If we are going to have one thing in life that we obsess over, I think our health is the most important. I remember scoffing at the obsessiveness of 'health nuts' when I was younger. I thought they were crazy. The world told me that food was food and moderation is the key. That is what I chose to believe and that was clearly wrong. The health nuts were right -- even if they did have bad information about what was healthy. I've become a health nut. I am a little obsessive. EVERYBODY who slides back into old SAD eating habits regains the weight. So if we want to keep what we have accomplished, do we even have a choice? We have to stick the the program that got us here.

My daughter just came home for a week long visit. Since birth she has had the same issues with food as I have always had. She too has been heavy her whole life. She joined me on this WOE 2 years ago and she has made some good progress. When she was more obsessive about the diet - (i.e. counting and tracking) she had steady success. She has struggled over the past year, though and has regained some of the weight. She eats the right foods, but is much more lax in her tracking. Even OP foods can be a problem if you eat too much of them, so not tracking has not worked so well. She plans on going back to tracking what she eats everyday. I hope she sticks with it.

I am falling into a pattern of eating roughly the same ratios of carbs and calories each meal from one day to the next. I have two different breakfasts (eggs & meat or flax muffin & meat), and a lunch consisting of a meat, a veggie, and some standard 'sides'. I'm even starting to do my standard lunch on weekends. Dinner is the one meal that is all over the place. My hope is that I won't have to track every meal if I already know that the meal I chose is within the range of what I've tracked 100 times before. I will only need to track those things that are new or unusual combinations in a given meal. My hope is that practicing eating right will form good habits and I won't need to track every item I eat every single day. If I do lighten up on the tracking, then the scale will have to be the gauge. Daily weighing would be required. A little movement in the wrong direction and I will be back to tracking every bite.

For now, I don't mind tracking and I'll continue to do it for the foreseeable future. I've got the rest of my life to figure out how to do maintenance and I know one thing for certain... I will always have to work at it.