The usual way to do that is to stop smoking entirely and eventually forget about it. You cannot stop eating. Food tastes good. We have infinite food available. The hell are we supposed to do about it?
Plenty of people have managed their food addictions and still are overweight. That's just the nature of it. If you think everyone who is overweight has an active food addiction, you should probably look into whether that's really true.
But obese, especially 35+ (never reached that, I caught myself a hair before), imho you need a 'food addiction', which was at least in my case either an overproduction of ghrelin or an hypersensitivity to it. Which kills any sort of temporary calorie restriction diet. My solution was a 5 day fast, and it worked well enough: I can now easily go hungry ( I am right now) and leave most of my meals hungry, without feeling more than a very, very mild discomfort (from a heavily to painful discomfort before, on the level of an occular migraine).
But I can’t seem to get weight off. I’ve tried GLP-1, appetite reduction medication, drinking a ton of water, etc.
I one point a few years ago I used to be much skinnier. The main difference between then and now is then I worked a physical job not in IT, was taking Adderall, and working long hours and didn’t have time to eat. So transitioning to a desk job I underestimated how much work it would be to make time to do physical activity and watch what I eat.
At this point I accept it may be an emotional thing for eating. I have a therapist but he doesn’t specialize in that area. Anyway I am just rambling.
28 to 25, yes, exercise needed.
The marketing and messaging for getting people to eat the right amount - "not too much! But also not too little!" is considerably trickier.
Also, you can put taxes on cigarettes, but you can't really put taxes on food...
I also think we're not all the same when it comes to these addictions. For example, I never had a smoking problem, although I do smoke. I must have smoked 10 cigarettes in 2024, even though I almost always have cigarettes on hand (I sometimes enjoy one or two when out drinking with people who smoke). Didn't smoke once during covid, when "going out" wasn't really allowed. Now, if you let a pack of Snickers bars in my house, there won't be any left one hour later.
So if the marketing and messaging for getting people to stop smoking is simple, it can be so for food, too: don't ever eat "junk food". At all. Haven't had a Snickers bar in years, and I seem to be doing fine. I've found it's orders of magnitude easier to not start eating at all than to attempt to "only have one" and hope I won't overindulge.
My first fast, the hunger 'spikes' were extremely painful. If 'broken leg' is a 10, the pain would be was a 6 to 9. Intermittently. Around every two hours, for a dozen minutes, from the end of the first day until the end of the second.
I was prepared. A doctor was consulted before, my sister was around, I took the week off, and yes, I entered ketosis 2 days before the fast. Still, it was very difficult.
It did help a ton though, because like my parent say, once you've gone hungry once and managed it fine ( day 3-4-5 were 'normal' to me), your body learn to accept hunger.
I now leave every meal hungry, and it's fine. I went from 34 BMI to 28 in less than two years, without changing anything other than the quantities I ate. The 28 to 25 took 5 years and physical exercise.
I used to eat a lot of junk food and got pretty fat after an injury which also had me drop my activity level. It's not easy, but with some will power, it's manageable to start eating other things, which help lessen the cravings for the junk. After a few months, the cravings disappeared completely.
Don't know if there's an equivalent for smoking / heroin.
I think 99 out of 100 doctors will not tell you to stop eating.
Just
- eat less
- eat less shit