Genuine question: do you have biscuits, confectionery or ice cream in your home normally?

The most shocking thing to me when I first moved alone was how easy it was too eat a ton of sugar, without realising it till after.

My solution these days is to just ensure its not there, and commit to not getting takeaway (easy if I think about all the money I save).

Even doing all that, I still have habits I need to keep up: eating toast too often is a problem, for example. I've eliminated peanut butter entirely. Don't eat lunch when I'm at a desk job and replace it with just mid afternoon coffee to keep me going.

The human body is stupidly efficient, unfortunately.

I think you need to count calories to really know what your eating. I did it as an experiment for a week, it really interesting to see how fast you blow through your daily calories snacking or adding sauce

Yes, do this.

It's shocking how much of your calorie budget a sugared soft drink has.

Strangely, it’s both most of your calorie budget, and none of it at the same time.

Soft drinks have a ton of calories which have to go somewhere; we all know that. The paradox is that the human brain does not generally treat liquid calories as calories. So even though you might drink down 300 calories of soda, your brain will not adjust your hunger levels to match. This is obviously very bad.

Oh yes, satiety of food is a hidden thing people don't talk about.

Eat warm porridge and on average you will feel twice as full as the equivalent calories in white bread: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b3cf/3b7d71a7485e6355e49b2e...

Anecdotes in this thread aside this is exactly what you would expect. I believe there is strong evidence for a metabolic set point maintained by the body established after some period of time. If you can maintain a weight for a year or something you body works to keep it.