Corbett Bennett
Age:18
Height: 6′4″
Weight: 170

My son Corbett blithely made this statement to me when he was in high school. He was not kidding. To Corbett, losing weight was simply a matter of not eating as many chips, or having a second bowl of ice cream. It had nothing to do with late night noshing or stressed-out snacking. Those ideas were foreign to Corbett. Food was fuel and if your tank was full, you didn’t top it off, you just stopped. Duh!

I remember looking at him like he was from outer space. Clearly he was not my child. Wasn’t the craving trait passed on genetically?

Apparently not. But Corbett inadvertently makes a point worth pondering: people deal with food in vastly different ways. Some of us do as Ben Franklin counseled, they “eat to live“. And the other 95% of us, the ones who have joined Weight Watchers multiple times, “live to eat“.

Corbett is older and wiser now, but he stands by his statement. And I have to agree that, essentially, he is right. All we have to do to lose weight is to eat less. It really is that simple, and that difficult. Eat to live, not live to eat. I don’t know about you, but those words make me want to head straight for the refrigerator.

For years I have sought to understand what makes some people succeed at losing weight–sometimes more than 100 pounds–while many others succeed at first, only to lose their motivation and begin the immensely frustrating cycle of losing, gaining, losing, gaining, over and over again. What is the fundamental difference between those who can go the distance and those who cannot?

This is no easy question, and it’s the really big carrot (thanks again to Lulu for providing the prop) that the diet industry has been grasping for. Whoever comes up with the solution to America’s obesity problem will no doubt be sainted, (don’t you need to perform a miracle to become a saint?) not to mention become Bill Gates-rich.

Alas, however much I hate to admit this, I have concluded that there is, as yet, no such carrot. Popular celebrity-endorsed meal replacement programs provide only temporary success with their portion-controlled frozen meals. Once you go back to the real world of food, like Kirstie Alley, you gain it back. It seems inevitable.

Weight Watchers sincerely touts the necessity of a permanent lifestyle change, and therein lies the rub. Most of us know what to do, we just can’t commit to doing it long term, which, let’s face it, means for the rest of our lives. I don’t fault Weight Watchers. I think they’re on the right track. But, until someone comes up with a real miracle, Vince Lombardi may have the most honest approach. It may not be glamorous, but losing weight requires hard work, dedication and determination.