Columnist Susan Snyder: No more weight for a new plan

Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004 | 12:36 p.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

November 27 - 28, 2004

Seeking professional weight-loss advice three days before Thanksgiving might seem like going to confession three days before boarding the Titanic.

But I was seeking passage on a safer ship.

I am not among the 30 percent of Americans who are obese. Rather, I am among the 34 percent taking the first shaky steps down that path. Together, we represent 64 percent of the nation's population.

The national news mentions obesity almost as often as it mentions Iraq. More than half of us live face-to-face with the former every day, yet we fear the latter more.

We rarely put faces on the issue of getting fat. When we do see a face, we're either making jokes or talking about gastric bypass surgery. We are the majority but are afraid to say so.

So here it is: I am getting fat, and I am afraid -- not of developing Type II diabetes or having a heart attack.

I am afraid of a size 8.

Certainly, plenty of people would be thrilled to wear, and should wear, a size 8. But two years and 15 pounds ago, I wore a size 4. If in two years I am wearing a 12 and two years after that a size 16, my 5-foot-4-inch body will look like an upright piano.

And I'll be sitting in Colleen Corey's office saying something she hears daily.

"People come in here and say, 'I've gained 50 pounds, and I have no idea how it happened' " said Corey, a registered dietician in Las Vegas.

For many of us, it started happening when that favorite skirt or pair of pants suddenly seemed a little more snug. And it's far more likely to happen to us after 40.

Around that age, Corey said, our bodies start losing the ability to build and retain muscle. Muscle helps us burn calories. Very simply, we need to build and strengthen our muscles (that includes our hearts) to maintain whatever size we need to maintain.

That doesn't mean the size 4 is ever going to hang in the closet again. But it does mean a size 6 is attainable and sustainable. There is nothing natural about gaining 15 pounds every two years.

Like the millions of people standing on the gangplank to obesity, I didn't need a fad, a pill or a new trainer standing over me in a gym.

"You need a plan," Corey said.

She asked a lot of questions about how I live my life before getting around to talking about what I eat. It turns we weren't looking for a diet plan, but a life one.

After 20 minutes, she surmised that I do too much outside of work and not enough of it is physically active. And, amazingly, I don't eat enough.

The enemy is not food but the daily chaos. Corey showed me that, like many of us moving toward chubby, I have made time for everything but eating right and exercising consistently.

How on earth did eating good food and taking daily walks in the sunshine become less desirable than gastric bypass surgery, strange diets and icky pills?

We seem to have lost our collective minds. Corey hopes to one day launch a community weight-loss initiative that will inspire Las Vegas Valley residents to set reasonable lifelong goals.

For now, she's helping us one by one. So I'm going to try eating right, moving around more and casting off commitments that interfere with either.

It sounds so crazy, it just might work.