No more losing for Quinte’s biggest losers

BELLEVILLE – Jennifer Coleman steps on the scale looking for positive results during the 2013 Quinte’s Biggest Loser contest. File photo by Matthew Blair

By Matthew Blair

BELLEVILLE – After just three years, Quinte’s own Biggest Loser competition is no more.

The Biggest Loser weight-loss contest, which had been scheduled to begin this past January and run until April, was cut because it wasn’t bringing in enough money for the Belleville General Hospital Foundation, which organized it.

“Because we have a campaign goal this year to raise $12 million in four years, which requires us to raise around $3 million this year, we had to be very strategic about the type of projects we run,” said BGH Foundation executive director Drew Brown.

In the last two years, the foundation raised over $40,000 and helped motivate nearly 200 people who took part in the competition. Each participant was required to raise a minimum of $100 in donations. Last year’s top fundraiser raised $1,025.

Contestants who have taken part in Quinte’s Biggest Loser before say they feel robbed of the chance it gave them to change their life.

“I am saddened. I think it’s a big mistake not to do it,” said Jennifer Coleman of Belleville. “They started people on this journey and now don’t want to continue it.”

Coleman was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and weighed over 400 pounds at the time. Luckily doctors found it early enough to remove it with surgery. Since the contest began in 2011 she has lost over 100 pounds.

Matt Tweedy of Belleville, the 2011 contest winner, said he is upset with the cancellation of the event, but it shouldn’t be an excuse for people to stop losing weight.

“It gave many local people a chance to get a kick start on a new healthy lifestyle and to meet some new people with the same goals in mind,” Tweedy said. “However, I know there (are) several other groups and weight-loss-style contests that go on.”

Karen Walsh of Belleville, who took part in the 2013 event, said: “I met some remarkable people on this journey … who have become close friends.”

Walsh also helped create the Biggest Loser run as part of the competition. The through Belleville was designed to get contestants active outside of the gym and to challenge themselves to try something new.

“It was such an amazing and emotional event watching people who never exercised previously run and walk distances like five kilometres,” said Walsh.

Asked by QNet News if the contest would return in 2015, Brown, of the hospital foundation, said, “Probably not.”

Coleman and other contestants tried to create a followup program called How to Live A Healthy Lifestyle, but were unable to come to terms with the BGH Foundation.

Coleman said the followup program was going to mimic the Biggest Loser, but it would have been run by the contestants and wouldn’t have had a winner. The new program would have been about people coming together to lose weight without competing against each other, she said.