Support, motivation help pounds fall away
A slow-and-steady approach to weight loss works — and keeps working
A year ago, Debbie Belle found herself in the same unhealthy situation as one-third of American adults. At 5 feet 6 inches and 221 pounds, she had a body-mass index above 30 and was officially obese, according to weight criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Belle, 54, had tried several of the best-known programs on the multibilliondollar weight-loss market. She enjoyed early success with one or two. But each turned out to be too pricey, too stress-inducing or too unwieldy to keep her committed for the long haul.
Then, she says, she tried the cheapest, lowest-pressure, most self-effacing program she’d ever run across, and the decision transformed her quest for better health.
Belle joined Taking Off Pounds Sensibly, or TOPS, a national nonprofit that promotes peer support and personal determination to encourage members to avoid crash diets and instead adopt healthy lifestyle changes. Its goal is to help the average person lose weight moderately and manageably — and to keep it off.
Belle, who lives in Nottingham, has shed 74 pounds in 11 months on the program and, more statistically promising for her health, has maintained her target weight of 147 since reaching it months ago.
She won a divisional first-place prize at a statewide TOPS convention in Ocean City this month for her efforts.
But the ribbon and affirmation Belle received were far from the only reason she intends to never to give up the $32-per-year program.
“It isn’t a quick-fix approach or a diet program,” she said. “The goal is to make weight loss permanent. I get such deep