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Finding the determination within herself, Belinda Marshall's story

This year, Belinda Marshall lost a person. During the Pound Plunge, she shed 79.2 pounds. Since then, she's taken off another 41 pounds, and she's not done yet. She talks about a recent outing with her four-year-old son.

"We ride horses quite a bit as a family," Belinda says. "Me and my son were up riding at Honey Creek in Savannah," she says. "Before we left, I grabbed a pair of jeans that I had worn before the Pound Plunge by mistake. They were even skin-tight on me, and I put them on and couldn't even keep them up," she says laughing. "I took my four year old as a joke and put him down in the jeans with me - and we still had a little room."

Imagine going to the store and picking up a 10 pound bag of potatoes -- an exercise Dietitian Jessica Hagey often uses with Pound Plunge folks who are floundering in their weight-loss efforts -- now imagine 12 of those bags, and that is the amount of weight Belinda has lost.

She, with her brothers and mother, came in first place during Pound Plunge Fourths. All of them have maintained the amount of weight they lost, and her brother and mother continue to try to lose - but Belinda says they are nearing their goal weight. They all look forward to a trip to Cancun in December. Before then, Belinda's goal is to lose another 15 pounds. If she doesn't reach her goal before the trip, she will do it, she says during the Pound Plunge Fifths.

Belinda is the first to admit that she would not have lost the weight had it not been for the Pound Plunge. "We found out that it was fun after we had gotten into it," she says. "It's something about having to face that scale every week that keeps you honest through the week. When you don't have to face the scale, you don't think about what you're eating through the days."
So how does she continue to be so successful, even after the Pound Plunge? "I get up and at least once a week, I weigh in," Belinda says. "If I know that I have to get up and get on that scale Friday morning, I am very watchful of what I'm going to eat through the week."

That's not an exaggeration. She eats 1,000 - 1,200 calories a day, including lots of chicken and vegetables. She's also teaching these new eating habits to her son, Quincy, who now knows that when he's finished with his dinner, what he doesn't eat is put away or thrown away. "Then mom doesn't get to sit there and pick at it," Belinda says. "Plus, I don't want him to be heavy through school, like I was. I've been trying to monitor more what he eats."

"I've been heavy all my life," Belinda says of herself and the rest of her family. "It was just a matter of finding the determination within me, and knowing that I have a four-year-old, and I want to be here to see him grow up," she states. "On the path I was on, I knew that at any time I could have a heart attack and that would be it. I know that I've got my husband and parents who would do a fine job with him, but it's not like being there yourself. I had to make the change not only for myself, but also for him."