For Many, January Is Cruelest Month : ‘Tis the Season to Sweat Out Resolutions for 1986

New Year’s is a time of action as well as promises, according to weight-loss centers, churches and other institutions of self-renewal in the San Fernando Valley.

If this New Year’s is like the last, many Valleyites will make it an occasion to ring out the old self and ring in a new, improved model.

They will not only make resolutions to look, feel and be better in ’86. Many will actually go on the wagon, lose weight, get their noses fixed and eliminate the clutter in their closets by calling in a pro.

Hundreds will decide that 1986 is the year to get high-visibility pecs and start pumping iron.

Banner Months

“January is our best month,” said Gary Siegrist, manager of Gold’s Gym, a round-the-clock body-building establishment in Reseda. Gold’s Gym signs up five to 10 members a day during January, in contrast to an average of two a day the rest of the year, Siegrist said.

As of today, thousands of Valleyites will kiss bonbons goodby.

During January, 10,000 Angelenos will be enrolled in Weight Watchers, according to Trudi Musicant, area manager for greater Los Angeles. That projected enrollment will represent a surge of 75% over December, making January the venerable weight-reduction business’s biggest (excuse the expression) month.

“I guess everybody has the guilts after the holidays,” Musicant said. She described the calorie-dense period from Halloween to New Year’s Day as the long, dark night of the soul for individuals with food problems. It is not unusual to see a December Weight Watchers’ class of 12 swell to 80 in January, she said.

Quick Action

“Years ago we used to say it takes about two weeks after the first of the year for people to say, ‘Yeah, I really have to lose weight.’ But in the last three years, the day after New Year’s people are banging down the door,” she said. The organization adds staff each January in anticipation of the New Year’s crush. “We try to make sure they’re not going to have to stand in line too long,” she said.

Inevitably there are backsliders who are back doing whatever they resolved not to do on Jan. 1 by Ground Hog’s Day or by the time they consistently write “1986” on their checks, whichever comes first.

Lynn Levine, manager of the Diet Center in Canoga Park, recalled a New Year’s 1985 dieter who quickly dropped out. “Her husband offered her $1,000 to lose 10 pounds, and she couldn’t do it,” Levine said. “Her husband was motivated, but she wasn’t.”

‘Something for Yourself’

In contrast, Pat Ramirez, 34, of Sepulveda resolved to lose weight last New Year’s and did. The 4-foot-11 hairdresser weighed 109 pounds when she was interviewed earlier this week. Last New Year’s she weighed 220 1/2.

“I decided that if I made losing weight a New Year’s resolution, it would be easier,” she said. “I figured, ‘It’s the start of a new year. Do something for yourself.’ ”

Ramirez is now a part-time counselor at the Mission Hills Diet Center that helped her modify her eating habits. She said people treat her quite differently since she dieted away more than half her weight. “Men tend to look,” she said, emphasizing that her husband had been extremely supportive throughout the often trying experience. “When I was heavy, men didn’t look.”

Ramirez’s only resolution this year is to maintain her pared-down self.

Ed Waldvogel, 53, also vowed last New Year’s to trim down. The Granada Hills contractor, who started dieting at 212 pounds, reported this week, “I weighed 171 this morning.”

Like Ramirez, Waldvogel has no special resolution this year. “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t go out on my wife. I don’t really have anything except church things that I want to do better,” he said.

An unknown number of Valleyites will celebrate the New Year by corking the bottle.

An administrator for Alcoholics Anonymous in the Valley, who invoked AA’s commitment to anonymity and asked not to be identified, said she stopped drinking in 1973. And again in 1975.

She recalled that she finally “came in” to full-time sobriety late in January, 1975, after a New Year’s celebration that she can’t remember at all. Her husband had left her.

“Women will stay with alcoholic husbands a lot more readily than men will stay with alcoholic wives,” she said. Alone, she rang out the old and rang in the new by drinking Cold Duck until she passed out. She is relieved she had the good sense to stay home and out of her car.

Daily Vow

Every day is New Year’s for alcohol abusers, she said. “We make a resolution every single day that we’ll never drink again.”

She doesn’t know how many problem drinkers sign up on New Year’s Day. Her suspicion is that the full moon is the most reliable predictor. But the winter holidays always swell the ranks, she said. “There are always some people who can’t face another Christmas as alcoholics or they’re remorseful about their behavior during Christmas.”

Her own resurrection was complicated, she said, by the physician who told her there was no such thing as a Jewish woman alcoholic. She knew better.

At least four people will celebrate New Year’s by having someone else go into their homes and eliminate the chaos. Lila Greene, a 53-year-old Encino resident who runs a company called Renta Yenta, sold four get-your-house-if-not-your-life-in-order packages this Christmas Hanukkah season. Each cost at least $100.

New Beginning

Greene’s theory is that, like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” we reappraise our lives at Christmastime. And then, she pointed out, “There’s always the chance for a new beginning.”

Greene said her favorite New Year’s gift this year was bought by a professional woman for herself. “She decided she was never going to have her checkbook not balance ever again.” For $100 a month, Renta Yenta will pay her bills and balance her account twice a month.

Greene doesn’t have a New Year’s resolution this year, but she has evolved a philosophy of life. “If I had known how old 50 was,” she said, “I certainly wouldn’t have spent 30 years worrying about the baseboards in my bathroom.”

Some people will decide to get new faces for the new year. Their new thighs can wait until they need a new bathing suit in the spring.

Judy Wilson of Woodland Hills is office manager for Dr. Peter F. Giacobazzi, a Tarzana plastic surgeon. Wilson, who schedules the surgeries and interviews patients, said December and January are particularly popular for facial operations.

‘Frenzy of Surgery’

“It seems to me there’s a frenzy now of facial surgery,” Wilson said. “Things that show. I always associated it with availability of money--Christmas bonuses and that sort of thing. We don’t do as much body contouring this time of year, breast augmentations and suction lipectomies. I assume that’s because people are not exposing their bodies as much this time of year.”

Money is particularly important to individuals having cosmetic surgery because so many of the operations are elective and not covered by medical insurance.

Although the coming of New Year’s helps some people gird their loins and strengthen their resolve, it isn’t magic.

You might predict, for example, that many men who decide to dedicate their lives to God’s work as priests would do so on Jan. 1, for centuries a Roman Catholic feast day of religious dedication (the Feast of the Circumcision) as well as New Year’s Day. Not so, according to the Rev. Gary Bauler, director of vocations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Each year about 12 young men enter the diocesan seminary in Camarillo. For them, as for freshmen everywhere, the new year begins in September.