Fatist anyone?

[mr friendly guy]

2. Medical reactions - hmm. Unless you are refering to allergies which cause swelling, and consider that fattening I can't really think of anything specific aside from maybe chronic steroid use (not the anabolic steroids athletes take, but steroids to treat medical conditions). In any event chronic steroid use causing weight gain would start falling under the umbrella of Cushing's syndrome which I will touch on next.

SSRIs (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Celexa, Paxil, prozac, zoloft, and Snow's personal drug of yesteryear Lexapro) are fairly common ones. Weight gain and drowsiness from metabolic slowdown are right in the side-effect list.

Fair enough. I also can't believe I didn't think of insulin when I posted, as that also causes weight gain. Which is not a good thing if you are a type II diabetic and hence likely fat.

[General Brock]

Tell me you're joking. Those sandwiches look utterly disgusting.

I wish I were. While I've been blessed with a body that doesn't easily put on excessive weight, I did abuse it and suffered from the not-uncommon contradiction of being at once malnurished and overfed. It took a long time to identify get over a junk food 'addiction'.

No easy task, when cheap sugars, high carbs and running low on vitamin D and essential minerals really screws with the brain. It wasn't as bad as a 'Moonie diet', but it was an unpleasant experience that crept up over time. Knowing better in the first place only seemed to make me think I could get away with it.

Some of the unhealthy patterns of thought related to perceiving 'comfort foods' never quite left.

[Simon_Jester]

Moonie diet? What do they eat?

[Ariphaos]

Didn't read that very closely, she knows that now, that's why she mentioned it as a bad behavior she picked up as a result of the way she was treated because she was fat. And she's not that much of an exception either. One of the first things out of peoples mouths when you've been dieting long term and its having little effect 'Diet harder' or 'you must still be snacking, eat less' which is what she did. And so do a lot of other people. A lot of eating disorders start for that very reason.

And this is the crux of the matter.

There's something not yet properly researched about what the body goes through when someone cuts down to one or two meals a day in order to facilitate their diet. You become lethargic, slow down, sleep more, do less.

I'm pretty sure I'm actually eating more than I was while I was gaining weight. I'm eating less per meal, yes, but now I'm eating five meals on average per day. Meal size was the only place I could end up cutting - and I suddenly ended up starving, finding times to snack similarly sized meals, and suddenly I'm at an energy level I haven't experienced since secondary school. And losing weight faster.

The "If you are overweight you are also malnourished" school of thought seems counter-intuitive at first, but it makes a lot more sense now. I'm eating more varied meals (vitamin supplements being just that - a supplement) by virtue of the smaller meal size, so my overall diet is nonetheless much healthier. I pay more attention to the calorie count of individual meals rather than my intake per day, so even when I go on a 'binge' it ends up being a binge of ~900 calories rather than ~2k.

[General Brock]

Moonie diet? What do they eat?

Moonies don't actually have a special dietary regimen. For the most part they eat normally.

Unification Church recruiting 'retreats' are a little different. They feed initiates with a high carb, low protein diet to raise blood sugar levels. It apparently makes people more susceptible to emotionalism. Used in conjunction with 'love bombing' - shows of 'affection or friendship' according to the wiki - people become malleable to brainwashing and conversion. In the book I read, a long time ago, I think it was mostly rice. The technique doesn't always work, but some people always convert at those workshops.

According to some cult specialists, its not an unusual technique anymore but the Moonies pioneered it.