Well, after some talk with other paleo/primal folks, I've decided NOT to cut out the cheese... because I am way ridiculously low on my calories. Lower than I thought. I should be eating over 2200 calories a day.
I'm going to get a little personal for a minute. When I was a kid I was skinny, SUPER skinny. People made fun of me. My parents and family made fun of me. I wouldn't even eat a whole four piece chicken nugget by myself, I just didn't eat a lot and I was just skinny... my (overweight) aunt and uncle would laugh at how little food I put on my plate and call me a "mouse," "oh look at the little mouse eating," "Oh little mouse bites." In middle school I was cornered by three girls who demanded to know if I was anorexic, if I made myself throw up, "if you are, it's okay, you can tell us." Apparently it was a rumor.
So I started stuffing myself. I was tired of the comments so I developed a habit of overeating. I still vividly remember being proud of myself one day when I ordered a large pizza and ate the entire thing myself.
This exploded on me when puberty hit. Suddenly I was no longer just plain skinny, suddenly my hips and butt got big. And I was in this habit of overeating because I had forced myself to do it to stop the teasing.
It wasn't exactly difficult to stop overeating; I just had to learn portion control. I lost a LOT of weight in my early twenties by just changing my portion sizes. Which is basically my problem... I'm still eating the same size portions I ate when I was losing weight/not working out. But running three times a week, training for a half marathon, hard cross-training twice a week, and strength training/weight lifting... I can't sustain on that anymore.
So I have to eat more. A LOT more.
And I'm having a REALLY hard time with this because every part of my brain is screaming NO NO NO at the idea of forcing myself to overeat again.
There. I said it out loud.
I don't know how this is going to go.