Diet is a four-letter word, and treated with much the same disdain as profanity.

We don’t like to diet because we like to eat. Not only is eating essential to life, it’s part of our social structure.

The dreaded diet makes us feel like we’re sacrificing something valuable. It’s a lot of work. It can be expensive. And progress is slow.

The alternative, of course, is excess pounds, which are detrimental to good health. Added weight also inhibits social activity, inviting frustration and sacrificing quality of life.

Many for whom New Year’s Day became a day of resolution to lose weight have already failed in their resolve. Disappointment is now part of the new year.

For a group of women in Weld, though, the new year is a source of great joy because, as a group, these 14 women have recently lost 350 pounds. Evenly split, that’s 25 pounds per person. But the loss wasn’t evenly split. Some women didn’t need to lose that much, and others had to lose much more.

They were successful because they worked together.

When we eat, we eat as a group, as a family or alone. When we diet, it’s usually alone.

Why not diet as we eat? As a group?

Being fat is not just a hindrance to social and professional circles, it is the surest path we can take to reduce lifespan and increase the cost of public health. In Maine, the estimated medical cost of treating obesity is about $1 billion annually – the same as the current budget gap.

If group support and encouragement worked for 14 women in Weld, the same strategy can be used to help Maine’s 1.2 million residents, 61 percent of whom are overweight.

Maine has the sad distinction of having the highest rate of overweight people in New England four years running. We are among the heaviest in the nation, and the cost of treating obesity is excessive for such a small population.

We have to do something about it, and not just a few of us. We have to do this as a group: legislators, employers, child care workers, educators, parents, physicians, librarians and state workers.

Maine has been enormously successful in reducing the smoking rate in recent years, but only with great effort. The costs – medical and emotional – of obesity now exceed the cost of tobacco use. While we certainly can’t stop the effort to curb smoking, we must enlarge our attention to tackle the obesity rate.

Rep. Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, has introduced a series of bills in this legislative session drawing our attention to what is now an epidemic of obesity. He is suggesting that Mainers work as a group toward a common goal, much like the women in Weld, to reduce the cost of public health by recapturing our health.

We encourage lawmakers to hear these bills fairly. They are not intended to attack obese Mainers. They are intended to improve their health and reduce taxpayer cost. It’s a matter of physical and fiscal health.

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