Rendell taking losing weight as seriously as the budget crisis

HARRISBURG -- Ed Rendell, the unabashed indulger in all things greasy, has not had so much as a bite of a cheese steak in two months.

He's given up sweets, too, including his favorite dessert -- Starbucks coffee ice cream. Not a spoonful, as hard as that might be to believe.

It shows.

The once-rotund governor has shed nearly 40 pounds since reaching an all-time high this spring of 265 pounds.

His secret?

"I literally eat half of what I used to," said Rendell Sunday at the governor's mansion. "I am now a devout disciple of the fact that if you want to lose weight you have to significantly reduce the amount of food you put in your mouth."

So, a three-egg omelet is now made with two eggs; eight slices of bacon are now four.

It was some not-so-subtle hints made by those closest to him earlier this year that got the 5-foot-11, 65-year-old governor thinking long and hard about being big and fat.

"You used to have so much fun going to my Little League games. You have to be around to go to my kid's games," Rendell recalled his son, Jesse, telling him.

Then there was the one dropped by his wife, Marjorie Rendell.

"I told him you don't see that many very heavy set 80 or 85 year olds, do you?" the First Lady recalled last week.

Gov. Rendell said he knew they were right. He was way over weight and, for longevity sake, had to do something about it.

He was just looking for a good time to start.

Enter the budget crisis.

Rendell said he started the diet in mid June when it became clear that a budget solution in a recession year wasn't going to come quickly, especially when Republican legislative leaders were dead-set against raising taxes.

"I thought this would give me something to strive for, something positive that I could see happening compared to the lack of progress with the budget," he said.

Rendell yesterday took a reporter on a retrospective of his weight through old Polaroid's, almost an offering of proof that he wasn't always so thick.

One yellow photo from the early 80s shows him at 210 pounds playing in the backyard with his son as a toddler. In a 1971 wedding snapshot, he was a svelte 195.

His goal is to get somewhere in between – 200 pounds.

Rendell predicts that, at the current pace (he's dropping about 4 pounds weekly) he will reach that by the end of September. He laughs when asked what will come first – his goal or the adoption of a final state budget, which is now seven weeks overdue.

Although he had reached 265 pounds earlier this year, Rendell insists that he was in overall good health – a product of a regular exercise regimen, such as the one he demonstrated Sunday morning in the workout room at the governor's mansion along the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg.

It's a 20-by-30-foot room, fully equipped with two treadmills, an elliptical machine, a stationary bike and free weights.

He is wearing red shorts, New Balance sneakers and a gray Drexel University T-shirt that, in a matter of minutes after jumping on a treadmill, is dripping wet with sweat.

He's on the machine for a half hour, most of it at a steady jog – a routine he says he does almost every day. Maggie and Ginger, his two golden retrievers, lay on the cool rubber matting nearby.

For years, he's been a regular at The Sporting Club at the Bellevue in Philadelphia. Before that, he ran on the streets.

Philadelphia lawyer Walter M. Phillips Jr. recalls that, once or twice a week in the early 1980s, he would meet Rendell at his office in East Falls and the two would jog to the District Attorney's Office.

Phillips, a onetime marathon runner, remembers having to jog diagonally on bike paths so Rendell, the city's top prosecutor at the time, could keep up. Still, Rendell would make it all the way – more than 6 miles.

"He was one of the great heavyweight runners of our time," joked Phillips.

Rendell said he had to give up street running when he became mayor in 1992 because people kept stopping him to talk.

Working out has had little effect on his weight loss, Rendell said.

It's all about what he calls "portion control."

Marjorie Rendell said that for years she had heard about her husband's latest efforts at dieting. She would ask how it was going, how much had he lost, only to be told "92 pounds or something like that," she recalled recently. "So I knew he was kidding me."

"He has a propensity to gain weight. He loves food," the First Lady added in tone of someone who has just said something painfully obvious.

But this time, something was different.

"If we had five lamb chops, he would have four of them," she said. "Now he is having two, so I have to watch myself now."

And she began noticing something strange with his clothes.

"All of a sudden, his shirts started having room in them instead of the buttons being pulled tight," she said.

The governor said he is resisting the urge to buy new clothes at this point or to have his old ones taken in. He only wants to do it once and that won't come until he hits 200 pounds.

"Will I look a little sloppy? Yeah, but I always look a little sloppy," Rendell said, answering a question that wasn't asked. "So that's no big deal."

Rendell acknowledged the tough part will be keeping the pounds off.

Even so, he said that once he reaches his target weight, he might indulge a bit – perhaps some Starbucks mocha chip, but only a small bowl.

"And I might have a cheesesteak again," he added, "but I'll put half of it in the refrigerator to have it later."

Contact staff writer Mario F. Cattabiani at 717-787-5990 or mcattabiani@phillynews.com.