months and it seems my intuative eye is guessamating bigger portions. Plus, its obvious that my intuative eating was not leading to weigh loss, which I do want to finally finish this weighloss project.

So, I'm back. I need to get a plan back together. Calories per day, and per meal. I'm going to be here a lot! So get used to my face! lol...or Marilyn Monroe's face! haha!

Congrats on realising this now. It shows you are really learning. I wish you luck with the rest of your journey

Thank you!

Every time I've ever tried intuitive eating, I've never been able to do it without gaining weight. I would like it to work for me, but I've finally accepted that I need some sort of outside, "artificial" regulator (e.g., counting calories) to lose weight. It seems like you've realized the same. Good luck to you!