SUFFOLK
Tim Duncan wanted to glisten like a muscled man on the cover of a health magazine.
He stepped out of his shoes and pulled off his T-shirt. He grabbed a bottle of baby oil and headed toward the scales.
Duncan, 45, is a Suffolk police lieutenant with 17 years on the force. Twelve weeks ago, he weighed 226 pounds and says he had let himself get out of shape.
He signed up for the 911 Fitness Challenge, a nationwide initiative to help emergency responders with conditioning. So did more than 30 other police officers, detectives, dispatchers, firefighters and crime analysts in Suffolk. They split into teams of five and spent the past three months trying to lose weight and gain muscle.
Stephanie Burch, a city police captain, knows four police officers who died within years of retirement. Two others left the job after suffering heart attacks.
“Obviously, law enforcement is a very stressful job,” Burch said.
Officers spend long hours in cars. They work odd shifts, sit through court appearances, grab meals on the run. “Nationwide,” she said, “the health of officers over 35 is actually worse than the population.”
With health and fitness initiatives cut from the department’s budget the past several years, Burch looked for programs that would cost the city little or nothing. She decided on the 911 Fitness Challenge.
Duncan’s group called themselves The Perfect Fit. His wife, Nicole Duncan, an emergency communications supervisor, was on a team called Emergency Tones.
The pair worked out together three days a week. They changed their eating habits, and for 12 weeks, it’s what they’ve talked about.
“Boy, do we talk about it,” Duncan said.
At lunch one day, their 10-year-old said he needed white cheese on his sandwich instead of yellow because it was less fat.
They all weighed at the beginning. Some weighed every day. Final weigh-ins were this week at Gold’s Gym in Newport News.
Betty Rogers, a dispatcher, wanted to fit into a pair of jeans in her closet.
Reanita Goodwyn, also a dispatcher, wanted to lose the weight she had regained after buying her house and dropping her gym membership 3 1/2 years ago.
One by one, they weighed in this week.
Rogers lost more than 15 pounds. She can fit into her jeans now.
Goodwyn, now a member of the YMCA and a fan of kickboxing, lost 5 percent of her body fat.
Baby oil in his hands, Duncan stepped on the scales – 217. He’d lost nine pounds and 8 percent body fat.
“I’m just ecstatic,” he shouted. “I’m stoked. The best is yet to come.”
Then he rubbed on the baby oil.
Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5208, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com
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