And while we're embracing truth for your health's sake, here's another tidbit to consider. There's a reason why the proportion of overweight 80 year olds is far less than the proportion of overweight 30 year olds. And, by the way, as you think about this, forget science (although there are a bevy of peer-reviewed studies that shed light on this very matter).

Dumping political correctness for the moment, go ahead and drive over to the old folks home and count the number of people in their 80s and older, and then notice how many of them are fat. Then compare the ratio to what you find walking around the mall or the supermarket or sitting at computers at work.

It's really pretty simple. And perhaps scary. More fat people don't manage to live to become 80 or 90 than do their skinnier counterparts. Put differently, by the time the 80 year olds you visit at the home got there, most of their overweight friends had already dropped dead years before from weight-related illnesses.

Like heart attacks. And stroke. And cancer. And diabetes. Others died from secondary problems stemming from circulation issues, lost limbs, and other problems years before that so often began when somebody's inner food junkie got hooked on candy bars and other goodies.

Left to its own unbridled desires, and equipped with no internal parent to stem the intake, the inner food junkie won the moment but discarded decades of life in turn. But, hey, such individuals never had to worry about being counted as part of somebody's octogenarian research.

Of course, you will find another, younger group at nursing homes. Those are the ones in their late 60s and 70s whose fat has debilitated them but hasn't quite killed them off just yet. Just a few decades before, so many of them, like perhaps you, were concerned about weight because it made them look worse. Too bad such concerns weren't quite enough to encourage a full-frontal assault on the compulsive eater lurking inside who exercised so much illusory control for so long.

Far fewer of them make it to anywhere near 80. Now, in case nobody's ever spoken to you this roughly, kindly pardon the question: How many decades are you throwing away tonight when you open the refrigerator door during a break from TV? Seriously, how many?

It's time to get a handle on this, and it's likely that the causes are far deeper than you've trekked before. When you're ready to go there, we'll be ready to join with you in doing battle against that part of your that just can't stop. If today is the day, click here. Or click here for some other fun facts about fat.