Frank Layden is about half the man he used to be, and he couldn't be happier about it. It's everyone else who's worried.
Layden - president of the Utah Jazz and Salt Lake's Man About Town - is thin, and this takes some getting used to. After all, Layden is known as much for his girth as he is for his mirth. Well-meaning people approach him on the street and ask, "What's the matter? Are you sick?"Quite to the contrary, thank you. Layden is just thin. Real thin. The one-time jolly fat man of the NBA has shed 160 pounds in the past 15 months. Beginning at a personal record of 330 pounds in April 1996, Layden has cut his weight to 170 pounds - his lowest weight since he was a high school sophomore.
"I want to talk about it," he says when the subject of his weight is broached cautiously, "because maybe I can help someone else. I tell people, If I can do it, you can do it."
Layden has received about 100 phone calls and letters from people asking how he did it, and that doesn't count the many who have asked him in person. He picks up two letters on his desk. One is from a man in California, a commissioner of a collegiate conference, who writes, "I would appreciate any suggestions you can give. I need to lose a few pounds. Please, give me a call." A high school coach from the East Coast writes, "I have to change my weight. I have to change drastically. I need your help."
Sorry, but there is no magic cure here. To lose weight, Layden used simple, if not incredible, willpower, mixed with a little prayer. He quit his favorite foods cold turkey - including cold turkey - bought a baseball mitt and a basketball and here he is, a new man with a new life, at 64.
Layden had tried before to lose weight. He estimates he has lost thousands of pounds over the years, but, like the swallows to Capistrano, they always returned.
"I knew for years I was an accident waiting to happen," says Layden.
Then in April '96 he saw one of those accidents. He was watching Major League Baseball on TV when umpire John McSherry collapsed and died on the field. McSherry and Layden had been friends. They had done speaking engagements together. Layden watched in disbelief. He would never forget what the announcer told the TV audience: McSherry, he said, weighed 330 pounds - same as Layden.
The next day, Layden was talking with an old high school friend in New York and raised the subject of McSherry. The friend said, "By the way, Frank, how old are you?"
"Sixty-three."
"How heavy are you?"
"330. Same as John."
"Do me a favor," the friend said. "I want you to make a list of everybody you know who's over 60 and weighs more than 300 pounds."
Layden did. "I was the only one on the list," he says. "I went home, had a physical, and I started on my quest."
His quest meant an overhaul of his lifestyle. This is what Layden no longer consumes: meat, fats, dessert, carbonated drinks, alcohol, sugar, salt.
This is what he consumes instead: Water. Lots of it - 80 to 100 ounces a day, or eight to 10 large glasses. ("It's kind of trendy, too," he adds. "I get to walk around with a bottle of water. People think you're an Olympian or something.") Grains and fruit for breakfast - Grape Nuts, Shredded Wheat, skim milk, a mix of orange juice and prune juice ("Looks awful, tastes great"), oranges, grapefruits and matzos (a Jewish cracker).
Lunch is a salad. Dinner is pasta or a vegetable plate. A snack is an apple or pear.
For Layden, this was no small test of willpower. All his life he has loved eating. Everything about it. The social setting. The atmosphere. The conversation. The food itself. Eating, for Layden, was an event. Give him a town, he'd give you a list of its best restaurants. He frequented local restaurants daily. He had a big breakfast, a big lunch, a big dinner and big snacks between.
Late at night, he liked to watch TV and down beer, pop, ice cream, pretzels and sandwiches. Almost daily he ordered a large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese - all for himself.
"Eating was a happening for me," he says. "It was at the top of my agenda. Every morning I'd get up and say, `Where are we going to eat today?' Diets are hard. It's spiritual and physical. It's not pleasant. You've got to want to do it. You've got to pray to want to do it.
"It's like being an alcoholic. You've got to say, I'm addicted to food. It's interesting that people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs must cut those things out completely, but you can't do that with food. You've got to eat. That makes it more difficult. You can't say I'm going to completely give this up. I prayed for strength to do it."
