From skwigg's journal:
I was kind of marveling at how much food I can eat and still be lean. It's a bit deceptive though! I see where the confusion originates. My husband and I were having a discussion yesterday about how I can eat (seemingly) twice as much as he does and weigh 30 pounds less. I did my thing yesterday where I ate two quarter-pound burgers, a bucket of mashed potatoes, M&Ms, and chocolate for lunch. He's like, "Where do you put it?!" But I was that hungry for lunch, satisfied afterward, and then hungry again for dinner.
Here's the thing. In crazy days, I was maintaining (or gaining) with days of restriction and then thousands of calories in bingey lapses. So, looking at my small portions of protein and vegetables (remember that palm/fist crap? LOL), it seemed like I needed very little food and needed to eat very carefully to avoid gaining weight, but if I spread out what would have been the binges into satisfying my hunger every day at every meal, satisfaction goes way up, the biological need to binge goes completely away, and I'm eating the same or less than when I was being so careful plus losing all control regularly.
I think my husband probably does eat more than I do, but he can't do as much burger/lasagna/pizza in one shot. I'll eat a bigger portion there and be done. He'll stop sooner, but then have pie and ice cream an hour later. I don't want to be in a position where I'm not satisfied and surfing for sweets shortly after I eat, so I go for it in three rather impressive looking meals. His meals are smaller but he snacks more. So, he comes into meals not as hungry and will eat again sooner.
The restriction really skewed my idea of what an "appropriate" portion looked like. It was my experience that if I ate any more food, I'd gain weight, but I was conveniently forgetting how much I could eat in one shot when I lost control. You think you have to restrict or overtrain to compensate for the overeating, but if you don't restrict or overtrain, there's no drive to overeat. I was always trying to use willpower to stop the overeating, but it only works when you stop the restricting first by making everyday meals more satisfying.