Record Dieter Just Waists Away

--Roley McIntyre didn’t appreciate the jokes about being 5 by 5. He was, after all, a full 5 feet, 10 inches tall--with a 6-foot, 6-inch waistline. At the height--or width--of his obesity, he drove from the back seat of his custom-made car and slept on a bed built with timber beams. Once, McIntyre got wedged in a turnstile at a soccer match. The machine had to be destroyed to free his 578 pounds. But the 33-year-old civil servant from Kesh in Northern Ireland continued his excessive life style, which included lunches of eggs, a half-pound of bacon and nine or 10 potatoes, until his doctor warned him that his weight would kill him in five years. That was 18 months and 389 pounds ago. Now, thanks to a 1,500-calorie daily diet, McIntyre has won a spot in the Guinness Book of Records and the Slimmer of the Year award from Britain’s Slimming magazine, which called him its “most remarkable success story ever.” His wife of one week, Josephine, nominated him for the contest. The new Mrs. McIntyre, who met her husband when he weighed 280, on the way down to his current svelte 189, said: “I can get my arms ‘round him much more easily now.”

--Neither snow, rain, heat nor gloom of night could stop Rob Sweetgall. His 22 blisters, however, did slow him down a bit. But that’s understandable for a man who has traveled 10,750 miles--by foot. “I’m just one person walking the highway,” said the 37-year-old Sweetgall, who was in Boston on the final leg of a 50-state journey to promote walking for cardiovascular health. Sweetgall, who started his walk last Sept. 7 from his hometown of Newark, Del., hopes to finish the remaining 850 miles in New York by Sept. 5. The former engineer said he has weathered Southern heat waves, five snowstorms and 30 days of subzero temperatures.

--Rhoda Haight isn’t certain if her hairdresser knows for sure what happened but, frankly, she doesn’t care. She’s taking him to court. The former model went to Chicago’s Mark-James salon a few weeks back for a $60 “body perm” and a $37.50 haircut. What she left with--if the description in her Cook County Circuit Court lawsuit is true--might have made even the NBC peacock wince. Haight said that her hair was the color of “India ink” in the front and orange in the back. Complementing that, on either side of her head, were red stripes against a black background. Not pleased with the multichromatic look, she returned the next day for further treatment. That, her lawyer said, is exactly what she got: a green tint to complete the spectrum. Hairdresser Mark Stein does, in fact, think he knows the problem. He said the complications arose because Haight had been doing her own hair for years.