My theory is that consuming sugar makes you more hungry. You can eat until you're full, but if you eat desert or a sugary snack a little later, it makes you feel less full and you can eat more. As if your brain notices the sugar source and switches into "full loading mode" and craves more of this historically rare resource.

> And yet most obese people are no more addicted to food than you are addicted to oxygen...

Most obese people seem to be addicted to sugary food, soft drings, desert and all that, which then triggers more eating.

In addition, it might be a gut bacteria thing. If your gut is used to processing lots of sugar, you crave it even more and fighting your gut microbiome requires way too much impulse control and moderation.

The solution might be to recognize this mechanism, remove all sugar from the diet and find a way to control impulses for a few weeks until the gut bacteria changed.

Drinking water and chewing sugar-free gum helps me to remove food cravings temporarily with no downsides. But... I have a normal weight.