weight watcher question

[jobob]

I lost a lot of weight last year when I had braces on my bottom teeth and, now that I have them off and have gained some of the weight back (grrrrr ) I'm trying to figure out what it is that made me lose all that weight in the first place.

I'm convinced that what did it was the fact that, especially early on, it was difficult for me to get used to chewing with the braces in place so I would chew my food verrrry slowly and carefully. The offshoot was that eating was downright tedious, and I would literally get bored of eating after a while. Although the portion sizes I ate were fairly small, I was never hungry, because eating so slowly I would gradually fill up, and the effort and the boredom from eating outweighed any hunger I may have perceived.

Even once I had the chewing thing more or less worked out, it was such a hassle to clean my braces afterwards that I would avoid snacking between meals.

I've had my braces off since late Dec and I wear a removable retainer now, and I like to joke to people to keep their hands away from the moving mouth parts. I really have to start being careful again, I've gained nearly 12 pounds over my absolute lowest weight (which was late summer/early fall). That's not such a bad thing since I've been told by many people that I had probably lost too much back then - my face was getting very gaunt, and I've lost count of the number of people who asked me if I had been ill Even my doctor told me I should put a bit of weight back on, LOL !

But that said, I think I've gained more than enough I have to be careful again, argh.

So I'm writing this all down as sort of a reminder to myself to eat slowly, watch the portion sizes, and to cut out the snacks !!