Congrats on your success! I am just starting out on this whole Paleo thing, so your story is a huge encouragement! The idea of trying to not lose weight, I wouldn't know what to do!

It's changed my life too. When I was in the military I kept my weight under control by running six miles a day and bulimia. Can you call that maintaining a healthy weight? (Rhetorical question; no answer needed.)

I finally made peace with my body, stopped dieting, just tried to eat healthy. The weight crept up. Arthritis hit. After being dismayed at conventional medicine's prognosis for disease progression, I started researching alternatives and hit on paleo/primal. (Started with Robb Wolf, went on to Mark Sisson's method as something easier for me to sustain for the long run.) Accidentally lost 40 lbs while eating to eliminate inflammation. Hoping to lose 40 more over the next year or two, if that's what my body wants to do. Not really dieting, just eating for pain relief.

My carbs have been in maintenance mode (100-200 g daily, trying to stay towards the low end as much as possible as I feel better the lower my carbs are) since January due to lots of travel, but now with summer I'll be home for a few months, able to shop and cook for myself, and thus able to keep the carbs between 30-80g a day. I gained about five or ten pounds between January and March and then my weight stabilized. Since being home (a whole week now!) I've started losing again slowly. Will be interested to see where my "set point" ends up.

Know what you mean about struggling with overweight one's whole life. My mom signed me up for Weight Watchers when I was 12. I can remember binging on ice cream and the chocolate chips from the baking drawer and my mom's homemade baked goods from my earliest days, and I kept on binging as long as I kept trying to control my weight with dieting. When I gave up dieting, I stopped binging -- but my weight went up over 200 lbs, not healthy for someone just over 5 feet.

Paleo feels like being set free, and Mark Sisson's 80/20 principle has totally changed my relationship with food. I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. (Of course, it's within the constraints of paleo/primal eating, most of the time.)

Though I don't recommend doing this, I was able to eat non-primal foods on vacation. Out of a month of days, I had pizza one day, ice cream another day, an amazing cinnamon roll another day, and Thai food (Pad Thai, which can be made gluten free but still involves high-carb rice noodles) a couple of days. These indulgences were spread out over the month, not back-to-back. I don't want to reawaken the cravings I used to have. I don't think I switched my body from fat-burning to carb-burning by these treats, because I never got the low-blood-sugar shakes or the high-blood-sugar sleepiness that was common before I started low-carbing.

Oh, and I have determined via elimination diet and reintroduction that gluten doesn't seem to have any effect on me. Dairy does (it's the protein, not the lactose -- so I still occasionally have full-fat dairy like cream, butter, sour cream, and rarely, full-fat cheese). Nightshades definitely do (three days of painful, swollen joints after eating tomatoes or potatoes). Just because I don't notice adverse reactions to gluten doesn't mean it's welcome back in my diet. It's so high in carbs, I'll avoid it just for that reason, like I avoid all the other grains, even rice and non-GMO corn. (If I keep my carbs under 80g a day I'm never hungry. I like that feeling.) Call it a luxury. Now that vacation is over I doubt I'll have any more gluten for months.

Sheesh, I feel like I'm talking about myself too much. Just wanted to encourage you and give you some food for thought as you work out this new lifestyle. Paleo/primal *is* a lifestyle, not a diet. If you "go off" and resume the SAD way of eating, I imagine you'd gain the weight back along with having that starving feeling.

Trying not to lose weight. What a concept. Not something I've ever had to worry about.

I'm so proud if you. This is supposed to be a lifestyle. The fact that it is natural to you is awesome.

I'm so proud if you. This is supposed to be a lifestyle. The fact that it is natural to you is awesome.

the cravings after a week just went away.... before i would die if i would not have PIZZA or PASTA.. and if someone ate that in front of me.. i would immediatly go for a slice.. and now i dont care... iits NOT WILLPOWER.. its whatever is going on with this PALEO thing..

Yeah, amazing how that happens. On previous diets, I'd crave the stuff I was avoiding (like pizza and ice cream and whatever I saw other people eating, or smelled baking in a store -- Cinnabon, anyone?). But with the paleo/primal lifestyle, I don't really find that stuff tempting.

Oh, I still eat ice cream, maybe once a week. But it's the good stuff, full fat, as much cream as possible, without artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, thickeners, whatever (carageenan, for example). It's part of my "20" (google "Mark Sisson" and 80/20 if you don't know what this means).

Berries with a side of heavy cream is just about perfect. I'd say "perfect" but I can't, quite, because it's getting harder and harder to find heavy cream without carageenan added! Also, if you order it "out" you want to make sure they didn't sweeten the cream.

I have only found heavy cream at a couple of stores, Trader Joe's and a whole foods-type local chain, without added stabilizers. Even some of the organic brands have carageenan! Bummer.

p.s. So just fresh berries, no cream or sweetening, might be your best bet. Or call it your 20% if you're following Mark Sisson's 80/20 mindset, and that way if the cream has something added, you don't feel as if you've blown it.