I still get my Spark People emails every day. Depending on the words in the subject line, I’ll read the entire article; others I delete without opening. The articles that I do read pump me up temporarily, then I crash later, apathetic and pessimistic about ever losing weight (much like how I feel after eating a bag of skittles).

That I could medal at eating poorly is no surprise. I love (love!) candy and eat some every single day. And by “some” I do not mean “a small handful”. I love fast food too: when frozen dinners are not on sale, you can bet that my lunches will be either chinese food, pizza or a burger and fries from the convenient eateries a short walk from my place of work.

I enjoy snacking when I’m doing things on the computer (at work and at home) and while watching movies. The only times I don’t snack during an activitiy is when the activity is reading or if I’m really busy at work. Otherwise, I devour an entire bag of candy without really tasting and appreciating it; it’s just consumed.

I don’t feel guilty after eating, because I find it a waste of time: if you’re going to feel bad about eating something, then don’t eat it! I feel bad/down when I realize that I have had “lose weight” as a resolution for more than half my life and with the exception of the year I lost 10 pounds, I haven’t had any success. Of course, in order to have success, you have to actually try, and unfortunately, trying, really trying hard, is not my forte. I can’t seem to commit to something for longer than it takes me to say (or blog) that I’ll do it. I can’t say I’ve ever been on a diet because surely you have to be “on a diet” for longer than a few hours or a day, max, before you can say you are actually on it?

Back to SparkPeople: today I took their diet profiler quiz (you can take it if you’d like) and I was surprised by the findings.

The first quiz ranks the type of dieter you are and in order I am a(n):
Emotional eater (6 points)
Portion distortioner (5 points)
Carb and calorie crazed (4 points)
Fast fueler (3 points)

I’ve always thought of emotional eaters as people who eat when they’re sad or depressed. I don’t tend to eat at those times because I’m generally too upset to. According to this quiz, mindless eating goes hand in hand with emotional eating, and God knows a lot of my eating is not conscious or deliberate, and very mindless.

Portion distortioners like to clean their plate and often eat out a lot (ding ding!) and with most restaurants serving helpings that are much larger than one needs to be satisfied, combined with my tendency to clean my plate, it’s no wonder my weight remains firmly in the obese category!

Not only does the quiz tell you what your dominant dieting traits are, it tells you what you can do, and also tells you how SparkPeople can help to help you reach your weightloss goals.

It doesn’t, unfortunately, hold a gun to your head and force you to do it.

Filed under: flab gab by jummy