Town’s battle of the bulge

In a remote corner of northwestern Spain, a small town has set itself the ultimate weight-loss challenge: by early 2020 its residents must have shed 100 000kg.

In Naron, gone are bacon and fried calamari from the diets of thousands of residents, who are taking to sport again as part of a slimming programme that kicked off in January.

“In the 21st century, people forget they’re made to walk,” says Carlos Pineiro, 63, the family doctor behind the programme.

Pineiro often swaps his practice for the local park where he helps dozens exercise.

Conrado Vilela Villamar, 65, a former crane operator, is one of Pineiro’s regulars.

“In Spain, people say you can eat everything in the pig, from the tip of the tail to the tip of the nose. The first food I stripped from my diet were tripe, pork belly and cold cuts,” he says.

Perched on the Atlantic coast of the Galicia region, the 40 000-strong town is known for its gastronomy and often gargantuan dishes. It is the region with the most overweight people, according to a Spanish Society of Cardiology study.

It has 9 000 overweight residents and another 3 000 who suffer from obesity, Pineiro says. “The rainy weather means people stay at home a lot with a very big daily ingestion of calories.”

More than 4 000 residents have joined the project and, to show their support, Mayor Marian Ferreiro and her councillors weighed themselves in public.

The programme, drawn up by local doctors, offers personalised diets and physical activity. Every now and then, the dieters come to the town’s health centres to weigh themselves.

“I walk with friends, including a woman who is 80 or so, who holds on to my arm,” says Maria Teresa Rodriguez, 55. “In March, I weighed 82kg, now 70kg,” she adds, beaming.

Every day, she walks or does gymnastics for 90 minutes, and has started dancing on Fridays since her “legs no longer hurt”.

Eighteen of the town’s restaurants now promote an Atlantic-style diet and a local school has also started participating – although “we don’t ever talk about weight directly” to the children, which “would have a stigmatising effect”.

Beyond the weight-loss challenge, Pineiro hopes residents will adopt “a healthy lifestyle to put a brake on chronic illness”. – AFP