Awaiting the skinny on weight contest

Published on February 25th, 2010

By ROSE COX

If Unalaska is looking lighter these days, it's probably more than the sun surfacing after a long, dark winter.

Thanks to the community weight-loss contest Unalaska's Biggest Winner, the town has jettisoned hundreds of pounds of unwanted, to put it delicately, lard. You can't tell by looking at them, but competitors for the contest's grand prize of airline tickets to Hawaii also lowered their risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other chronic killers.

"There are more benefits to losing weight than you have room to print," said contest organizer Char Gisvold, community wellness advocate for the Oonalaska Wellness Center.

Seventy-eight people registered for the town's first-ever, year-long contest that will officially end Saturday, with the winner being announced during the fete at the Grand Aleutian. Up to 20 returned faithfully to weigh in and win terrific monthly prizes - massage certificates from Aleutian Chiropractic, baskets of healthy food from Safeway and Alyeska Store, free passes to the PCR, a month's worth of free salads from Amelia's, cases of vitamin water from Horizon.

Collectively, they dropped 206 pounds by April, 294 by July, and 402 by October. January's weigh-in registered 516 missing pounds.

So who will win the fabulous trip to paradise sponsored by Northern Mechanic? The final weigh-in Feb. 16 showed some contestants lost a total of 50, 65, 80 pounds.

Gisvold coyly refused to say more.

"We're not going to put their names out there until Saturday. But I would say there are probably three people running neck and neck."

For a small town, Unalaska sure can keep a secret. Gisvold won't tell, contestants won't say, and possible winners didn't return calls for this story.

But it definitely won't be Laura Leasure landing in Honolulu.

The 70-year-old ramped up her exercise program with water aerobics on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and zumba classes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at the PCR. She cut out the desserts served with meals at the senior center, and quit hauling home calorie-laden food from the grocery store.

"It was a pretty good deal, I lost 26 and a quarter pounds" she said. "In a year, that's not all that much, but every single time I weighed in, I had lost weight."

As a winner of the weigh-in one month, she's holding out hope for Saturday's cash drawing. The name of each person who won the monthly weigh-in is entered in the drawing for a cool $1,000. But competition will be stiff.

For instance, Linda Lekanoff won the monthly weigh-off four times in a row, so her name is in the pot four times.

She'll probably be going to Hawaii with the $1,000 in her pocket, Leasure said.

Or not.

It won't be Leasure's daughter, Susan Lynch, even though she worked her fanny off soliciting all the contest prizes, gave those pep talks at monthly meetings and lost more than 50 pounds to boot.

"I was proof in the pudding that if you watch what you eat and exercise every day, you'll lose weight."

Not much for group classes, Lynch launched what she calls "aqua boogie," jogging and cross-country skiing in the pool while rocking out to her water-proof iPod. She leaped out of the gate, training 45 minutes each session, sometimes twice a day. A friend put her through floor exercises, kickboxing and other regimens.

"That's a humbling experience to go to the gym in front of everybody and do donkey kicks. But I kept looking around, thinking maybe I could jumpstart somebody else if they saw this fat chick's doing it."

She won the monthly weigh-in three times, early on. Then came those trips to Texas, the capital of corner barbecue joints, and a corresponding uptick on the scale.

She may have gotten a bit cocky and talked some trash, she says now.

"I bragged about it, I told everyone to count on me."

But when it comes to divulging the winner, she's a clam.

"Unless a sleeper comes along, there's a person who has lost over 80 pounds. But someone could come out of the woodwork."