People talk about how hard it is to lose this way, but although I've tried diet after diet, I only recently understood intuitively the reverse: why some people can't understand how difficult it is for some. When I moved to a new area this year and went to a new GP, he wanted to talk about my weight, of course (I'm 42, but everything else about my health was quite good). I explained that I had managed to lose about 50 pounds since my peak in 2012, through various diets like intermittent fasting, keto, and sometimes just counting calories for a bit. He suggested I try an appetite suppressant. I scoffed a bit, saying that my problem wasn't that I was too hungry, since I rarely ate so infrequently as to experience hunger. Instead, I said, my problem was that I ate when I was bored, or when friends were, or ate to improve other experiences like TV or movies, or just because it had been a while and I felt increasingly that I "ought" to eat. He didn't argue with me, but just mildly pointed out that it might well not work, but why not give it a shot for a few weeks and see? So I agreed. That was three months ago, and on the appetite suppressant I've lost another 50 pounds. But that's not my point, exactly.

My worldview around food has changed. Before, I assumed that people who were thin were either heroically couting every calorie they ate, or had some weird biology that meant that they couldn't gain even when they tried. I think both of those sets do exist (since I know people in each), but now I realize that there is a large group of people out there who simply don't care about food that much. I didn't even understand that I had this constant drive to eat until it vanished; I'd never not experienced it, as far back as I can remember. I didn't know what people were talking about when they talked about appetite, because the only thing that ever changed was hunger, until I started taking the suppressant.