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CNN Live At Daybreak

Many Americans Fighting Battle of the Bulge Without Long-Term Success

Aired May 03, 2002 - 05:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Turning now to a dreaded four letter word, diet. It's no secret many Americans are fighting the battle of the bulge, much without much long-term success.

So, just how do we lose weight and keep it off? It's the focus of CNN Presents this weekend.

Our Elizabeth Cohen has a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The struggle to stay fit is a decades old battle. Driven to find solutions, people have put their bodies through all sorts of strange contortions, trying one newfangled diet after another, most of which end in failure because we're unable to do the simplest thing of all, put down the fork.

DR. JIM HILL, CENTER FOR HUMAN NUTRITION, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: All of our physiology is geared up to eat when food's available. That's worked for most of our history. The problem is it's not working now.

DR RUDOLPH LEIBEL, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: The body chronically detects that you are at a lower body weight and tries to make adjustments that cause you to regain the weight.

COHEN: And that helps explain why 95 percent of people who lose weight gain it back again. Look at all these modern conveniences that are keeping us lazy and fat, even a contraption that does the walking for you. Is it any wonder that obesity among American adults has nearly doubled since 1980?

HILL: The epidemic of obesity is a byproduct of our success as a society.

COHEN: So now that we've given you all this bad news, our biological tendency to eat, eat, eat, a society that helps keep us lazy, how in the world does anyone ever lose weight?

Successful weight loss in this country is so unusual that Professor Hill keeps a list of people who've managed to do it. We asked two of his success stories, Karen Brown and Robert Romaniello, to tell us how they do it. Considering that six in 10 Americans are overweight or obese, we figured they had some lessons to teach us. Karen Brown used to weigh 194 pounds.

KAREN BROWN, SUCCESSFUL DIETER: I would sit and eat a pound and a forth of Oreos, which is the entire package, and a gallon of chocolate milk in one sitting.

COHEN: Then six years ago she slimmed down to 124 pounds and she's been there ever since.

ROBERT ROMANIELLO, SUCCESSFUL DIETER: There's enough for another half of me in here.

COHEN: Robert Romaniello used to weigh 218 pounds.

ROMANIELLO: I was a junk food junkie. I was a couch potato. I lived on tacos and at quick food places and did no exercises at all.

COHEN: Then five years ago, he lost 60 pounds. There are 3,000 people like Robert and Karen in Professor Hill's group and they tend to have seven things in common, seven things they did to lose weight and keep it off.

BROWN: Being able to feel good about who I am, that's the success in this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Wow, she's awesome. And why is it when you lose a bunch of weight you always dye your hair blonde? That always happens. Want to find out what those seven things are? Well, you'll have to watch CNN Presents: Fat Chance. It airs Saturday night at 8:00 Eastern time. Something else I've wondered about, when you go to the doctor to get a checkup and they weigh, you, why do you always weigh five pounds more than you thought you did? It's a mystery never to be solved.

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