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After a fast start to magazine's challenge, participants largely fell back into old habits

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

By Christopher Snowbeck, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Men's Health magazine's weight-loss challenge to the men of the Large community in Jefferson Hills has ended with a whimper.

	Jan Jennings, the president and CEO of Jefferson Regional Medical Center, has lost 36 pounds. (Tony Tye, Post-Gazette)

There was quite a bang when the campaign kicked off in June, with roughly 180 men taking on the challenge to get fit.

But six months later, the magazine reports that only 25 men ever reported their weight loss.

The grand total lost: 209 pounds.

That's particularly paltry considering that 178 pounds had been lost by September.

"They might have lost more, but just didn't tell us about it. Or they could have just failed," said Joe Kita, executive writer with the magazine. "We have no way other than the honor system to know how much they lost."

Kita thinks the campaign started well.

Many men showed up for an event at the Large Volunteer Fire Department that was broadcast on national television. Local restaurants promised to offer heart-healthy entrees. Men received fitness guides from the magazine, free six-month subscriptions and periodic tips on losing weight -- all under the winning slogan "Help Large Get Small."

Interviews with men in Large don't fully explain what happened, but it's clear that the fanfare has given way to the sobering realities about the difficulty of losing weight.

Jim Owen had a head of steam at the beginning, taking regular walks and dramatically changing his diet. He found inspiration from weekly meetings of a Weight Watchers group at Dick Corp., one of the largest employers in Large. The group pledged to lose a combined 300 pounds and Owen said he'd provide a third of it.

But Owen still has another 76 pounds to go toward his goal, and the Weight Watchers group has disbanded. The lack of peer pressure has hurt, Owen said, as has a job schedule that's required the safety officer to travel a lot.

"You're generally in a restaurant for the evening meal and you're around people ordering the nice steaks," he said. "It's really hard to say 'no.' "

During the summer, Owen was walking three miles in 34 minutes every afternoon. He could feel the difference in his golf game, where he shed three strokes per round. But it's been tough to keep exercising in the cold winter.

Owen was one of three Large men whose weight-loss journey has been chronicled by ABC's "Good Morning America." Sgt. Bill Potts of the Jefferson Hills Police Department initially found that the television spotlight helped him stick with the program. But the third man, Scott Deutsch, didn't even want to talk about his experience.

Mary Larcinase, the mayor of Jefferson Hills, said she knows more men have lost weight than the total reported by the magazine, but that they just want to keep their efforts private.

But she acknowledges that the experience in Large has shown that getting small is tough.

The campaign has been positive because it's made people more aware of the need to stay healthy, Larcinase said. And it has drawn the spotlight to the community. Last week, Larcinase received a package from an Alaskan company that wanted to know how the men were doing and had health information to share.

"Everybody has good intentions when it comes to recognizing these sorts of problems and dealing with them, but everyone has a lot of obstacles between home, family and work," she said. "Our world is picking up some and everybody seems to be in a faster mode, but we do need to take the time and think of our health."

Jan Jennings, president of Jefferson Regional Medical Center, sounded a similar note when talking about his weight-loss journey.

Jennings has dropped from 300 to 260 pounds and has gone down two suit sizes. (He didn't report that weight loss to the magazine.)

An exercise physiologist at the hospital helped Jennings craft his plan. He started by eating between 2,200 and 2,500 calories per day. With diet changes, he's cut the total by about 250 calories per day but, more important, is burning off another 450 calories on each of the five days a week that he walks.

His secret?

"To me, the most important piece of physical fitness equipment is the TV in front of the treadmill," he said.

Every night, Jennings tunes into "Hardball" with Chris Matthews or Donahue or Connie Chung and starts walking. An hour later he stops, although sometimes he's on such a roll he doesn't want to. It's a different sort of roll than the one alluded to in his "Shake, Rattle and Roll" nickname from the Pirates fantasy baseball camp he attended in Florida a few years ago.

Jennings has lost an average of 1 or 2 pounds a week and still hopes to drop another 62. He was full of jokes at the beginning of the campaign about why he needed to lose weight. Six months later, a friend who also lost weight has helped him to see a deeper reason for getting fit.

"He talked to me about how he felt it was his duty to be around for his family, to do the right thing for the people who depended on him. And boy, did that have an impact on me," Jennings said. "If you have a family, they're dependent on you, they're looking to you for support. The least you can do is take care of yourself."