Written by David DesRoches
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 08:00 AM
It took Weight Watcher’s CEO David Kirchhoff nine years of battling his weight before he finally reached his target size. Now, three years later, Darien resident Kirchhoff took his journey and wrote it down in a new book, “Weight Loss Boss: How to finally win at losing — and take charge in an out-of-control food world,” which went on sale this week.
Kirchhoff is quick to acknowledge the irony of his personal weight struggle under the light of his profession as leader of one the world’s most popular weight loss programs. “I’m a slow learner,” Kirchhoff said. “You can quote me on that.”
The core of his book is about the obesity epidemic that plagues the U.S. and how to turn it around. To this end, he is donating all proceeds from book sales to the nonprofit Share Our Strength, which fights to end childhood hunger and promote nutritious eating habits.
“It’s a terrific group,” Kirchhoff said. “They’re out there trying to solve two vexing issues.”
His writing infuses scientific research about human behavior with the question of healthy eating, and concludes that forming healthy habits is the key to maintaining a healthy weight.
“It’s habits, not willpower,” he said. “Knowing what to eat is kind of a less complicated part. Make it happen in your day-to-day life so it’s not a decision, it’s on autopilot, that’s the key.”
The book is full of revelatory anecdotes about Kirchhoff’s personal struggle with weight gain, dotted with self-deprecating humor and insights. “I have a long history of failures, inadequacies, and bad habits, even today,” Kirchhoff writes in the book. It took him nine years of battling his bulge before he got his weight down from a plump 242 pounds to 203, a number he maintains today.
“People who go through cycles of losing weight — feeling good, then watching the weight come back — you need to recognize that what you’re doing should be something you can happily live with the rest of your life,” Kirchhoff said.
Fad diets should be avoided, unless a person feels they could live with that diet until death. “You should be thinking, ‘Is this something that can keep me happy forever?’” Kirchhoff said. “If you run around feeling depraved, you’re gonna break. If you’re miserable, you’ll break.”
Kirchhoff said each person has to find the routine, diet and inspiration that works for them, and stick to it. “Sample widely, choose well, lock it in, and your world just became a whole lot simpler,” he writes. “Not having to make choices can mean not having to make not-so-good choices.”
His conversational tone mirrors that of his blog, Man Meets Scale, which he started three years ago to reach out to men about weight loss. He was approached by Rodale publishers and asked about combining his thoughts into his first book, and Weight Loss Boss was born.
“It ended up coming out really fast,” Kirchhoff said of his writing, adding that about half of it is reworked material from his blog posts. Never shy to admit his weaknesses, Kirchhoff draws the reader in, giving him a neighborly and approachable appeal, and subsequently distancing himself from the detached and beguiling image that many associate with heads of international corporations.
He’s also quick to point out that the book is not tailored for Weight Watchers members, nor is it attempting to get people to join his program. “A lot of the strategies I talk about and advocate, anybody can do,” he said. “Keeping track of foods, being more mindful, anybody can do that. We don’t have a monopoly on that.”
Working on the book in his spare time, Kirchhoff developed ideas and conclusions that became apparent as he sifted through his blog posts and new research. “I think the most fulfilling thing for me, was literally having the ability to take three years of thinking about a lot of different topics, and see it condense and realize how all these concepts connect to each other,” Kirchhoff said. “As I’m writing the book, light bulbs are going off — ‘I’ve never thought of this that way.’”
Kirchhoff stays away from discussing the value of organic and local foods, and he avoids the controversy over genetically modified foods, choosing instead to focus on eating behavior.
“You can never really go wrong picking up fruits and veggies at a local market,” he said. “But that’s not the only way to eat healthy foods.”
The food industry can help consumers by making nutrition labels easier to understand, Kirchhoff said, and decreasing portion size. Americans have access to 600 more calories per day than 30 years ago, according to Kirchhoff, and when combined with the ubiquity of desk jobs, this country is a perfect storm for rampant obesity.
Even if people are able to make healthy choices, American society overflows with food options, and many of them are unhealthy. “That’s not going to go away,” Kirchhoff said. “The only thing that can change is how we interact with those foods. If people start demanding higher quality foods, the merchants will respond.”
What sets the U.S. apart from its European contemporaries is sheer density of dining options, according to Kirchhoff. “And I think they’re wired a little bit differently,” he added.
Obesity has nearly tripled in the U.S. since the 1960s, when roughly 13% of people were classified as obese, which means that 20% or more of their weight is body fat. It’s estimated to cost U.S. society $147 billion in annual health costs because of obesity, and employers dole out around $13 billion annually for obesity-related problems, according to Kirchhoff.
Weight wasn’t always a problem for this Washington, D.C. native. “I was insanely skinny,” Kirchhoff writes. “I’m half surprised that my inwardly facing belly button didn’t poke out of my back.”
Once he went to college he discovered “a scintillating range of dining options” at the school cafeteria that led him to gaining 45 pounds his first year. After school and marriage to his wife, Sandee, he moved to Darien in 1999 to work for PepsiCo. He considers his current job as a bit of personal contrition.
He joined Weight Watchers in 2000 to run its website division, and decided to also become a member. He became CEO in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2009 that he was finally able to develop the lasting habits which helped him reach and maintain his target weight.
Going to Weight Watchers group meetings and having to weigh in a person who had actually gained weight was the spark that woke him out of his dietary stupor, he said. Now a father of two daughters, Harley and Lila, he remains committed to helping others find and maintain their own spark.
“The tendency for all of us is to look at our own challenges and failings and convince ourselves that we’re the only ones who are suffering from that,” Kirchhoff said. “In truth, this is everybody’s struggle. When we surround ourselves with other people, we cut ourselves a break… (and) we ultimately have a lot more success.”
ddesroches@darientimes.com
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