Columnist Susan Snyder: Weighed down by military inflexibility

Tuesday, March 28, 2000 | 9:31 a.m.

In four months Susan Lalin will retire as a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

Whether she retires with her full rank as staff sergeant or with one stripe stripped from her uniform hangs in the balance of a bathroom scale.

For although the 45-year-old Persian Gulf veteran lost 34 pounds in the military's weight management program, officials say she failed three weigh-ins since 1997. She is to be demoted, losing a stripe and about $300 a month in retirement pay.

"I've served for almost 20 years, and this is the thanks I get," said Lalin, a medical technician.

Lalin says the Air Force wanted her to lose 51 pounds, and she's still chipping away at the other 17. The program sets no time limit.

It's been hard because Lalin has chronic hypothyroidism for which she takes hormones that promote weight gain, she said. During her tenure in the weight program she has had a pelvic infection, hernia surgery, a hysterectomy and currently suffers from a hip problem that makes it difficult for her to walk or stand.

Exercise isn't easy, but she manages.

"When my son goes to bed, I hop on the bike," she said.

Air Force officials say her efforts have produced "negative results" because of the three backslides. The weigh-in that sealed her fate was in December.

She had gained a pound. Her attorney, Air Force Capt. Wendy Davis, calls it outrageous.

"How can 34 pounds be negative results?" Davis asks in an appeal filed earlier this month.

In the appeal Davis says program enforcement is inconsistent. Records show six other Nellis Air Force Base members have failed weigh-ins as many as seven times with little or no action taken against them. None has lost more than 6 pounds total, she writes.

In 1998 the Air Force discharged 693 members because they couldn't lose weight. Last year it was 588 members, Davis says.

"These are good troops who simply can't lose enough weight fast enough and consistently enough," the attorney writes. "In an age where we are undermanned and overworked to the point that there isn't time to incorporate physical fitness in our daily routines, there has to be some implementation of flexibility and good judgment."

Judgment is the issue, not Air Force standards, Lalin and Davis say. A demotion just weeks before retirement seems more like a push for a pay reduction rather than an incentive to conform to a military weight reduction.

"It's just soured the military for me," Lalin said.

Lalin is fighting the same battle almost 20 percent of the nation's population is fighting. It's a battle that won't end when her uniform is retired.

The military has a responsibility to keep fit troops. But demoting a middle-age woman with thyroid problems for losing "only" 34 pounds seems flinty.

When it comes time for those who have served their countries to retire, perhaps they should be measured by their service instead of their waistlines.