How to lose weight -- why we wrote the story

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Last week, we explained in the catchily headlined Why It’s Hard to Maintain Weight Loss exactly why a newly svelte figure almost never stays that way. The picture wasn’t pretty. As Shari Roan reported, the body has several systems designed to preserve weight at its highest level -- it likes those extra pounds.

But it wasn’t our intention that readers abandon their weight struggles -- and hope -- and stock up on barrel-sized bags of chips, hot dogs and assorted ‘stuffed’ foods. So we felt morally compelled to offer a ‘don’t give up’ message.

Thus, for this week’s ‘How 6 people lost weight and kept it off,’ Jeannine Stein tracked down some of the relatively few people who have managed to keep the weight off long-term.

What she found is that they changed their lives completely. They didn’t diet. They didn’t go for an after-dinner walk for a couple of weeks. Nope. They consistently eat far less than they did before, they’ve made exercise part of their routines, and they’re constantly working to maintain their weight loss. Weight-control is now second nature to them.

It’s daunting, I know. And tiring just thinking about it.

But the folks profiled seemed ... happy. And healthy. And generally positive about themselves. ... Even without stuffed food.

So because we want to fulfill our journalistic mission of improving people’s lives -- and because we’ve got a whole passel of research saying readers want useful information -- we offer up these stories on how to fight your body’s best efforts to regain the fat.

(Besides, there’s a limit to the number of stories any of us can stand bemoaning the ‘obesity crisis’ -- not to mention the use of the word ‘overweight’ as a noun. Enough already.)

-- Tami Dennis