I do not want to sound like I am arguing with you for the sake of arguing, but I have lost weight and several of my friends and family have lost weight without feeling hungry by switching to a low carb (ketogenic) diet. It was so crazy to eat mostly fatty food and green vegetables and lose weight very quickly. One major thing I noticed was how much longer I was able to go without eating on this diet without feeling hungry. I used to feel very ill if I did not eat at least 3 meals at day. I can now, if I choose, eat a snack in the early afternoon and then eat dinner and feel fine (1.5 meals instead of 3).

This matches my experience as well. The transition period (~1.5 weeks, but especially brutal on days 2-5) was rough, but once established, it was the easiest diet to stay on if you could control your environment and mostly cook for yourself or choose where to eat.

It is somewhat harder to stay on the diet while traveling, attending conferences, or business meetings. Having a host choose a place to eat, offer you local cuisine, etc makes it harder to stay in keto. Hunger though, was never a problem after the first full week.

Keto is great but there's still a willpower component, it can be more or less difficult depending on the person. I don't really like cooking a lot, but I don't mind eating the same things most of the time. It would be a lot harder for someone who hates cooking and hates eating the same thing all the time. While raw hunger never bothered me I did find cravings an occasional issue (never constant, but even after months never quite disappearing) and sometimes they'd be for things I haven't had in years. Eventually it might be something easy to satisfy like a pizza and when you give in once it's easy to say "screw it", though some people can only continue if they have an occasional cheat day.

I'm an on-and-off-again keto dieter (I appreciate that for me it seems to take at least 2-3x as long to put the weight back on as it takes to take off as I inevitably revert to former diet choices...) and I never find the transition period difficult, but there's a consistent point where I hit "eh, still fat, but don't feel super fat anymore" and that's when the cravings or the pressures of eating non-keto with company have the highest chance of getting to me. There are also unforeseen stressors that can make things difficult (in my case a forced house move) but I'm ok with the state of flux. I don't want a six-pack physique enough, not really, and that's the last willpower component -- how long can you stick with it (and introduce more exercise), even with bumps and setbacks? My friend who introduced me to the diet lost 100 lbs by forcing himself to do keto for about 5 months, but he was fat enough at the start that he could stand to lose another 50 lbs but it's not as easy now. Still, he's much happier and healthier now than before. One's level of willpower is still involved even with how great keto is and is the difference between losing 50 lbs (not bad), 100 lbs (pretty awesome), and 150 lbs (your ideal).

I didn't take it as arguing for the sake of arguing at all. I know a lot of people who really do well with low carbs - and I'm slightly jealous.

I've tried before, but I feel like complete garbage. I'm told it goes away, but I don't really have days to waste feeling dizzy trying out something that may or not work for me.

You'd think that the link between "eating less" and "losing weight" is so well-proven that any subsequent study would re-validate it. Yet there's not a single study where 100% of participants who cut their caloric intake lost weight in 100% of the cases. The reports, at best, are "inconclusive". http://time.com/2809007/eat-less-exercise-more-isnt-the-answ...

On a global scale countries low on the obesity scale (Japan, Singapore, Korea, France) are not teeming with starving under-nourished citizens, and countries high on the obesity scale (Mexico, US) are not lacking gyms, exercise equipment, or opportunities for simple nature walks.

Being obese and eating less or feeling hungry doesn't mean you're starving or malnourished. That's complete hyperbole.

The fact is if you're fat, you've conditioned yourself to eat too many calories, and eating a normal amount of calories will likely leave you feeling hungrier while you adjust.

And yet fasting diets do not consistently work, and it's the fattest countries of the world that have supermarket shelves full of low-calorie products (finding a low-calorie yogurt or low-fat cheese in a French supermarket would be a challenge)

http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(96)00456-1/abstract

"In the adult US population the prevalence of overweight rose from 25.4% from 1976 to 1980 to 33.3% from 1988 to 1991, a 31% increase. During the same period, average fat intake, adjusted for total calories, dropped from 41.0% to 36.6%, an 11% decrease. Average total daily calorie intake also tended to decrease, from 1,854 kcal to 1,785 kcal (−4%). Men and women had similar trends. Concurrently, there was a dramatic rise in the percentage of the US population consuming low-calorie products, from 19% of the population in 1978 to 76% in 1991. From 1986 to 1991 the prevalence of sedentary lifestyle represented almost 60% of the US population, with no change over time."