You could ask the same of someone addicted to smoking or cocaine or whatever. Every fibre of your body is telling you to go eat/smoke/get high etc. It is an all consuming urge that relentlessly interrupts whatever else you are trying to do or think about. You literally cannot stop thinking about your next think you are going to eat.

For me, it is not even physical stomach ache as you suggest, it is the mental aspect of total and complete brain derailment until you go eat something.

I guess I could ask someone to lock me in a room or something. That is not practical though as unlike smoking or drugs you need to eat something to stay alive - you cannot just go 100% cold turkey to try and break the addiction because you need to eat eventually.

> You could ask the same of someone addicted to smoking or cocaine or whatever.

That comparison with addiction to illicit drugs always perplexes me, because those drugs are clinically known to cause physical addiction to that substance, but that's not the case for (most?) food.

I do get the thing about it completely consuming your brain though (and being doubly painful if your stomach's in pain) even if it's a different phenomenon than drug addiction, so I'm not discounting that at all.

It sounds like this is something you've tried in the past. Have you given your body enough time to adjust when you've tried this? From what I know, when people start to fast (note I'm not suggesting you fast—just cut your portions > 50%), it's way more painful in the beginning (both physically and mentally) than it is, say, 2-3 weeks later. If you haven't tried this, do you think you could give yourself a chance and just tolerate it for (say) 3 weeks? I wonder if having a definite end date to look forward to might make it easier for yourself to convince your brain to tolerate some hunger?

Of course this has been tried. I think you are doing people a disservice (and with respect frankly it is quite insulting) by thinking they have not tried to use simple will power. People are on diets for years (potentially their entire adult and lives) - of fucking course people have tried giving their bodies time to adjust.

If it was just a matter of waiting a few weeks then we'd not have an obesity epidemic in the west, nor would the huge huge huge dieting industry exist.

Sorry, I didn't mean this to be insulting. The reason I was suggesting tolerating some of the pain to give your body time to adjust is that I've actually seen some people (obviously not everyone, just some subset) who don't do that, responding that they fear letting themselves feel hunger for a few days is to much of a health risk (because otherwise why would their body feel hunger/pain, etc.). You might believe everyone tries this but it's simply not the case. Of course lots of people really do try everything and still gain weight, but for every stage in the process there are some who don't give it a chance (and not all unreasonably either), and I've seen that for this one in particular, hence why I brought this one up.

There are different levels and kinds of hunger. When I do what you suggest my brain and body don't work very well. After some time, blood sugar gets low and the glycogen stores in the liver are depleted. At this point my body tells me I'm dying. Obviously I've gone through this and lived.

My main point is that people will give mechanical advice for losing weight, but it's very hard to tell someone what feelings they will go through. It's very hard to tell someone else what 'normal' should feel like for them.

I wrote a long comment, but I kept erasing it because I don't really want to come across as trying to give medical advice, or telling you how to feel. I'm just hoping that the medical assessments you're describing (about glycogen, risk of death, etc.) are accurate ones given by your doctor in response to cutting your portions, not your own personal extrapolations or speculations—otherwise you might be letting your fears harm you rather than help you.