Weeeell, smoking and alcoholism are two very different things. Similar in just a few aspects with some of the addiction stuff, but the psychology of it is way different. As someone who quit completely for 6 years, I'll tell ya, it took about a year for the cravings to really go away. After that, they were gone. I was one of the people who didn't mind being around smoke, like with friends or in bars; some people develop a major aversion to it after they quit. No way to know in advance. But it doesn't trigger any craving after a while.

One of the ways I explain being an insomnic to people is to liken it to alcoholism. I will ALWAYS be an insomniac. But sometimes, I'm 'on the wagon'. I will be one my whole life, but it is often managed. I have some tools, and my actions can affect it greatly, but sometimes, given the correct stimuli, it's an illness that is out of my control. I never know exactly how far I can push my behavior before it kicks it off, so the safest thing is to always be in control of my behavior. Which I'm not. But I have been. And it works pretty well to keep me 'on the wagon'. Anyway, blah blah blah.

Rhea ~ It doesn't sound unusual to me to have eating habits like that! I think many, many people are members of the 'clean plate' club. Socially, we've gotten really screwed too with the portions and all that, mixed with clean plate syndrome, ooooh, tough combination. Portion control sounds like it could be a great thing for you. For me, it wasn't cutting down on what I was eating that drove my 180 turn, it was changing what I was eating and that drove the rest; I actually had to teach myself to eat a lot of breakfast (I think I eat a huge breakfast, but to a big breakfast eater, it's probably not). There are many things that happened on their own, or I guess secondary to another change I made, like my portion tollerance decreasing, or greasy food tollerance and cravings decreasing. I wish I knew it all. I wish I'd had a nutritionist following me around for the past eight months so they could make it all make perfect sense. It's going to be a tough chapter to write. I'm really going to have to think it through a LOT.

Gawd, I'm babbling a lot today.

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