Picture this: Freshly cooked meals instead of fast food. Having enough time and energy to exercise, not to mention living near a park or a sidewalk where you can exercise.

Tough to imagine? You're not alone. Health experts say these are key ingredients for a healthy lifestyle, but far from a reality for most Mainers.

Surveys show that nearly two-thirds of residents are overweight or obese « on par with the national rate and slightly higher than any other state in New England.

If current trends prevail, obesity could overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in Maine and around the country. At the very least, it is is shortening life expectancy by as much as five years, according to a report published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Obesity, while itself not a diagnosis, throws open the door to chronic illnesses. Maine's obesity rate unsurprisingly coincides with some of the region's highest rates of diabetes and heart disease.

Health experts say obesity runs in some families, but that heredity alone doesn't explain its prevalence.

"Our genes have not changed significantly since this particular epidemic has started," said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, who heads the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Our diets and levels of physical activity have changed over the last two decades, however. People center their lives around the computer and television, and they eat processed food loaded with sugar and fat, often on the go.

People living in a rural state such as Maine are further disadvantaged by the lack of walkable communities and harsh climate, experts say, and many can't afford to attend a health club, or they don't live near one. Furthermore, surveys show that Mainers have less education and money than residents in neighboring states « making healthy lifestyles a more remote goal.

"If your whole social network said a meal isn't a meal without supersize french fries, how are you going to know any different?" said Christine Lyman, a health educator at the Maine CDC.

Socioeconomic setbacks have not stopped Maine from besting most of the country when it comes to reducing teen smoking and teen pregnancy. But improving diet and nutrition among residents has proved much trickier.

Food is around when we socialize, celebrate or mourn, not to mention the fact that we need it to survive. As Veronica Bates, a 33-year-old Westbrook resident struggling to lose weight, says: "You don't have to drink or smoke three times a day, but you do have to eat."

Bates, who started dieting in high school, is one of the hundreds of Mainers who each year achieve drastic weight loss through stomach surgery.

Others are trying crash diets and diet pills, said eating disorders specialists whose patients take their weight to the other extreme. Still others are joining diet programs such as Weight Watchers, which has 7,000 members statewide « a 15 percent increase since last year, Maine spokeswoman Jackie Conn said.

Some people are getting a boost from their employers, who want to protect their work force and their bottom line at the same time.

In Maine, excess weight and physical inactivity cost more than $2 billion a year in the form of lost productivity, medical bills and worker's compensation, according to a study released last month by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and the MaineHealth hospital system.

Some businesses are joining groups such as the Bangor Region Wellness Council, which shows its 60 members how to start employee wellness programs focused on exercise and nutrition. Kenduskeag-based member Northeastern Log Homes was able to cap the growth of insurance premium rates at 3 percent this year, thanks to its 3-year-old wellness program.

Meanwhile, a small army of health educators funded by settlement money from tobacco companies is working in 31 communities to promote better health. Past efforts by Healthy Maine Partnerships have included distributing thousands of pedometers to schools across the state and encouraging schools to open their doors to the public for indoor exercise.

Attempts to create statewide anti-obesity mandates have seen mixed success. Last summer, Maine led the country in banning soda and candy at schools, except during community-wide events.

But a bill that would have required chain restaurants to provide calorie information about every item on their menus was killed last year.

"They were trying to demonize restaurants and somehow make it our fault because we offer products that people wanted," said Richard Grotton, president and chief executive officer of the Maine Restaurant Association.

The only anti-obesity bill that was adopted out of four considered last year required the Department of Education to establish higher nutritional standards for many of the food and drinks sold in school, along with some smaller initiatives.

Karen O'Rourke of the Maine Center for Public Health said the battle against tobacco was waged long and arduously before smoking bans ever were imposed.

"Change is incremental and you've got to learn to compromise," O'Rourke said.

O'Rourke and other health advocates aren't easing up.

About one-third of Maine youths are either overweight or at risk of becoming overweight, putting them on an early path to diabetes and asthma. Several studies have shown that up to 80 percent of overweight adolescents will become obese adults.

"The sad thing," Mills said, "is this may be the first generation of Americans who won't be living as long as their parents, because of this epidemic."

Staff Writer Josie Huang can be contacted at 791-6364 or at: jhuang@pressherald.com