Program helps Yuman lose 100 pounds
After losing 100 pounds, Yuman Joyce Lane feels that part of her journey was community support which she found at a local chapter of the nonprofit weight-loss organization TOPS Club, Inc. (Take Off Pounds Sensibly).
At a special awareness event hosted by TOPS area captain Carol Knobbs on Saturday at the Main Library, members of local chapters shared their success stories with the program.
Although she was not always overweight, Lane noted at the meeting that she gained weight after getting married.
“I joined TOPS on the 46th anniversary of my wedding in 2004,” Lane said. “The first two years I had my weight off I was never below my goal and I couldn’t keep my weight down so I fought it.”
In total, she lost 100 pounds while with the program, and received a “century” recognition from TOPS for the significant weight loss.
Jeanie Volpey, another member who achieved a weight loss of 100 pounds, said she found the positive reinforcement of the group to be helpful in her journey.
“TOPS has helped an incredible amount because the group — they did not look at me as some horrible creature. The ladies were so welcoming and so supportive and so kind to me that I am still there two years later.”
According to the TOPS obesity statistics, the number of local chapters in Arizona for 2016 came in at 126 with a total of 13,723 pounds lost within the state in 2016.
Knobbs herself said she lost about 71 pounds while being a member of the program, and though she has fluctuated in weight, she said she has kept below 200 pounds.
“No one has to be told they are fat. We know it, we hate it, it haunts us and we feel helpless to change it because we’ve tried over and over again. I weighed over 200 pounds for 33 years... No matter how much resolve when starting on yet another diet it always resulted in failure and I came to believe that losing weight and keeping it off was an impossible dream.”
Knobbs said she joined TOPS in 2011 after retirement. “After a lifetime of failure I began what became my final decade as a morbidly obese person. Finally it occurred to me that I might die having lived nearly my entire life weighing over 200 pounds. I wanted to know what it was like not to endure that frustration anymore.”
Knobbs explained that TOPS is based off the ideology of making small, steady lifestyle changes that provide lasting weight loss as well as bettering one’s health.
The program also provides sample meal plans and healthy eating advice, weekly meetings, a members-only website with online tracking tools, recipes, a medical library and more.
Members work with their own healthcare provider to set a healthy goal weight, and once a member achieves that goal they become a “KOPS” member or “Keep Off Pounds Sensibly” as they work to keep their weight off long-term.
In the United States, the yearly due to become a TOPS member is $32 as well as a regional member fee that is typically $5 a month. Knobbs added that the first meeting is free.
The TOPS website showed that the organization has experts in the fields of medical research, nutrition, fitness, and psychology and currently funds obesity and metabolic research at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
For more information on the local chapters, call Knobbs at (928) 342-6303 or email knobbsca@aol.com.