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Feb 17

City Room: A Test for Dolan in the Land of Pasta and Gelato

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ROME — For Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan in Rome this week, there will be banquets and dinners, wine and laughter. There are places like the Ristorante Cesarina Roma, which offers, he noted, “magnificent fettuccine Bolognese” and excellent veal piccata. “Then they have a tray of dolce that is just unbelievable,” he said.

But Archbishop Dolan, 62, robust and rotund, is also on a diet, and he is candid about his struggles with his weight. “I actually have a Ph.D. in dieting,” he wrote in a recent blog post. “On and off for the last 40 years I’ve tried and tried.”

In the past year, he has successfully shed about 25 pounds from his 6-foot-3 frame, according to his New York diet doctor, Howard M. Shapiro, an osteopath who has guided dozens of firefighters and police officers to slimness. But the archbishop has not visited Dr. Shapiro since Thanksgiving, and as he spends 10 days celebrating his elevation to cardinal in Rome, he faces a dieting minefield, where a bowl of pasta and a scoop of gelato lurk around every corner.

Dr. Shapiro is praying that Archbishop Dolan will heed his advice and choose fish over meat, fruit over dolce. The archbishop still wants to lose 25 or 30 pounds, he pointed out.

“I wouldn’t expect him to lose an ounce, and I don’t expect him to be perfect,” Dr. Shapiro said of the archbishop’s visit to Rome. “If he doesn’t gain weight, I would consider it a victory.”

Dr. Shapiro’s technique helps his patients visualize how high in calories their food is, by showing them pictures of fattening foods and healthier options. “When he’s making choices, I would like him to make the better choices,” he said of the archbishop.

Archbishop Dolan seems to have listened to the doctor. Ask the archbishop about his favorite meals in Rome, and his tone normally changes into a kind of gentle chant as he pronounces with a thick Italian accent the names of the rich sauces and cheese-filled pastas he relishes: the cannelloni, the spaghetti carbonara, the paglia e fieno.

But when he arrived at the Rome airport on Sunday, he spoke about how it was easy to eat in a healthier way, even in Italy. “If you get a pasta with some red sauce, and you don’t overdo it, and you get some good fish or chicken with some vegetables, and you get some fresh fruit, that’s a great meal, and it’s not that bad,” he said.

Breakfasts in Rome are light, he pointed out as he waited for his bags — fruit, yogurt, cup of coffee. And though one might have a nice large meal for lunch, dinner can be very simple, he said, suggesting “a minestrone verdure and maybe a salad.”

Then his voice turned wistful. “But the temptations are going to be the rich, creamy pastas,” he said. “You don’t like to come to Rome without trying out your old favorites.”

Later that day, went out for one of the Roman meals of his dreams.

“We went to the Abruzzi,” he said on Tuesday, describing a small family-owned restaurant on the Piazza dei Santissimi Apostoli. “They’ve got the greatest cannoli I’ve ever had. They have a wonderful abbacchio alla Romana; that’s lamb. They have fresh spinach and a tiramisu that’s worth the flight. And some pretty good red wine.”

Dr. Shapiro, who practices on the Upper East Side, said in a telephone interview that he had met Archbishop Dolan shortly after he was appointed in 2009, at an event hosted by Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. The subject of weight control came up in the conversation, and the archbishop said he was interested. “I said, ‘I’d be happy to see you anytime you want; just call me,’” Dr. Shapiro recalled.

Nothing happened until a year later, when the archbishop and the dietitian met at another event.

“I said to him, ‘It’s time to start the diet,’” Dr. Shapiro said. “Better to be direct about it. If I beat around the bush, it would be another year.”

The archbishop called, and began to visit weekly, to discuss his food choices. The dietitian also spent a day talking to Archbishop Dolan’s cook at the archdiocese, to train him in healthier food preparation, advising, for example, broiling rather than sautéing. Within three months, the archbishop had lost 25 pounds, and in the following months, he stayed within about five pounds of that accomplishment.

When Archbishop Dolan first consulted with the doctor, he was walking a lot, “about four miles a day,” and exercising on a stationary bike, according to Dr. Shapiro. But his food portions were large. He didn’t eat a lot of desserts, but “he did eat doughnuts and pastries in the morning sometimes,” Dr. Shapiro said. “He had snacks of pretzels and peanuts. He likes beer; also, he did a lot of stress eating. He did what typically everybody does.”

Dr. Shapiro said he was hoping that even in the food paradise of Rome, the archbishop would listen to a steady voice of nutritional reason.

“If he’s going to have a glass of wine, maybe he could have a glass of club soda first,” he said, offering one practical tip. “Because the first glass, when you get somewhere, goes down very quickly.”

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City Room: A Test for Dolan in the Land of Pasta and Gelato

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