The depressing article of the day:
The Fat Trap - The New York Times

It's a long read, but very informative. Buried in there is the hope that leptin replacement therapy can make it easier to keep weight off; it says that is years away but it is a 2012 article. As I approach goal, I am learning that almost done is barely begun. That small minority of people who keep weight off monitor maintenance as carefully as weight loss.

One ray of hope for me is that I was not at my highest weight for all that long; months, but not years, weighing over 220 (peak was 230) and I have only weighed that much twice. But I spent several years above 185 and at least a few years in a row at or above the low 190s. That still means my body is likely to put up a fight when I try to stay in the low 160s. From about age 25 to 40, I weighed close to 175 without a lot of variation. From 40 to 50, it was mostly in the 180s and never as high as 200. After age 50, I hit 200 a lot. That used to be my "freak out weight" that would get me to go into crash diet mode and lose back to 185 then almost immediately gain back to 190. Somewhere in my 50s, 200 became more acceptable and I weighed 200 or more quite a bit of the time, but not the majority of the time.

And here is an article that your annoying skinny friend should read:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-th...about-dieting/

They have the luck of the right genetics more than willpower.