Join Your TownHealth 
Christian Schiavone
Heather Hasz is a health agent for Acton.
Board hosts obesity program
By Christian Schiavone
Thu Sep 27, 2007, 05:25 AM EDT
Acton, Mass. -Heather Hasz began to struggle with her weight in her late teens.
She tried Weight Watchers, personal trainers and all the latest fad diets, but nothing worked long term.
Last winter when her doctor told her that at 5 feet 1 inch and 246 pounds, she had become a candidate for gastric bypass surgery.
Hasz, 34, took it as a sign to make drastic changes. She started working with a personal trainer and cut excess fat and sugar from her diet. Since January and with the support of her husband, daughter and two stepchildren, she has lost 58 pounds.
Now Hasz, a health agent for the town, is hoping her story and the stories of people like her will inspire others to make a renewed commitment to losing weight and to take advantage of the Acton Board of Health’s upcoming Obesity Awareness Program, made possible by a grant from the local Community Health Area Network.
For the next seven weeks, the town will be hosting a guest speaker, classes on nutrition and a trip to a local health center.
The town first pioneered the program three years ago, but organizers hope that this year’s program will be bigger and more engaging than ever.
Hasz spoke to The Beacon recently — her desk littered with multi-colored maps of the United States with each state shaded according to the proportion of obese residents — about the town’s program and her own efforts to lose weight.
Q: Could you tell me a little bit about the Board of Health’s obesity awareness program?
A: We called the first one [three years ago] Acton Takes Action, just a play on the “Acton” and “action” thing, but also taking action against this public health issue that we’re all dealing with. That program, what we did, was I sponsored a speaker at the Acton-Boxborough junior high Project Wellness that’s held every spring, then we sponsored Acton residents to attend Weight Watchers meetings. Sometime people feel they need a bit of a push, and sometimes it’s financial.
To attend Weight Watchers meetings there’s a fee, so we thought if we could provide some financial incentive that maybe people might take that first step that they may have put off in the past. So we were able to provide 20 residents with scholarships to attend a 10-week period of Weight Watchers and we yielded pretty good feedback on the program. You can help somebody pay to go, but sometimes it’s not enough.
A: The grant came around again and I wanted to take another crack at the obesity awareness campaign because even going back three years it’s just become more of a front-page issue. It’s all over the television, you have “The Biggest Loser,” you have “Celebrity Fit Club.”
So we thought we would this time make the program a little bit more comprehensive. This time we called it Acton Takes More Action, and this time around I thought, “Well, instead of giving people the money and sending them on their way to do their thing that we would provide education this time. What we designed was a seven-week program. … In the four weeks that follow the keynote speaker are going to be hosted by a nutritional therapist, her name is Cindy Woodman, and she’s going to provide a four-week comprehensive group of lessons in healthy eating, and not just “Here’s how you cut up this to make this,” she’s going to provide background.
She works with people on a regular basis with respect to eating issues so she’s designed a program that’s going to address different aspects of it with respect to healthy diet, talking about some of the different balances — what is body mass index, calories in versus calories out, the pros and cons of losing weight too quickly.
Accompanying her lessons, she’s going to provide hands-on cooking demos where she’s going to prepare some simple meals. Sometimes I think people get overwhelmed by simple cooking, they think it’s really complicated, it’s too time consuming, so she’s going to provide some basic menu preparation and give people an opportunity to taste it.
We have a doctor coming in … and then it would be hard to do an obesity awareness program without addressing the physical aspect of it. Through my own personal and professional work I came to know a local training facility very well, CBC Fitness and Wellness Center, and they have offered to host the last night of the class at the facility to go over some hands-on fitness tips for people that they may be able to do at home.
I’m hoping to address both mind and body. And spirit. … This is just saying, “Look, healthy eating applied with exercise will yield a healthy lifestyle.”
Q: You mentioned that you’ve also been working to lose weight, right?
A: I have. I’ve been overweight probably my entire adult life. Back in December of 2006, we flew to Colorado for Christmas and being on the airplane was not very comfortable for me. Sitting on the plane for five hours, and it was a crowded plane, and just not being 100 percent comfortable in certain activities and I have three kids at home.
I had talked to my husband time and time again about making a change, so I finally decided that I really needed to make a change. I started to work with a personal trainer and I’ve done Atkins and I’ve done Weight Watchers, but I knew I’m 34 years old and it was just I wanted to do it to set a good example for my kid and to be healthy for my kid.
I started working with a personal trainer and that yielded … physical pain for the first couple of weeks, but nothing was really happening and he said, “Well, you need to change your eating. You need to make a change to what you’re putting in.”
I started Weight Watchers again, but this time I was doing a program called the Core Program, which really focuses on basic nutrition — whole foods, fruit, vegetables, low fat or no fat dairy, lean meat and brown pasta and rice. Actually, I was on the scale yesterday and I’m down 58 pounds since January and that’s amazing. I’ve lost 10 inches off my waist and that’s just amazing to think.
I hope in my own way I’ve inspired people the way other people like Gary [Marino] have inspired me. It’s a lifelong battle.
Q: What prompted you to really make the whole lifestyle change this time around?
A: I was remarried in July of 2006. My first husband had died 10 years earlier when I was pregnant with my daughter. I spend time taking care of myself by going for all of the other routine screenings and such, but then I would go for my annual physical and my doctor would say, “You’re 10 pounds heavier,” or “You’re 13 pounds heavier.”
When I went for my last routine physical earlier in 2006, my doctor had told me I would be a candidate for gastric bypass surgery, and I thought, “Wow, have I really gotten there,” and I think that was the thing for me. It hit me and I was mad. It hurt me.
So I think it was a combination of him in the back of my head, taking that flight to Colorado, seeing pictures of myself and I turned 34 in December right around the same time. So I think it was a combination of things that my problem was not getting any better and I really needed to make a change.
I wasn’t going back this time, this was it. It’s nice to be comfortable in my own skin again.
To find out more about the signing up for the program, Heather Hasz can be reached at 978-264- 9634.
Christian Schiavone can be reached at 978-371-5743 or at cschiavo@cnc.com.
