I realize this is more of a pop culture, human-framed narrative driven story but words like "insulin", "leptin", "mitochondria", "carb(ohydrate)", "glycemic", "

I realize this is more of a pop culture, human-framed narrative driven story but words like "insulin", "leptin", "mitochondria", "carb(ohydrate)", "glycemic", "glycogen", "ketones" don't appear a single time in the 5000+ word piece. My take as someone who has some personal anecdata is a) no one really quite knows what is causing the incredible and nationally, geographically, socioeconomic/culturally, etc divergent crisis in weight gain and obesity, however b) there is a lot of interesting and useful information at the intersection of biomechanical, endocrinological, psychological, cultural, etc research and attempt at explanations. What's worked for me is a moderate all-of-the-above approach: eat real unprocessed food, do some lazy IF/low-carb, focus on nutrient and protein-dense plant and animal foods, find enjoyable exercise outdoors in the sun, lift some weights, eat fermented and fiber-rich foods, etc. Basically there's a slippery slope and positive feedback loop, where if you're sedentary and eat processed junk you're going to gain weight and wind up feeling like remaining sedentary and eating processed junk, which will cause you to gain more weight, and so on. "her urge to eat, as powerful as the urge to breathe when holding your breath, defeated her" just seems like learned (taught?) helplessness "misinformation" - you need to breathe every one or few dozen seconds or you die. You certainly don't need to eat every one or few dozen seconds or you die. This isn't to understate the difficulty and I was never hundreds of pounds overweight, but fundamentally you need to commit to turning the dial in the other direction at a pace that feels sustainable, and then sustain it. Nutrition science provides good explanations for why the urge to eat low nutrient crap is going to be very powerful if you're 200lbs overweight, not totally unlike the urge to inject heroin is going be very powerful if you've been injecting heroin for a decade. Your body down to the cellular level has adapted to it and you can't just hit an off switch. At a personal level I'd urge everyone to disregard the learned helplessness narrative and try to make a healthy lifestyle work - at a societal/policy level I think we desperately need to stop greasing the path down the slippery slope. It's as if a syringe full of heroin ready to inject was on sale BOGO for $2 at the supermarket and completely socially accepted while you had to cook up aspirin yourself on the stove for $8/pill with 30 minutes effort. "Why are so many addicted to heroin? Experts have no idea." Please.