By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

The Trenton Weight Watchers are a bunch of big losers, and this month they will prove it by fattening up a local food bank for the needy.

In conjunction with a nationwide Weight Watchers charity drive, Lose for Good, the local chapter will donate a pound of food to Trenton United Methodist Church’s food bank for every pound members lose between September 7 and Oct. 18.

“We average losing about 40 pounds a week, so we should have about 250 pounds of food,” said Polly Ryan, leader of the Trenton group.

Nationally, Weight Watchers will donate the cost of a pound of food for every pound lost by participants, up to $1 million, to two charities that fight hunger, Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger.  Locally, donations are made in cans, boxes and bags of actual food products, with members asked to contribute the equivalent in net weight of their loss each week.

And these Dade dieters, who meet each week at Trenton UMC, are losing big time. “The year 2006, we celebrated losing 2006 pounds. That was our goal for that year,” said Ryan.  “Last year we well exceeded that, the 2007, and this year we’re already past 2000.”

Ryan is a Weight Watchers success story herself, having lost 23 pounds through a Chattanooga group before starting as leader of the Trenton chapter.

Attendance at the Trenton meetings averages from 35 to 45, she said, with attendance thinning in the summer months, then positively porking in January and February. “When everyone makes their resolutions to start the new year out and lose weight, oh, our numbers are just unbelievable,” she said.

Members of Weight Watchers shed pounds through the organization’s system of healthy nutrition plus friendly group support. Through the years, the organization’s weight-loss method has evolved from calorie-counting to two food plans dieters may currently choose between, or which they may alternate week to week.

In the Flex Plan, each food unit is assigned a point value and participants are assigned a total daily number of points based on age, weight, gender and activity level. Dieters may thus eat and drink whatever they choose and still lose weight as long as they stay within their allotted points allowance.

Points are tracked by daily journaling. So are additional “treat” point that are allowed weekly. Extra points may be earned through exercise, and the plan emphasizes the importance of eating plenty of such healthful foods as vegetables and fruits.

Alternatively, participants may follow Weight Watchers’ Core Plan. On this program, dieters do not keep track of amounts but eat as much as satisfies them from certain listed “Core” foods. The list includes lean meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fat-free dairy. “Uncore” foods – and bread is one of them – may only be consumed as part of the weekly treat-point quota which the Core Plan also allows.

The fact that both systems perform as billed is attested to glowingly at meetings by their adherents.  Most local Weight Watchers seem to prefer the Flex Plan, but one member said she had lost over 30 pounds following the Core Plan.

But central to both programs is Weight Watchers’ emphasis on group support. “I’ve met a whole lot of friends here,” said Rita Burkett, a member of the Trenton group. “Everybody knows your pain. They know how hard you’ve tried, and they don’t down you if you don’t lose, they encourage you.”  

Burkett, who has lost 80 pounds in 22 months with Weight Watchers, not to mention her need for blood pressure medication, said she would recommend the program to anybody. “I actually feel good about myself for a change,” she said.

Registration at the Trenton Weight Watchers group is currently free, said Ryan. Members pay a weekly fee determined by the national organization – about $10 a week, depending on the payment plan chosen – when they meet and weigh in.