The Consumption Conundrum

I've been thinking a lot lately about my eating habits. I know they aren't particularly healthy, but like any ingrained behavior pattern, it's proving very difficult to change them. Let me share a rare glimpse of my past with you. I have, in my younger days, gone hungry. By younger days, I mean late teens, early twenties. Those were lean years and even into my mid-twenties, food wasn't plentiful. I did manage to eat at least once a day, after a certain point, but prior to that it wasn't uncommon to go a couple days between meals. No, I wasn't homeless, except for a month or so living in my car, but it wasn't a pleasant way to live, regardless. Needless to say, I've managed to do much better in later years and food has become a bit too available. When you are in a situation like I was back in those days, you end up living under certain rules where food is concerned. Rule #1 is "never pass up an opportunity to eat". Rule #2 is "when food is put in front of you, you eat it regardless of whether or not you like it". Rule #3, which is the most problematic right now, is "eat as much as you can in one sitting because you don't know when the next sitting will be". It's that last one, combined with the fact that I really do *like* to eat, that causes most of the problem. I'm not exactly overweight, but the weight I do have isn't distributed very well. I do work a sit down job, yes, but I also get a fair amount of exercise. Apparently, it's not enough, given my diet. I can't seem to avoid eating large amounts of junk, mostly because that's what is readily available and convenient. If I could reduce the portions of said junk, it might help, but my brain has been trained by bitter experience to "eat it all, eat it now and eat again as soon as possible". Good habits... if there is a wide-spread famine. Not so good in modern America's culture of culinary excess.