I will go on a limb and say from my experience in talking to doctors that doctors know very little about how to lose weight. The same is true for the multi-billion-dollar weight loss industry, which consists of diets, dietary supplements and now drugs such as Ozempic or Wegovy. 

From my experience of losing a lot of weight, you should not starve yourself. Therefore, you do not need willpower to lose weight—you just need brains. Specifically, if your caloric intake is slightly less than your caloric requirement and you keep it going for months at a time, you must lose weight, pure and simple.

When doing that, your weight will fluctuate daily up and down by two or three pounds, but with a definite and steady downward trend.

Then, the question is how to find out what the caloric requirement of your body is. I am 5 foot 10 inches in height. I am moderately active, and my iPhone tells me that my caloric requirement is 1,800 kcal a day. My wife is 5 foot 4 inches, and has maintained her body weight of 110 pounds for the past 75 years. Her caloric requirement is only 1,400 kcal a day.

For a brisk 2.5-mile walk, I need an additional 220 kcal, while my wife needs only 140 kcal.

If these numbers of calories seem rather low, then this is an explanation of why we have an “obesity crisis” in this country. Namely, the food is easily available and cheap, and most people habitually overeat.

I will admit that this has been a new “religion” for me only for the past 10 years. I learned it by observing my wife and our son, a spine surgeon, who both have been eating sensibly all their lives. Most overweight people feel they are just fine. I thought so too. My wife never told me anything about my weight. Until I bought a new ski racing suit, size large, and I could not fit into it. Only then did my wife say that I looked like a Michelin Man. That did it!

I lost 73 pounds after the age of 70. 

I want to emphasize that we do not count calories and we eat anything and everything. For there are no fattening foods but there is only overeating. And one knows very well whether he/she is overeating or not.

The last thing I want to mention is drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, etc. Many see them as a possible solution. I believe that this is wrong. First, we do not need these drugs to lose weight. Second, the American population is overmedicated as it is. Doctors are prescribing drugs left and right to avoid the accusation of negligence. As a result, many Americans, and seniors in particular, use willingly 10 to 12 drugs daily potentially with serious side effects. And those serious side effects compromise our natural body immunity that we will need again when and if the next epidemic, such as COVID-19 strikes.

Ivan Orisek of Forestburgh, NY, used to weigh a lot more than he does now.