Winning for Losing : Kathleen Sullivan is just glad to be back in the spotlight, even if the whole country is watching her weight.

Kathleen Sullivan has a lot on her plate these days.

There are all those lean turkey breasts and lightly dressed salads, and then there’s that big fat deal with Weight Watchers that has her on the most public diet in the history of the world.

And if that weren’t enough to drive a person to the nearest 31 Flavors, there’s this fuss over the seemliness of a news anchor--even one unemployed for nearly four years--doing commercials for anything , including healthy food.

“Does it bother me? Oh, yes. Does it hurt sometimes? Absolutely,” Sullivan says. “But I learned a long time ago not to expect to be treated fairly. I expect to survive. And I will.”

Standing at the counter of her tiny kitchen in her tiny Rancho Mirage condominium, the increasingly tiny Sullivan is chopping raw vegetables with a very sharp knife and talking about what else she has survived.

Like the entire 12 months of 1990. That’s the year her father died, her husband left her, she was fired from “CBS This Morning” and left in “financial ruin.”

Chop-chop-chop.

“A lot of us think when there is suffering and challenge this (chop) is difficult, this (chop) is hard. But that’s the point: Life is hard!”

Of course, it is less hard if you are a Size 6, which--surprise!--Sullivan says she is now. “I’m 3 1/2 pounds from my goal weight,” she recently confessed, “but I’m going to readjust it and then take seven more pounds off that. It’s not like you’re on a shake for two weeks. This is a whole new way of eating, a new way of living.”

Indeed. Every week or so, a team of Weight Watchers inspectors comes to the pitchwoman’s home and puts her on a scale just to make sure she’s actually getting smaller--which she is--and make her sign affidavits vowing that Superstart! and the company’s other reducing plans are the reasons why--which she swears they are. (What she will not say is how much she weighs or how much she’s getting paid.)

Every three months, Weight Watchers has the option of canceling Sullivan’s contract. “We’ll see if I make my weight and they still want me. . . . (chop-chop-chop ) That’s OK. No pressure (CHOP! ).”

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Born in Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital 40 years ago, Kathleen Mary Sullivan grew up eating healthy food. Raised in Arcadia, she was an only child who loved to climb trees (a hobby she gave up two years ago), play tennis with her pal Cathie Lee Crosby and watch television news with her beloved grandmother.

“One day my grandmother, whom I spent a lot of time with, pointed to a woman reading news on TV and said, ‘Kathleen, you could do that.’ It’s very empowering for someone to tell you you can do something. So, I quit USC my junior year and I went out and I did it.”

In 1984, someone told her that she could anchor the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, even though no woman had ever anchored such an important sporting event. But she went out and did that, too. Her baritone delivery and colorful Slavic wardrobe assembled from Sarajevo shops transformed Sullivan overnight into the first “sweater girl” of sportscasting.

In 1987, she switched to CBS, where, in an early morning market of perky blondes, she was, according to the New York Times, like a shot of “double espresso.” And like the drink, the sweet-faced Sullivan was potent; she woke you up. A Mary Tyler Moore with attitude.

Early on, critics raved about Sullivan for being smart, occasionally tart, always stylish and refreshingly natural. Back then, you may recall, Kathleen Sullivan had something no other woman on television had: gray hair.

When she was fired, some critics said it was because she had grown bossy and temperamental. Others confided off-the-record that she’d simply grown too gray.

When she showed up on television last month--almost four years after her Valentine’s Day dismissal from CBS--it was with a bit less attitude and a lot less gray.

Without apology or explanation, she had dyed her hair raven black and taken a job she “really needed.”

Appearing in a baggy dark sweater and patting her belly, Sullivan’s candor once more caught America off-guard. “One moment I’m a network anchor and the next, well, look at me,” she announces in the first of her Weight Watchers ads. She needs to get back in shape, she says. “Don’t make me do this alone,” she implores viewers.

“It is amazing how this campaign has hit people,” Sullivan says. “In the grocery store, three women--that’s the average, three women and a man--come up to me and greet me so sincerely. . . .” Her eyes fill with tears as she spears a bite of salad.

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“Can you believe this is only 14 calories?” Sullivan asks, pointing at the salad. “And that includes the dressing. Not too much dressing though. But please, please have some more.”

She says she is not embarrassed by what she calls “the fall.” Neither are most viewers, she says. If anything, her return as “a mere mortal” (albeit one with artificially colored tresses) has delighted many of her old fans.

“Now that they’ve seen me (on the commercials), they think I’m less austere. My image is more approachable and that is the highest honor,” Sullivan says. “Before, people didn’t know what to say to me. Now they do.

“They say, ‘How’s it going? Good luck.’ That’s a great thing about Weight Watchers. I’m not usually big on group things, but this is one area where you can really do a lot with support from others.”

Her critics, most of them professional media observers, have complained that her commercials may confuse viewers. Some charge that her endorsement of a product is an abuse of her credibility as a journalist.

Although others, including Linda Ellerbee and Mary Alice Williams, have taken similar turns in the world of commerce, Sullivan’s turnabout was hardly sudden. For years, she seemed not to exist in the world of network broadcasting. She was, some say, a non-person.

“I honestly thought they had forgotten about me. I’m stunned by the attention now,” Sullivan says.

For four years, she supported herself by conducting golf clinics designed to make courses “more comfortable environments for women.” Her best friends include such strong, confident and athletic women as Martina Navratilova, Joan Lunden and her neighbor, Dinah Shore.

Neighbors report that when she and Shore golf together at the Mission Hills Country Club and one of them sinks a putt, Shore often bursts into song--usually, “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

One day after a golf tournament (her seven-handicap made Sullivan captain of her otherwise all-male team), Sullivan looks robust but not overweight.

She pushes a forkful of spicy turkey stir-fry around her hand-painted Italian pottery dinner plate. “A little dry, isn’t it? I always overcook with poultry.

“Gosh, don’t you hate it when your hostess immediately begins apologizing for the food she’s put in front of you? Didn’t your mother always do this? Mine did. Martha Stewart never would. Never.”

Before she began Weight Watchers last November--”Can you imagine going through all those holidays? I plateaued at first but I did it! I did it!”--Sullivan’s diet history included a brief flirtation with SlimFast. Today, she sees that was “a temporary fix.” To lose weight and keep it off, she says, you need “more than a shake.”

Still, wouldn’t it have been easier to make a SlimFast-type commercial? You know, one of those before-and-after testimonials where you only show how fat you once were after you are slim and trim.

Even Weight Watchers executives say her “real-time” weight-loss shows are as risky as “the flying Wallendas without a net.” But Sullivan is unfazed.

“Well, yes, of course, I had some hesitation,” says Sullivan, gazing across to the snow-capped mountains beyond her dining room window. “I mean, can you imagine failing at this?

“But I don’t always do the things that are easy. And that’s all right because I have a great life now, don’t I?”