Layden dumped about 30 pounds the first month, but after that the weight came off more gradually. Along the way, he had to buy three new sets of clothes, every 50 pounds. In the middle of each 50-pound weight loss, he would take the clothes to Mr. Mac's for alterations. His waist shrunk from 63 inches to 38. His size went from 4X to Large, "and sometimes that's a little big on me," he says. His jacket size went from the 60s to 42-44.
"I even lost weight in my feet," he says.
Layden also took up exercise. He walks two hours a day along the roadways of Salt Lake City while people hail him from passing cars. "I stroll," he says. "If I see someone, I'll stop and talk. I walk to a different place every day. There's a lot to see. This is a wonderful walking city. And I love to walk on (Jazz) road trips. I go all over the place. It's added a new dimension to my life. I used to ride everywhere. Now I walk everywhere."
And he plays ball. Layden bought a new baseball mitt and a basketball. He shoots at local playgrounds or the Delta Center and plays catch with friends. One day he was shooting basketball at a gym in Logan when a group of kids recognized him.
"Are you Frank Layden?" they asked.
Yes, he said.
"What are you doing? We never saw anyone shoot like that."
Layden was using the two-handed set shot of his era.
In many ways, Layden has come full circle. He played baseball, basketball and football in his youth, standing 6-foot-11/2 and weighing between 200 and 210 pounds. It was after he gave up sports that he got into trouble. A college basketball player at Niagara University, his weight shot to 240 pounds when he graduated from college.
"Slowly but surely through the years I got heavier," he says.
In 1968 he returned to his alma mater to coach and actually dropped 40 pounds. He maintained that weight for a few years, and when he joined the Atlanta Hawks as an assistant coach he lost another 50 pounds. In 1979 he joined the Jazz and two years later became the head coach.
"After I left Atlanta, I put on weight," he says. "Next thing I know, I'm over 200, then 250, then 275. I was always going to diet next Monday."
Layden weighed 225 pounds when he joined the Jazz; a few years later it reached 265 pounds. Dave Checketts, then the Jazz president, called Layden into his office. "You're dangerously overweight," he told him. Checketts said the Jazz wanted to pay the bill to send him to the Pritikin Institute, a famous fat farm in San Diego. Layden agreed to go. He dropped his weight to 235 pounds, but the weight didn't stay off for long.
"You've got to change your life to make it work, and I was just not willing to make that commitment at that time," he says.
After a little more than seven years on the job, Layden quit as the Jazz coach in 1988, in part because of the toll he saw it taking on himself and other coaches (Mike Ditka's heart attack, in particular, spooked him).
During his days as a coach and later as the Jazz president and unofficial goodwill ambassador, Lay-den directed his famous wit at himself and his weight. "Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside," he says now. The fans also directed their wrath at Layden's waistline. Layden wasn't oblivious to the signs in the crowd: Fire Fat Frank. He only appeared to ignore the taunts: Hey, Frank, you fat blankety-blank."
"It hurt me; it hurt my kids," he says.
After Layden left coaching, his weight climbed steadily. It never went anywhere but up. Then an umpire died on a baseball diamond.
"I just decided," says Layden. "I'm 64 years old and 330 pounds. This is going to kill me."
Layden continues. "I've lost thousand of pounds, but this is first time that I didn't get in a race to lose weight. I did it gradually and sensibly the way it should be done."
Layden has mixed feelings about the attention his weight-loss generates. When people congratulate him for it, he is grateful but uncomfortable. "There are people who have problems that weren't their fault," he says. "This was my fault. I did this to myself. I wish I had done something about it sooner. Maybe I'd still be coaching."
Layden is comfortable with his new spartan lifestyle. He doesn't plan to lose more weight - at this point, he can no longer consume as much food as he used to - and he has learned to enjoy other (healthier) types of food. But more than most he knows he must be vigilant.
"For a fat person, the shell is always there, just waiting to be filled up," says Layden. That's why he weighs and measures himself daily and sticks to his diet.
One night Layden decided to indulge himself. "You know what," he told Barbara. "I'm going to have a good steak."
How was it? "It wasn't as good as I thought. It was overrated."