Many people are soothed by doing what authority advises, even if it doesn't work. Nothing I tried for over twenty years ever worked right away and stuck around, until low carb.

I also think there's a lot of voluntary, and involuntary, denial operating, because of the normalization of things that just aren't normal. I watch a lot of "how I did it" videos and my favorite part is that it varies. But what almost everyone has in common is portion size.

If anyone grew up during the Figurine era, this seems impossible. The women's magazines had jaw-wiring articles and tips on using child sized plates and flatware. But I digress.

My point being, I don't need portion control. We eat out at a few locally owned places, when we have errands to run and there's not enough energy between us to also make breakfast. But it's cooked fresh and uses some local products.

A corner cafe we like carries a really good gluten free roll I get as a treat, their bagel breakfast sandwich: only I use the GF roll. As delicious as it is, I wind up eating only a quarter of it as a sandwich, and making it open face, and finally finishing with knife and fork, half the roll not even eaten.

Because it's nice for a few bites, but then I notice that the roll actually blunts the impact of the lox, egg, lettuce and tomato, and cream cheese. That's the tasty part! Yet I lose all appetite for the roll very quickly, but finish every bit of the filling.

The roll is filling, but not satisfying. And I think a lot of people probably do confuse one for the other.

So people wind up with an distorted understanding of what hunger and "full" and satisfied feels like and what they mean. If they are anxious, do they know blood sugar swings can do that? And that depression and fast food go together, though I'm sure people overeat because of depression.

It fills such a giant space in their life that I don't think they can imagine anything less than what they are doing to shut up the hunger, as it is.

They need a whole new way of looking at food. Because I tell people, with utter sincerity, that food has never tasted so good, and yet, I think about food the least I ever have.