What unexpected benefits did you see?

I've been noticing that a couple of things as I've stuck to my new habits. I'll share, but I thought it might be interesting to open a thread about unexpected benefits. We all started out with certain benefits in mind, I'm sure; more energy, better health, better appearance, and so on. But there are probably other "oh, cool!" things you've seen that you didn't anticipate when you started. What are they? Maybe if they're pointed out, others will notice the same things in themselves.

So, here's what I've seen:

1) An interesting new mental discipline. Within about a week of sticking to the new way of eating, my mind slipped very easily into a "budgeting" mindset. When I was reviewing what to eat, I'd see my old temptations and start considering them, but my mind would squish that with a thought of, "If I'm going to spend 400 of my precious calories, it's not going to be on *that*." I naturally gravitated toward much healthier things. The benefit: Healthy choices became very natural and much easier than I thought, and wasn't the tedium and drudgery I anticipated.

2) At some point, my body seemed to reset itself. I calculated my maintenance calories, knocked 5% off, and made that my target. After a short time, my body started calling me a wuss and told me to knock more off. So, I went to 20% off. Then it knocked off more... somehow, the neighborhood of about ~2200 calories is where it settled. That's pretty low... I'm a hair under 6'7", pretty huge skeletal structure, etc. I rarely have to sit on the phone book when I go for a haircut. :-) The benefit: Once I replaced the garbage in my diet with good (or better, anyway) stuff, everything settled at a much lower calorie point than I would have though possible.