at Almostheaven!
Anne - you pretty much described my life.
I'm the same way - do really well for a few days and then get so hungry (or just plain want to eat) and eat more than I planned. Repeat cycle. Maybe this is just the way maintenance is going to be for us??
I'm not hungry ALL the time, but I'm hungry a lot of the time and probably hungrier more often than most people. I'm not sure whether I'm hungry so often because I eat a lot less per meal than the average person (250 - 300 calories) or whether my brain is just wired differently than the average person and my 'full detector' never goes off. If I'm lucky, I've got two hours after I eat when I'm not thinking about food and wanting to eat again. But if it's a bad day, I'm just as hungry when I finish a meal as when I start, and I hate that feeling.
I read someplace that we should think of hunger on a scale of 1 through 10, with '1' as literally starving and '10' as Thanksgiving dinner stuffed. We 'chronic restrained eaters' are supposed to aim for somewhere in the 5 - 7 range most of the time - never getting too hungry and never feeling very full. Kind of a mild level of satisfaction.
When I'm eating normally, I never feel 'full' past a level of 7 but often feel hunger at a 2 or 3 level. It's always a struggle to try to keep my hunger level under control without overeating. But it's absolutely essential because hunger is my number one trigger for binging! I've successfully dealt with most of my emotional triggers for eating over the past four years and feel like those are pretty much under control. But genuine physical hunger still is my toughest maintenance battle. Every day is a tightrope walk between eating enough to keep from going off the deep end but not eating so much that I gain.
Without a doubt, 3FC is my support structure too.
There isn't anyone in my Real Life who struggles with the issues that we do and sadly, I can hardly think of anyone in my world who's lost weight and
kept it off. I'd truly think that I was
without all of you telling me that things are just the same way with you. Perhaps that makes us all
but it's a nice place to be!