Thanks for the flowers. Though I feel a bit of a fraud - I don't think putting 5lb on in one week (mostly water to deal with massive carb overload) and then being very careful and taking it off through low carbing the next week is exactly healthy eating behaviour.
Speaking of which, Henrietta, I completely understand you feeling disheartened, but a lot of your 5lb is likely to be water, same as mine was. If you're very careful this coming week, odds are you'll lose most if not all of it. I always find that low carbing which I don't do properly but can keep up for a few days helps me get rid of water gain and then it's back on the wagon again.
The question you asked, about eating when not hungry, is the big one for me. I can spend weeks carefully watching every calorie, making sure I don't go even 50 calories over plan and/or making sure if I do that I exercise the 50 away, putting up with feeling hungry sometimes and managing it perfectly well. And then I go and have a huge binge where I keep eating long after I've stopped being hungry and go hundreds if not thousands of calories over. It's like a switch flips, and I undo in an hour or two what it's taken me a week or more to accomplish. The good news is that I now do it much less than I did in the 'old days'. The bad news is that I can't seem to find a way to stop doing it altogether. Are some of us just hardwired that way, or eventually will I do it less and less and then stop? I really don't know. I've done all the psychologising I can do about it, so maybe it's a physiological thing and I just have to believe that this poor, addicted body of mine will learn new habits if I keep at it long enough. But it's so hard - and I don't think anyone who's not been there quite gets it.
I've just read through what I've written. And thinking about your other question, about whether you're destined to be fat, I would give you an emphatic no. You're younger than me, and your weight loss in other weeks suggests your metabolism is nowhere near as screwed up as mine was. And though it feels weird to say it, I'm no longer fat. There, it's said. For the first time since I was about 10 years old, objectively, I'm not fat. Not skinny, but easily within a healthy weight range for my height. I still see a fat woman when I look in a mirror (force of habit) but interestingly I no longer see one when I catch sight of myself unexpectedly in a reflection in a shop window as I walk past!! And if it's not my destiny to be fat, I'm very sure it's not yours either.