Sailors Who Go Overboard : Weight-Conscious Navy Tells Its Brass to Shape Up or Ship Out

Senior Chief Tom Cook would punch a wall when he got angry at his crew aboard a guided missile frigate, and then he would eat. And eat, and eat. His weight fluctuated between 205 and 260 pounds.

After 12 years of unswerving loyalty to the Navy, the 6-foot-1 Cook was recently told to lose weight or lose his job. “I was very, very angry,” said Cook, 32. “I’m just fat, but I’m doing my job. Why get rid of me?”

Because the Navy says overweight sailors and officers aren’t fit for combat, and it is cracking down.

In a last-ditch effort to rescue their careers, the best and the biggest sailors worldwide today vie for a spot at the six-week weight-loss program held at Miramar Naval Air Station’s Alcohol Rehabilitation Center.

In the Navy, after a minimum of three warnings, anyone can be discharged if still overweight. An individual also can be prevented from transferring or advancing in rank because of weight. For every dollar spent on an individual in treatment, $12 would be spent to replace the person, according to Navy estimates.

“It provides more productive man-hours, I feel, than any other program in the Navy today” because it saves personnel from being discharged, said Capt. Ronald B. Lewis, commanding officer of the rehabilitation center, which treats 192 alcoholics, drug abusers and overeaters during a six-week period. Almost a quarter of those patients are usually overeaters.

The Navy considers any man overweight if he has more than 22% body fat; for a woman, the level is 30%. Last year, the Navy tried to help about 26,000 enlisted men and women, or 4% of its personnel, lose weight. Almost 900 were treated in residential programs. Officials declined to say how many personnel were discharged because of weight. But the Navy estimates that about 10% of its 614,598 personnel weigh too much.

At Miramar, the largest of four such Navy facilities across the nation, the average person who attends the overeaters’ program is about 50 to 100 pounds overweight. Without any lasting success, they’ve tried everything from diuretics to laxatives, fasting to purging.

Most have spent many years in the military, and for them, success means staying in the Navy. Of those who enroll at Miramar, about 70% succeed in keeping their weight down, according to one-year follow-up surveys.

For some participants at Miramar, food had become the focal point of their lives.

Chief William Newsom is an example. Stationed on the frigate Francis Hammond in Long Beach, he would issue an order and then return to his locker, where he had a cache of sour balls, peanut butter, breakfast cereals and cheese-flavored chips stashed away in plastic bags.

“My locker was the center of the day, it was the center of everything I did,” said Newsom, a 29-year-old St. Paul, Minn., native. “I’d check on someone and go back to my locker. I’d issue an order and go back to my locker.”

Since 1984, all Navy personnel are measured about every six months for fat and put through an hourlong “physical readiness” test that includes a 1 1/2-mile run, push-ups and sit-ups. Newsom, at 5 feet 8 inches, had trouble with the fat measurements. At his heaviest, he weighed 240 pounds and his body fat was 35%.

Newsom, who enlisted 11 years ago, used to run marathons. But when he quit running, he gained about 60 pounds, he said. His weight threatened to sink his career. When he came up for promotion, he was ordered to slim down; he was awarded the rank of chief but not the increased pay. If he couldn’t lose weight, he said, he would have been demoted.

Newsom fasted for four days, ate one meal and fasted for another four days to pass the fat measurement test, he said. Then he applied to the Miramar program, knowing his crash diet would not prevent the pounds from returning. Still enrolled, he now weighs about 218.

Miramar is open only to supervisory officers, or those whose ranks are 2nd class petty officer and above. After investing what can add up to millions of dollars in training, the Navy is reluctant to discharge an individual because of weight, said Lt. Cmdr. Jim Blunt, an administrator involved with the reduction program. But the Navy will enroll only those considered valuable and those who want to continue their service for several more years.

“The Navy is not interested in investing six weeks’ treatment in someone who is going to be a poor sailor,” Blunt said.

To the shock of most commanding officers who send personnel to Miramar’s weight-loss program, many don’t return dramatically slimmer than when they left.

“It’s not our intention to melt the weight off, because it won’t work and the weight will come right back. We try to have a more long-term solution,” Blunt said.

Many arrive at Miramar calling it a “fat farm,” figuring they will be placed on strict diets and run through a treadmill of rigorous exercise. They are usually surprised to learn they are allowed to eat whatever they want.

“Nothing stops me from going to chow hall and pigging out,” said Chief Marc Rioux, in his final week at Miramar. “When I first got here, I thought this was asinine. How the hell would anyone lose weight with three meals a day? I thought they would give me a strict diet and run your butt off, and then I realized this place is working on your mind. I found myself asking for less and less food--and I was getting full.”

Blunt and a staff of 22 counselors hope to help the individual initiate a different life style. They believe the chronic overeater uses food just as an alcoholic drinks or a drug abuser takes dope. Each abuser, they say, has a disease over which they have little control. The weight-loss program is modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous courses. To the surprise of some, alcoholics, drug abusers and overeaters are placed in one program at Miramar.

“I couldn’t figure out what I had in common with these AA and NA types, but then I realized it was the same basic compulsion. Instead of drinking or doing drugs, I ate,” Newsom said.

While alcoholics and drug abusers learn to stop consuming drugs and alcohol, overeaters must learn to control their compulsive behavior.

“They get the opportunity to re-enter their disease three times every day. Alcoholics put the plug in the jug and that’s it,” said Blunt, a former overeater. “We have to take the tiger out of the cage and pet it three times a day.”

Applicants to the program sometimes wait months to enroll. Miramar’s waiting list used to be 10 months; it’s now down to one because the Navy doubled the center’s capacity during the past year and encouraged three other rehabilitation centers to treat overweight personnel.

Even so, individuals frequently wait several months before their senior officers can find a suitable time to allow a leave from duty to attend the program, at a cost to the Navy of $3,200 per person.

For several years, the Navy, Army and Air Force have tried to tackle the problem of unhealthy weight gain. Officials say the military has been affected by the fitness trend sweeping the nation. Doctors warn that roughly 33 million Americans are so overweight that they are at high risk for a range of life-threatening conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

While some in the Navy say they’ve had lifelong problems with overeating, others can pinpoint the times in their lives when eating became a salve for jangled nerves. But for all the participants, the program means confronting their past and how they cope with emotions.

Chief Rioux, a hospital corpsman now stationed in Alaska, began bingeing and eating almost constantly after he returned from Vietnam, where he spent a year in the intensive care unit of a hospital ship.

“I had to put up with the pain and misery of caring for these young kids and knowing they were going to die,” Rioux said. “I kept swallowing down my feelings. And I swallowed a lot because I thought no one would care.”

Over the years, food became a buffer that separated him from the world. The 6-foot-1 Rioux weighed 285 at his heaviest, and tests indicated that about 33% of his body was fat. Shopping for his clothing became painfully embarrassing since stores never stocked his size.

“Eating to me was an outlet like alcohol. It comforted me,” he said. “It relieved my anger and tension. Instead of sharing my emotions with my family or friends, I’d share it with my refrigerator or cupboard.”

Rioux and others say the real test comes when they leave Miramar, returning to the same jobs and tensions that drove them to eat.

“Sure I’m scared,” Rioux said. “But this is something I’ll have to deal with the rest of my life.”