After three months of running treadmills, walking sidewalks and rejecting the occasional cookie, 22 teams in Butler County combined to lose 440 pounds with Scale Back Alabama.

Eighty-eight people participated in the 10-week program in effort to lose the most weight across the state of Alabama.

L.V. Stabler Memorial Hospital’s Physical Therapy director Shannon Hartley served as the local coordinator of this year’s Scale Back Alabama, and said the event was a success.

“Overall, there were more teams and greater pounds lost than prior years,” Hartley said. “My participants had over 440 pounds lost with the hospital weight total at 286 pounds lost.  The biggest winner for our weigh-in site was 27 pounds for the female and 35 pounds for the male over the 10-week period.”

Across the state, the program saw approximately 7,500 four-member teams compete with the statewide loss of 148,963 pounds.

Each team that lost at least 10 pounds was included in a drawing for one of three grand prizes that included $1,000 for each member of the first-place team, $500 for each member in the second-place team and $250 for the third-place team.

“A team from Madison County won the $1,000 grand prize, a team from Calhoun County won second with $500 per team member and third was a team from Madison County with $250 per team member,” Hartley said. “Another 50 individual winners were randomly drawn from a pool of participants who lost their 10 pounds. In addition to this, five individuals who lost any weight were selected to win a $50 cash prize.”

As for next year, Hartley said she hopes to get more people involved.

“My goal next year is to get more involved with the community awareness and provide fun ideas to help motivate,” Hartley said.