Like three-quarters of the population, I have spent a large part of my life on one fad diet after another. Each worked reasonably well in the short term because I actually would lose weight. Fifteen to 20 pounds were “easy” to shed. What ended up being difficult was maintaining the loss. Almost immediately after attaining my goal, I would “reward” my body with food. How ridiculous!

Our chapter, TOPS ON 5327 Thunder Bay, was formed in July 2007. The first week, after alternately fasting and feasting, I had lost a whopping…half-pound. “TOPS is not working!” I declared to myself. What I should have realized was that I wasn’t working TOPS. What I had been doing was taking off pounds un-sensibly. I remembered a quotation from my years of training as a Watkins manager:

“Success is the sum of efforts repeated day in and day out.”             —Robert Collier

 I started reading TOPS’ jump-start guide, My Day One. I started reading the recipes in our chapter’s copy of TOPS’ lifestyle guide, The Choice Is Mine. Then I realized that if it’s meant to be, it’s definitely up to me.

No one else could be held accountable if I had poor success one week. I made the choice to “overeat in private” and I paid the price. On week two, with my new attitude, I recorded a great loss. My journey had begun.

I cannot overstress the great importance of maintaining weekly attendance at meetings. Those who stayed each week after weighing in learned from the programs presented and tended to record substantially better results. Our chapter presents a Best Loser gift each week. I have a veritable treasure shelf of gifts, as well as scrolls, pins, and so on that I received at ARD.

We all want to bask in the limelight of public recognition, if only for one, brief moment. For me, the limelight has yet to fade. Daily, I have people commenting, “You look so good.” I always answer,

“I feel phenomenal. I go to TOPS.”

I know that next year I will be on stage as a KOPS. That really is what makes TOPS so special: the safety valve of needing to maintain our goal weight for the rest of our lives. This is not, in any way, a yo-yo system whereby we lose weight and then put it back on when our “special occasion” passes. We are in this for the long haul: a long, healthy life.