Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- While analysts were served macaroni and cheese along with chicken and cream sauce at a Microsoft Corp. meeting in July, Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer ate steamed broccoli and a plain chicken breast.
``I noticed his lunch was pretty healthy and he looked like he was in shape,'' says Charles DiBona, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst who joined Ballmer, 49, for the software maker's annual analyst day at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
``I had to do some soul searching because it was going to cost me $12,000,'' says Angela Ware, a property manager who lost 79 pounds through the program offered by Pro Sports Club in Bellevue, Washington, which is within walking distance of the Microsoft campus in the suburbs east of Seattle.
Ware, 37, rented a room in her condominium so she could afford a 10-week program, where she spent 15 hours a week with a nutritionist, a personal trainer and psychologists. She heard about the program through her mother, who works out at the Bellevue gym and noticed that some Microsoft employees were losing lots of weight. Ware kept on the tenant to help pay for another 22 weeks on the plan.
Microsoft pays for employees' $118 monthly fees at the gym and 80 percent of the cost of the weight-loss program, which can run from $5,000 to more than $10,000. It was devised by Dr. Mark Dedomenico, who pioneered heart-bypass surgery at Seattle's Hope Heart Institute in the 1960s and now runs the club.
The diet emphasizes adding protein at every meal and eating less carbohydrate-rich foods to control spikes in blood sugar, which can lead to weight gain and diabetes, says Dedomenico, 67, whose family owned a candy factory and, at his heaviest, weighed in at 285 pounds. Participants exercise five days a week. While warming up for their 1.5-hour sessions with a trainer they might watch a video geared toward their weaknesses, such as emotional eating or how to handle holiday stress.
Before 1,200 business leaders at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce on Sept. 29, Ballmer was trim in a navy sports coat, white shirt with red-and-blue striped tie and gray pants.
It helps being in Seattle, one of the few U.S. cities where people have the means as well as the motivation to pay. With the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges both within an hour's drive, the city is a Mecca for hikers and skiers. Men's Fitness says 85 percent of residents report exercising at least once a month.
The Seattle area also boasts three of the world's richest people -- Ballmer and Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen -- as well as thousands of millionaires made rich by the late 1990s Internet boom. The health club's membership includes three billionaires and 6,000 multimillionaires, Dedomenico said.
Sheryl Grant, 44, convinced husband John, a Redmond homebuilder, to sit in on one of Dedomenico's biweekly seminars after watching a Microsoft friend get thinner. They ended up spending $10,000 on the 10-week program.
John Grant says he has lost 38 pounds and Sheryl is 10 pounds away from her goal of 125 pounds. They are building a home gym with a 65-foot lap pool that will be completed next week.
As for Microsoft, the company says the program is a good investment because it will contain future health-care costs. In the past five years, health-care costs for U.S. companies have risen 78 percent, according to Towers Perrin, a Philadelphia- based human resources consultant. The firm projects an 8 percent increase next year.
Workers at Microsoft qualify by having a body mass index of at least 30, considered obese. An employee with an index of 27, coupled with two life-threatening conditions such as diabetes, coronary heart disease or hypertension, may also qualify. The body mass index is a measurement of the relative percentages of fat and muscle calculated by using weight and height.
Microsoft expects to save $1.92 for every dollar it spends by cutting future drug costs, reducing visits to the emergency room and helping employees lower the risk of diabetes and heart attacks, says spokeswoman Jamey Chown.
About 4,000 people have gone through the program so far, and the club can handle about 400 clients at any one time, double the volume since Microsoft began offering the benefit three years ago. About 48 percent of participants maintain their weight losses for three to five years, Dedomenico says.
Proof of the program's success drew Microsoft staffing consultant Christina Burrows to the seminar this past Tuesday night, which filled up a 60-seat theater. She says she hopes to start the program within two days.
Seattle-based Starbucks Corp., the world's largest coffee retailer, began offering a similar benefit in March 2004. Premera Blue Cross, the Mountlake Terrace, Washington-based health insurance provider that manages the program for Microsoft, says it is adding weight-loss programs for other local companies based on the software maker's model.
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