Seeking.

I just had to pull this analogy out of the comments to the last post, because I think Tabitha hit it out of the park.  I had written that I didn't think cutting back on habits and  "just maintaining" the numbers on the scale was a good goal, because going back to old habits isn't "maintaining" behavior, it's "gaining" behavior.  Tabitha wrote:

I see what you mean, Erin. It's like when my NFP teacher told me that if you "take chances" your behavior says you are seeking a pregnancy.

The eating behaviors aren't a perfect analogy, of course, but it makes sense that you either have the healthy habits or gaining habits.

I remember encountering that language in NFP class too, and I thought it was a very helpful and realistic way of thinking about it.  There is no such thing as "avoiding pregnancy" and "taking chances" at the same time.  The criterion of whether you're "seeking pregnancy" or "avoiding pregnancy" is to be judged by what your ACTUAL REAL BEHAVIOR is consistent with.  

That's not to say there's not room for an oops, as in, an honest mistake interpreting a chart, or medication screwing up your fertility signs -- that's a time when you might say "I was avoiding pregnancy but I got pregnant anyway" --- although a better way of phrasing it would be "I THOUGHT I was avoiding pregnancy but I got pregnant anyway."

But see here, if you have sex during your fertile time, you're "seeking pregnancy" even if you don't want to get pregnant.  Your biology doesn't care one whit about your intentions, or whether you have your fingers crossed.

And yeah, Tabitha's right -- regaining weight is kind of like that, although it can be a little more complicated because there are more behaviors involved.  If you change enough of your habits from "new weight-maintaining habit" to "old weight-gaining habit," well, you're trying to gain weight, whether you want to or not.  

That's why I want to point out that it's much better to think in terms of permanent change to new, low-weight-maintaining behaviors, and eliminating the old, high-weight-maintaining behaviors.