NYPD group collectively loses 3,000 pounds: "That's the weight of a police car"
NYPD Lieutenant Tara Deckert is a ring leader. By day she commands the Grand Larceny Division's Intelligence Unit, but she's got an undercover passion that plays out underground.
That's where the NYPD has its fitness center and where Deckert shreds calories. Her weight rap sheet has dropped 60 pounds.
"I had high blood pressure. I was having a hard time keeping up with the kids because I was overweight," Deckert told CBS News correspondent David Begnaud. "I said I've had enough. I'd been overweight since I was 5 years old. It was time to change."
She started eating right and started a WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers) group at police headquarters.
"Our group has lost over 3,000 pounds. That's the weight of a police car," she said.
On Thursday, Deckert joined a wellness walk in Brooklyn with two of her WW accomplices, Danielle Craven, who lost 75 pounds, and Shamira Gill-McGaney, who lost 140 pounds.
"I lost a person," Gill-McGaney said. "I was just telling the ladies in the car, my daughter, at the time she was 8 years old, and she used to have to help me get dressed. I couldn't do it on my own."
"She was putting my socks on for me and she said, 'Mommy, I feel like I'm your slave.' I died. I'm like 'Okay, that's it, can't have my baby feeling like a slave,'" Gill-McGaney said.
In all, 2,082 NYPD employees have lost more than 8,000 pounds. It's all part of a partnership with the WorkWell NYC program, which launched with WW in June 2016. Nearly 40,000 city employees have collectively lost more than 170,000 pounds.
Deckert, Craven and Gill-McGaney will be on stage Saturday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for Oprah Winfrey's 2020 Vision tour. But on Thursday there was a surprise: Winfrey, who is a major investor in WW, joined their walk.
Asked to finish the sentence, "The tour thus far has taught me ...," Winfrey said, "Taught me that there is unity in the country around the issue of wellness, that everybody wants the same thing. They want a better life for themselves so that they can be better for their children and their families."
Winfrey said she told Gill-McGaney that the amount of weight she lost used to be her goal weight.
"I was prediabetic before. All of that's now done," she said. "And now my numbers are glowing. I just checked with my doctor the other day."
