I went on a high fat diet to lose weight but these two other goals of mine were achieved with zero effort
So the good news is that the struggle is temporary. Bad news is that cheat meals reset your progress, especially cheat meals when you're hungry. And research suggests this is not related to how much you eat. A slice of pizza or a whole pizza, it's enough to make the brain remember that pizza is good when you're hungry.
If a relapse happens, it's because I had a good experience and kept going down that train of thought but with other foods. "Hey, that reminds me, I haven't had chocolate in a while, wonder what that's like..."
This fits very well of people gaining weight around the holidays, when you're exposed to lots of delicious food that's outside the daily diet. And once they do this, next time they're hungry you can bet that vegetable rice will not be the first thing that pops into their heads. Doesn't help that we tend to starve ourselves before big meals out of guilt, which only makes the habituation stronger.
Another reason is the "voluntary" part. It helps a lot if giving up food is a choice, as opposed to something imposed by a diet. If you see cake, make a cost-benefit calculation and decide that it's nice but doesn't fit into your lifestyle, you're likely better of than if you decide one day that cake is forbidden because it's bad.
100% on the carb/sugar cravings, though.
Do you drink alcohol straight? If you tend to drink beer, wine, or cocktails, maybe it's related to carbs in drinks?
I should do this again, I'm back where I was; lots of sweets and beer thanks to the pandemic and boredom.
A low carbohydrate diet stabilises blood sugar whereas a high carb diet causes swings in blood sugar levels and actually prevents the body from burning fat. Insulin causes the blood sugar to drop then cortisol is released which stimulates the appetite for sugar, causing snacking. When on a high fat, calorie deficient diet, you're still hungry sometimes but not like the cravings you have when your blood sugar is all over the place from eating a high carb diet, Your body isn't prevented by insulin from going to the 'pantry' (your fat tissue) to keep you going.
Also aerobic exercise, ie walking NOT running burns fat. The latter will cause your glycogen stores to be raided as well as stimulating cortisol to tell you that you need carbs, URGENTLY!
I used to live with a guy who was the same with chocolate biscuits. Once, I bought a packet of chocolate "Hob nobs" (very nice), eat one and went out. When I returned, the packet was full and unopened. "So what's the story" I asked, and it turned out that this guy had had one biscuit from the packet, then another, then scoffed the lot. So he went out and bought a new packet (sweetie) and took one biscuit out so I'd be none the wiser. Then the same happened and he scoffed the whole packet. Then he bought another packet and left it sealed for fear of doing the same: "I can't eat 3 packets of Hob-nobs in a day"
On top of that, I believe the GP was talking about not craving those at all as opposed to consciously abstaining despite the desire.
Having been on a similar diet in the past, I second the notion.
The point, though, is if you've succeeded at cutting out carbs, then it's pretty likely you did so by no longer desiring them. So to have a set of people who succeeded at low carb diets claim that the low carb diet was the potential cause of no longer desiring carbs is a strong selection bias. It's like a fooled by randomness type scenario.
It's not like they said "I started playing golf and no longer desired carbs" which would really be novel.
For many people though, cutting out carbs come at an expense. You need to police yourself constantly in order to not give in to cravings. You get twitchy, you get anxious, you get a lot more withdrawal symptoms and you need to soldier through them.
Once you're out of the habit and your body has adapted to getting most of its energy from other nutrients, the cravings reduce or disappear.
Playing golf will probably have no real connection to these results. Making an effort (sometimes a huge one) to cut them down to the point where they cease to be a phisiological and psychological necessity does.
On the point of alcohol being a carbohydrate, you may be right. I am no chemist. It does contain all the same core elements. From a behavioural, dieting and additction points of view though, they are quite different.