Renee's roller coaster

November 12, 2004 BY TAMMY CHASE Staff Reporter

We are obsessed. Renee Zellweger's weight gain for her role in "Bridget Jones's Diary" (2001), subsequent loss and regain for "Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason" -- to be released in theaters today -- has been plastered all over the entertainment press.

And it's making us worry. Reports have said she again gained 30-some pounds to become Bridget for the newest film and has since worked with a personal trainer and nutritionist to shed the extra pounds. Maybe too much. The thing is, we at the Sun-Times are concerned about all of this. In a past photo, Zellweger looks healthy. Maybe chunky by Hollywood standards, but OK by real world standards. Now she's rail thin -- Star magazine, in the Nov. 15 article "Now She's Bridget Bones," reports she's now 100 pounds. We asked Chicago expert Dr. Julie Roth of Northwestern University's Wellness Institute, which has physicians and nutritionists to help people lose weight, for her opinion on Zellweger's rise and fall on the scale. *Zellweger is 5 feet 5 inches and 35 years old. Roth says a "healthy weight" range for that height and age -- doctors don't say "ideal weight" anymore since body frame can vary so much by person -- is 111 to 150 pounds. That means if she weighed 145 pounds for her Bridget role, as entertainment reports have suggested, she wasn't fat at all. That weight range is based on what's called the body mass index, a measure of weight and height -- and an indicator of health risk. A healthy BMI of 18.5 to 25 would mean a woman Zellweger's height and age should weigh within the above-mentioned range. *Roth says Zellweger appears to have a "small frame," which could explain why it might appear to some that she looked a little heavy at her Bridget weight "though she's at a healthy weight." *If Zellweger indeed is 100 pounds, "that would put her in the underweight category," Roth says. Wouldn't her personal trainer or nutritionist keep her on track to lose the weight in a healthy amount (and over a healthy period of time, 1 to 2 pounds a month)? Roth says sure, but there have been mixed reports on this. Some reports have said Zellweger cut calories even more than what was recommended and exercised a lot. *Star reported that Zellweger allegedly wanted to be so thin in part because the round-faced woman has, well, a round face. It's not uncommon for women to obsess about one body part, Roth says. She has an overweight patient who has lost 17 pounds in about three months -- "v.v. good," as Bridget would say in her diary -- but is upset that her stomach looks too big. The patient -- who still has more weight to lose -- says she's thinking about liposuction. It's unhealthy to dwell on one body part, Roth says. People forget: In the case of her patient, her stomach could look larger, Roth says, because there's a little less of her elsewhere. Concern yourself with a healthy weight and lifestyle, not whether your stomach sticks out. *Why would she want to get so thin? "What better motivator is there than to be in the public eye? Almost to the point of driving people to be too thin," Roth said. *What if someone needs to lose 30 pounds? What's a healthy rate in which to do that? Roth says the rule of thumb is 5 percent to 10 percent of your weight over a three- to six-month period. For a 200 pound woman, that would be 10-20 pounds within three to six months.

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