Why does a pregnant woman gain weight? Because she consumes more calories than she burns. Why does someone with hypothyroidism gain weight? They consume more ca

Why does a pregnant woman gain weight? Because she consumes more calories than she burns. Why does someone with hypothyroidism gain weight? They consume more calories than they burn. Why does someone on prednisone or antipsychotics gain weight? They consume more calories than they burn. Why does someone on an 11-day meth bender lose weight? They burn more calories than they consume. All true, but it's not the most enlightening way to look at it. The more interesting question is why they eat so much/little. In my experience, and the experience of lots of others, eating food like Little Debbie's makes you want to pig out, whereas it's practically impossible to pig out on steak or chicken. I'm not surprised that you could lose weight on an 1800 calorie junkfood diet, but I think it would be hard to stick with it, even by the standards of diets, which are pretty much all hard to stick with. The fact that a doctor, a profession loaded with people who are a few standard deviations above the norm in terms of ability to delay gratification and self-discipline - a med school professor, no less (same but more so) - has the discipline to do this for 10 weeks, is not surprising, and probably not relevant for the average person who's struggling to lose weight.