1) Do you restrict food calories/quantities to maintain weight, or, do you eat ad lib?
I restrict calories and quantities. I only eat ad lib under two conditions: when I go out to eat (because then it is impossible to control cals), and when I'm on a high hunger swing. Even then, I am trying to do damage control and I never totally give in if I can help it. Damage control is basically avoiding as many carbs as possible, focusing primarily on fresh meat and fiber veggies, and trying my best not to eat too much. I restrict the next day(s) to avoid regaining weight. Usually I’ll restrict a day, two if that day wasn’t much low, or, if I had been eating quite generously before hand.


2) Do you experience physical hunger?
If so, is it constant or does it come in episodic "jags and lulls" where it is alternating between starving and normal?
I do experience hunger.
My hunger is not consistent. I am not hungry all the time, but I am aware that I can't eat when I am.

My body goes in little cycles of low appetite and high appetite, during the day and day to day. Over a continuum of time, these cycles favor over eating (to what would maintain weight). It is only through formulating unconscious rules and restrictions (“portion control” or “things I always do” or “things I never do”) that I am able to avoid going with my true hunger, thus the metabolic push to be fat.


3) Do you find this hunger emotionally distressful and discouraging, or, is it easy for you to tolerate because you accept it?
What bothers me most about hunger is not feeling it, but when I lose control of it. I feel as if I’ve failed. I feel no security about my weight or anything else really. It’s a bad feeling. Hunger itself can sometimes be pleasant, in the right context.

4) What is your high BMI?
46.2 (body mass index value)

5) What is your present BMI?
19.2

6) How long have you been maintaining within 5 pounds of goal?
I don’t know. I haven’t been a true weight below 112 in months and months… and, ignoring post carb bloating, I haven’t been above 121 in way long too. I’ve been a weight around the mid teens for a very long time, but I tend to climb up or drop down from time to time. I doubt I will ever be low teens again, though. That weight required a lot of obsession that I just don’t feel anymore.


7) If you know, how many carbs & calories do you eat?
Fitday says from june 1st to now I’ve been eating 1650 cals and about 63 carbs.
If I go all the way back to march 1st (when I dramatically changed my eating to be lower carb and not as cal restricted) my averages are 1600 cals and 56 carbs.