When 22 teachers and staff members at Whitko Middle School in Larwill, Ind., decided to lose weight in January 2007, the idea took off faster than kids bolting out of their classrooms for recess.
A school is an easy place to gain weight, says Kathy Prater, 54, an eighth-grade language arts teacher. "There's always food at meetings and in the teachers' workroom. I could see every year I was picking up a few more pounds and then a few more pounds."
So for five months, the colleagues weighed in weekly, tracked their losses and received prizes for their success. Many exercised together, walking around the inside perimeter of school after the students had left for the day. They shared diet tips and recipes and even had a clothing swap to give away clothes that no longer fit.
Their results were impressive: Altogether they lost more than 300 pounds from January until June of last year. One person dropped 40 pounds. Two lost 25 pounds, and others lost 10 to 20.
These women were among more than 200 readers who submitted their weight-loss stories in January via e-mails and letters. Their story was selected by a panel of experts to be featured in the fifth annual USA TODAY Weight-Loss Challenge in the newspaper and at the website at dietchallenge.usatoday.com.
The effort "was one of the most supportive things that I have ever seen the staff of Whitko Middle School do," says Georgia Tenney, 63, who has been a secretary there for 29 years. She lost 28 pounds. "Whenever you have people around you doing the same thing, it's a lot easier."
No one wanted to let her co-workers down, says Rochelle Leininger, 35, an eighth-grade math teacher who lost 16 pounds. "We watched out for each other. We exercised together. We ate lunch together. This accountability motivated us. Plus, we were afraid of what others would do to us if we brought chocolate into the building."
This year's Weight-Loss Challenge, which runs every Monday through mid-May, focuses on dieters who have inspired others to lose weight.
A recent study showed that weight loss is socially contagious. When one person sheds pounds, it has a ripple effect and increases the chances that his or her friends, siblings, colleagues and spouse will trim down. And distance doesn't matter. People can live thousands of miles apart and still be influenced by another's weight loss.
Sharing the challenge
The Whitko teachers and staff worked together and "shared their successes and their setbacks," says Edith Howard Hogan, a registered dietitian in Washington, D.C., who helped select the challenge participants. Their stories illustrate the importance of a network to keep you on track, she says.
People need a supportive environment to lose weight, says James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. "These teachers created it, and I think it's just fantastic.
"I bet some of the teachers' enthusiasm spilled over to the kids in the school. They should challenge the kids to do something like this."
Prater says many teachers had tried to lose weight on their own with mixed results. She and a colleague decided they'd all be better off working together.
When they told others about their idea, more than half the staff -- 19 women and three men -- agreed to give it a try. Everyone who participated put $10 into a fund, which was distributed every week to the person who lost the highest percentage of his or her total weight.
There was no prescribed weight-loss program, but the participants picked their own plans. They also chose their own exercise routines. Some worked out to exercise DVDs or went to classes.
Most started walking more, and many did it right after school. The track coach measured off sections so participants would know how far they walked, and the school nurse got them pedometers so they could count their steps. Some walked an hour or more each day.
Their weigh-ins were anonymous. All participants were assigned numbers, and each week they weighed themselves on the same scale and wrote down their weight by their numbers. They paid a dollar if they gained.
One of the most inspired ideas was a clothing swap room, a place where the dieters could drop off clothes as they melted down to lower sizes and others could get free items.
"This was fabulous because we did not have to put a lot of money out as sizes changed, and I would often try on the smaller size to encourage myself," Prater says. In the end, they were wearing each others' black, blue and brown slacks.
Exercise was a key component
Staff members lost weight in different ways:
*Prater, who once owned a catering business with her husband, cut down on bread and pasta and ate more fruits and vegetables. She also walked for 15-minute intervals throughout the day and took a water aerobics class twice a week. She lost 40 pounds during the competition and is now down 65 pounds. "I never considered quitting. I was on a roll and was not going to stop."
*Leininger gained after she gave up coaching volleyball and track to spend more time with her daughter, now 3 years old. "The weight piled on because my poor eating habits caught up with me. After having my daughter, I felt too tired to cook, so I would eat junk, and I would plop in front of the TV to relax instead of exercising."
She lost 16 pounds last winter by being more conscious of her snacking and getting up earlier to exercise daily. She has continued to lose and has now dropped 34 pounds.
*Mandy Kling, 33, a preschool special-education teacher, weighed 208 pounds when she started Weight Watchers online. "I really didn't think I could lose any weight, until my first week was a great success. Then I knew I could and wanted to do it." She had lost 54 pounds and weighed 154 before she became pregnant with her second child, due in May.
*Julie Green, 44, a teacher's aide, had ballooned to 216 pounds over the course of a few years as she coped with breast cancer, chemotherapy, steroid treatments, a divorce and depression. To lose weight, she cut out soda and sugary foods and started walking with the other staff members. "At first, I really couldn't keep up with them," she says. "If I could only do a couple of laps, I did. Gradually, I did a little more and more, and I felt better and better."
She walks most days now. Some nights she has time to do only 10 to 15 minutes, but other times she walks up to 2 miles. Green, who has lost 50 pounds, says, "Now I am cancer-free and committed to living a healthy lifestyle."
A better environment
The competition ended right before school ended for the summer, but many continued to lose and kept up the exercise. Others just worked to maintain their loss. This year the staff had an exercise competition to make sure everyone stayed physically active.
Leininger says the atmosphere in the building has changed. Gone are the doughnuts and pizza at meetings. Now it's cereal, yogurt and granola bars in the mornings and healthier sub sandwiches for evening meetings, she says.
She even used her weight loss as a teaching tool when she was doing a lesson on percent change.
"Our yearbook will show a group of teachers this year who are leaner, healthier and more active," Leininger says. "We have more energy for teaching, and we are setting a positive example for our students. If we do indulge in the occasional chip or cookie, we will be lacing up our walking shoes to burn it off."
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