Is my friend on steroids?

Are you watching her eat the food or just seeing it on instagram? It's not uncommon for food instagrammers to not actually eat the food they post.

Steroids dont do that.

Here's my guess:

1. She probably doesn't eat as much as you think. If she was actually eating 6 meals a day that were 2000 plus calories, no amount fo exercise, illegal diet pills, whatever, would keep her weight off. She is probably eating a lot less than you think.
2. She is probably more active now than she was when she was obese, so she has a higher TDEE from exercise which allows her to eat more than she used to and still maintain her weight.

This is not the first post I've seen from you regarding the issues of steriods, which has me concerned. You do not need any special substances to lose weight or get in shape. You just need a diet with a reasonable calorie deficit, exercise (not for weight loss, but for fitness goals if you have them), and most importantly, patience. I am not sure if you have the first two, but it seems like you may be lacking the last. This is a slow process. I have lost 33 pounds and greatly improved my fitness level/all around look, but it's taken 8 1/2 months to do that. It didn't happen overnight and I didn't starve myself or take any supplements to do it. Just the three things I've mentioned.

She could be photographing the food, but not eating it all. She could be bulimic, i.e., eating it and making herself throw up before most of it was digested (which would be a very, very unhealthy, very dangerous thing, so we'll hope it's not that). She could actually be regaining some weight, and it just isn't obvious yet. You don't know.

About the only (reasonably healthy) thing that will let a person eat lots, and not gain, would be doing lots of endurance exercise, and making it a point to move as much as possible in daily life. Even then, there's a limit someplace.

There is no pill or supplement or anything like that, that would let a person eat massive amounts, way beyond their calorie expenditure from daily life + exercise, and avoid gaining weight. If there were such a substance or strategy, everyone would do it. The people who know the strategy or sell the drug/supplement would be advertising it, and making lots of money (even if the thing were dangerous or illegal). (There are lots of "weight loss solutions" advertised that demonstrably don't work, and the people selling them make lots of money despite that.)

Other than possibly being concerned that your friend is doing something unhealthy, why does it matter? What helps us lose weight and be healthier is focusing on ourselves and our own best strategies, not on other people. I can understand why you'd be interested if you think she has a magical secret, but I'm quite certain she doesn't.

BTW, the whole somatotypes thing (endomorph, ectomorph, etc.) has been debunked: Not a real, science-based thing. It's true that some people have higher or lower calorie expenditures than others, even at the same body size and activity level, but the range is fairly narrow. For such matched people to be more than a low number of hundreds of calories different would be very, very unusual indeed. It's not thousands of calories different, in any practical scenario. Similarly, a few people have noticeably more or less genetic potential to add muscle mass under like condtions, but most people fall in a narrow range of potential. If you read "hardgainer" stories here, very often, a disinclination to eat (forgetting to eat, feeling full fast, having lots of food dislikes so eating less, etc.) can be part of the picture.

If there was a drug that turned food to nothing, most fat people would be on it. Steroids don't do that anyway. It's possible to be able to eat more when you're then than when you're fat if you drastically increase your activity level, it's also possible to photograph food and not eat it, or have a few bites and be done. Being obsessed with food and updating instagram with food stuff 6 times a day clearly signals something wrong is going on. Food deprivation does that, so she may be slipping into some kind of eating disorder. There is also a possibility that she is rebounding and may put on weight again.

Somatotypes were created by a psychologist in the 1940s in an effort to associate human "temperament types" to his made-up scientific-sounding classification of people based on body size and shape. It was a spectacular failure since it's foundation was in eugenics and proposed you could determine a person's intelligence, morals, ethics, and social value/worth based on how they physically looked. It had zip all to do with weight loss and ease thereof or what one should eat in order to achieve it.