Noted on the root veg stuff, will look into it. Agreed with everything here. // EDIT: just to add a couple of points here: * There are documented cases of making huge dietary changes and being able to stick with them. The most notable ones are the morbidly obese cases that fasted on rice or even just water for 6 to 12 months and managed to have zero issues afterward and remained a healthy size (skinny). * I think I know the reason why huge dietary are really difficult: you hormones are what control how much you eat not you. Basically, if you just eat different over a long period of time your hormone feedback loops will eventually re-regulate them selves to match the enviornmental conditions. So, for example, I mentioned that I don't know how I upregulated McD consumption to a weekly meal. Well, I kind of know I just don't remember the process because it happened soooo slowly over a long period of time. But upregulation of consumption has usually the following patterns for me: a) Sugar - I always had a coke with McD meals. Sugar makes everything taste good. Ever try eating pizza without a coke? I don't think it's possible to eat pizza without a coke. Sugar not only makes everything taste good, sugar makes you eat MORE than you would normally. There is a phenomenon known to scientists that sugar HAS NO UPPER LIMIT TO CONSUMPTION. All foods known to man have a natural satiation point. You cannot overeat potatoes, meat, fish, rice or anything, eventually you just get sick of it. But add sugar to any of these foods (where it makes sense) and all of a sudden you can eat an infinite amount of it. This is a real testable property of sugar. On top of that, coke has salt in it. So, not only does sugar upregulate what you eat, the salt in the coke makes you more thirsty making you drink larger and larger sizes of coke. b) Starches - as posted by others, a starch is a sugar. All sugars spike your insulin, insuling upregulates how much fat you store but insulin also control a lot of other processes and upgregulates other hormones ... kind of throwing your hormone response into a high state of chaos as if you had ah it of heroin or something. I think french fries being fried and super salted and being a pure starch really does a number on the system. Your hormone leves basically go,holy shit this is the good stuff, more please. c) Salt. Salt can make any boring food tasteinteresting. McDs salts their food liberally. Anyway, most people say that if you slowly increase how much you eat you will eventually aclimatize. This is true but what I think is happening is one layer below that: If the food is rich in sugars, starches, veg oil (nicely made tasty with salt too), what you are really doing is upregulating your hormone response loops and strengthening them over time. Every time the hormone feedback loop is upregulated to a new higher default you are going to create withdrawal symptoms if you try to downregulate. Which would explain why we have documented cases of EXTENDED FASTING / extended severe dietary changes working: If you fast or change your diet and can commit to 6 to 12 months of change, your hormone feedback loop will downregulated into a new normal feedback loop and you will remain skinny. The problem with the severe change is that you have to absolutely commit to a long term dietary change like that and you will have to do real work including dealing with severe withdrawal symptoms. NOTE: Again, these are notes for me, the post was super intersting, thanks!