As a marketing executive involved with the 50 Million Pound Challenge, a national weight-loss initiative, Pam El has spent the past few years traveling the country to help Americans who are struggling with obesity. Until a year and a half ago, El was one of the very same people she was trying to help. In fact, during her first year touring the country for the challenge, she gained 20 pounds. Her life changed when she saw herself -- at 5-foot-2 and 217 pounds -- on a promotional video.

"The moment for me was when I saw myself on one of the videos, standing there on the stage telling people to get healthy," she told Black Voices, "and I realized I looked like the poster child for obesity. From that point in my journey, a year and a half ago, I'm down from that 217 to 147."

El joined the 50 Million Pound Challenge in earnest, journaling her exercise and diet habits, getting a workout partner and finding inspiration in the stories of other challengers on the Web site. Fast-forward to today and El, along with 50 Million Pound Challenge founder Dr. Ian Smith, is celebrating a milestone -- more than 1 million people have signed up for the challenge at 50millionpounds.com.

Smith, who was inspired to create the challenge after working on the VH1 show 'Celebrity Fit Club,' told the Black Voices community -- like the million plus challengers on his Web site -- why it's important for people trying to lose weight.


"People like to be amongst others when they're in a struggle, and weight loss is often a struggle for many people," he said. "We've created an online community where people can meet up and go for a walk or find out if there's a local team in their area they can join. The support structure is important."

And no where is support needed more than in that African American community, where men, women and children are disproportionately obese and suffer disproportionately from obesity-related diseases.

"For African Americans," Smith said, "it's an issue of trying to understand how the cultural entrenchments have gotten us into the situation we're in. The cuisine we eat, our lack of exercise or excuse for exercise, misconceptions that we are genetically predestined to be large or big-boned, which is no such thing, that we are predetermined to be curvier therefore larger, that the BMI scale doesn't apply to African Americans -- there are so many misconceptions that we suffer from in the African American community, and I'm trying to lift the veil off of it."

Whether your challenges are cultural or not, weight loss is hard -- just ask anyone who needs to lose a few pounds. Over the course of her ongoing weight-loss journey, El said she learned a valuable lesson.

"The problem with dieting is that most people want to complicate it," she said. "Most things in our lives are gray, but losing weight is black and white. You diet and you exercise, and it happens."