Understanding weight issues

Over the past week I have had several patients lament to me that they have friends and relatives who do not understand why it is so difficult to gain control of weight. Clearly, there are some people whose metabolisms are such that they pretty much eat what they want and have no difficulty controlling their weight. These people have no comprehension of what it is like to basically look at food and gain weight. I will provide the following examples: When you hear about someone who goes incessantly to casinos and gambles their life savings away, lose their marriages because of this, etc., is it easy to understand how they can let that addiction ruin their lives? Or, how about the alcoholic who has a great family, job, etc., but yet continues to drink alcohol excessively, winds up with a DUI and has other issues severly impact his/her life? The point here is that "addictive" behaviors are difficult to understand unless you are the one with that addiction. To some extent, overeating and the use of food as a "treatment" is an addiction as well. It is very difficult to break addictions on your own. In my medical practice, when I have an alcoholic asking for my help in discontiuing drinking, I ALWAYS advise a program because on one's own, the failure rate is about 99.999%. Overeating and the development of obesity similarly is an addictive process and obtaining help for this, either via our program, Weight Watchers or other is important and should not be looked at as some "weakness".