KG, sounds like you're doing great and have some excellent plans in place for the New Year Regarding this comment:
"I also need to change my eating habits. I realize diets are not for me and that people who look great and are healthy don't really diet. They just have good eating habits."
My W has always struggled with her weight and has been on many diets. I went on them with her mainly to support her but to lose a few pounds myself. The best diet we ever did wasn't really a diet so much as a retraining of eating habits. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, I tried Google and couldn't locate it either. But basically you didn't change WHAT you eat, but HOW you eat. Things like always leaving some on the plate to override that instinct to eat everything, and if you have say enchiladas, rice and beans and you normally eat the beans and rice first and save the enchiladas as a "reward" then don't do that. Eat your favorite first, then your 2nd favorite next and as you work down when you get full you won't want to keep eating because you're past your favorite anyway. It also taught to eat slower, because the stomach sends signals to the brain with a delay so if you eat slower you won't overeat as much before your stomach says "enough". You've probably noticed that when you get full you feel REALLY full, that's because we eat too fast. Also your body sends the same signals for hunger and thirst, so in the morning if you feel hungry you're probably really just dehydrated from sleeping overnight. So if you feel hungry in the morning you're supposed to drink 32 oz of water. You'd be surprised at how the hunger pangs go away when you do that. Anyway, it was all kinds of tips like that. We did the diet probably 10 years ago and I still follow many of the high points of it, and I've never felt like I was missing out on anything like you feel on traditional diets. I'll try to figure out what diet it was and post the info here.
Regarding this comment: