"I sucked in my gut a lot, " says Mr. Kirchhoff, who has since lost 40 pounds.

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Kirchhoff made these statements in a talk at the 2011 TEDMED conference where, it turns out, he met BJ Fogg.

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This concept first came up for me in discussions with Stanford behavior design researcher BJ Fogg and continued in my interview with Weight Watchers CEO David Kirchhoff.

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But, as Kirchhoff described to me in an interview last week, the problem is complicated by the fact that there are multiple systems at play that impact what we eat.

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David Kirchhoff owns at least 42, 073 shares after this.

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Indeed, Kirchhoff says that the major differentiator between the company and its app-centric rivals on the one hand and the diet purveyors on the other, is that it has a program that everything ties into and that people are willing to pay for.

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