"I'm not hungry, I just feel like eating"

And THAT, dear friends, is a big part of my problem.

There are many habits you learn as a child that you may think you outgrow but when you actually examine your habits you realize you've been doing it that way since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. (I do love that expression). And so is the case with me: I've always been a fast eater and an over-eater. I was always a little chubby as a kid but I grew up in the country, in a time when you shoved your kids outside after breakfast and only let them back in when it got dark. Lunch would happen, of course, but it was usually whatever the parents could cram down my throat rather than a formal affair. So being a fast eater and a heavy eater didn't matter as much because I was running around outside burning it all off.

It caught up with me in high school, when we moved further into the country and much further removed from neighbours. Suddenly I didn't have friends' houses nearby to walk or bike to or a swimming hole to spend all summer at.  And then my PCOS blossomed and suddenly none of my pants fit and I had this tire around my stomach (which is still there, BTW). Despite this, my eating habits didn't change.

And in university, of course I put on weight. I mean, my meal plan let me eat at fast food restaurants every day, every meal if I wanted and there was no one to tell me differently. Sure, I knew it was bad but this was also the late '90s and early 2000s, so the fast food industry wasn't yet the despised beast it is now, but rather a decent outlet for an occasional lazy dinner.

Even after university, when I started making a better effort to eat well, I kept up with the fast eating and eating when I felt like it, whether I was hungry or not. I'm not even sure why I became such a fast eater. I was an only child until I was 10 so I wasn't competing for food with several siblings. And when you're a fast eater you finish your reasonable portion and still feel hungry you so go in for seconds and when your body finishes digesting you're suddenly stuffed to the seams and, more often than not, in a bit of pain. I speak from too many years of experience but - and here's the rub - I keep doing it. Egad.

I know I need to slow down and I know I need to cap how much I eat and how often I eat but, honestly, it's really hard. I've been doing this since I was a wee lass and it's not easily switched off even when I know it's bad for me and that it is the main contributor to my weight and body image issues.

So this is the big thing for me to tackle this year: eat slower, eat less, eat when hungry and STOP when I'm full.

Losing ground

Guys, I'm not going to lie: I've been slipping.

I'm still tracking my points but I've also been a little cavalier with them, even ignoring them completely for big meals. It's strange but I was doing much better during the winter months; now that it's spring I can't seem to stay on track even though this is the time of year when people really get on track.

I think it's starting to dawn on me the magnitude of the life change I've undertaken. It's easy enough to say that it's better to make slow progress if it means making lifestyle changes but it sure is hard to actually do!

This is also where my impatience kicks in. I've been on WW for not quite 4 months and I've managed to lose and keep off 17 pounds. There is nothing wrong with that! Despite knowing this, though, I want to make more progress - I want to be thinner NOW, dammit! And I find myself falling into that downward spiral; you know, the one that goes, "Since I can't be thin now, why bother trying? That donut looks delicious. But now that I ate that donut, I won't be thin. And since I can't be thin, well, that bacon cheeseburger looks delicious..."

Oh self-defeat, how I thought you were gone!

So I'm a little worried about tomorrow. I really don't want a third week of gaining but I know I only have myself to blame if I do (I had cake twice this past weekend! TWICE! And it was delicious.)

I've been thinking a lot about habits recently and I'm going to do a post on them and the habits I really want to get into. I need to make eating well and exercising so ingrained in my life that I don't even notice when I'm doing it, but I still get to reap the awesome benefits.

I've got ideas of what I can do to help myself, too. I just need to put them into action. I'll share those with you too, later, hopefully after I've acted on them, so you can see what brilliant things I've added to my life!

I can tell you this, though: no matter what, I will not let myself become complacent or defeated or upset over any changes that don't go my way. I'm 32 years old and the eating and exercise habits I have now I've been working on for 32 years. Four months ain't gonna change that!