Lose the weight and keep it off!

Challenger's data

Weight-loss challenger: Tanica Plummer

Profession: Student, Mico University College

Age: 23

Height: 5' 4"

Weight (at start of challenge): 225 pounds

Target weight loss: Five per cent of weight (over three months)

Progress: Average two-pound weight loss each week (official weight to be taken end of April).

Start date of challenge: March 1.

These days, Tanica Plummer can hardly contain her excitement. Less than two weeks ago, she hit her never-before-achieved 200-pound weight target.

"Ms Thompson, I am so excited!" she was screaming on the telephone. "I have always said that if I could reach 200 pounds, there will be no turning back. I am so excited!"

Of course, I too was overjoyed for her, as if it had been my own achievement. Being a 'slim girl' all my life and basically, (up till now) being able lose weight when I felt like it, this challenge has not only been a learning experience for Tanica, but for me as well. Being in almost daily contact with her, I have begun to understand the other side; it's tough to reshape one's body.

No short cut

Tanny deserves every bit of her success. She realises that there is no short cut in weight loss - only eating management, regular physical activity, commitment and motivation will work. She has been walking around with her scale to show her colleagues on the school dorm that she has hit a milestone. Only a few more weeks to the end of the challenge, but Tanny is already a winner.

Tanica is up early in the mornings to start her exercise programme and has modified her eating plan to achieve her goal. I am happy to hear her say in almost every one of our conversations that she realises that this has to be a lifestyle change and not a quick fix.

Just prior to the weight challenge, Tanica was weighing 225 pounds. Through her own efforts, she had shaved off several pounds and at her first official measured weight with Health team nutritionist Dr Suzanne Soares Wynter, she weighed in at 209 pounds, aiming for a healthy rate of weight loss of about two pounds per weeks. She is well on track.

Intelligent and confident

Tanny was selected in February from a pile of letters from dozens of readers who answered Health section's promo to 'lose the weight and keep it off'.

She is a 23-year-old student at Mico University College, Kingston, in the first year of her secondary-education degree. She had been struggling with weight management ever since she was a child and at one point weighed in at 245 pounds. The intelligent and confident young lady admitted in our first interview that she 'can't seem to get it (weight management) right". All that is now turning around with expert guidance from the Health section's team members.

Tanny won the prize of free nutrition consultations with Dr Soares-Wynter, exercise prescriptions with exercise physiologist, Dr Kenneth Gardner and ongoing mental-health consultations with Dr Wendel Abel and Eulalee Thompson. The challenge ends in May. Coming up to the end of week number eight in the challenge, Tanica is already reaping big successes. This is definitely a winning formula.

Eulalee Thompson is health editor and a professional counsellor; email: eulalee. thompson@gleanerjm.com.