Food for thought.

• Author: Nicholson, Nick
• Position: Medicine & Health - Weight gain

MAYBE YOU have been heavy your entire life, or you never lost the pregnancy weight, or the pounds your high school football coach was ecstatic about when you were his star lineman have morphed into less muscle and more fat. One day you realize that you are bigger than most of the people around you. You know you are not perfect, but it does not seem that you eat that much differently than everyone else. How in the world did you end up as this super-sized version of yourself?

Most people do not become obese by binge eating or a thyroid problem. Weight gain can be unnervingly insidious and usually comes from eating anywhere from 10 to 100 calories more than you need per day.

If you eat the equivalent of one Life Saver, only 10 calories, over your body's caloric needs every day, you will have gained one pound by the end of a year. Increase those extra calories to 100 a day, and you will be 10 pounds heavier than you were just a year before. If you keep it up for 10 years, you will step on the scale finding that you have gained a staggering 100 pounds. That is why you can wake up at 40 thinking you really have not been eating that much to find that you have crossed the line into obesity.

Most people have no idea how overweight they are until something bad or embarrassing happens. It is as though your mind's eye protects you from seeing yourself as you really are up until the moment when your doctor tells you that you have diabetes or you see a photo of yourself at the company picnic.

"I was at a party with my husband and realized I was the biggest woman there, including a lady who'd had a baby just five days before."

"My friends and I had to walk a few blocks to get to a restaurant. By the time we got there I was sweaty and out of breath, and they were all fine. I was so embarrassed."

"I went to a meeting with potential clients and couldn't fit in the chair at the conference table. That was it for me."

"I went with my friends to an all-you-can-eat sushi bar and we sat together at one table.

We're all pretty heavy. I noticed other people in the restaurant staring at us like we were a bunch of pigs. I had to get out of there. I didn't want to be part of that group anymore."

Whatever inciting event led to your decision, the day comes when you resolve that you are going to lose the weight--period. You go on a diet and drop three sizes, but then go back up four. You try a different diet. Same result. You combine exercise with yet another diet. No...