Less Is More for Model Who Shed 130 Pounds After Trying Every Weight-Loss Trick in the Book

Today, Allison Gapa is half the woman she once was.

“I’ll never be heavy again,” said Gapa, who once weighed 260 pounds and now checks in at 130 pounds and wants to tell the world about it.

The Huntington Beach resident has already written “The Weighting Game” but wants to develop a newspaper column called “Ask Allison” to answer questions of her phenomenal weight loss. Still, she sometimes wonders, “My God, who am I to help those women?

“I’m not perfect and don’t have all the answers. But I’ve experienced a lot through weight loss and can talk about it.”

Gapa said she knows “what it is to be obsessed with losing weight” and to try every fad diet before settling on a 1,000 to 1,200 calorie Weight Watcher regimen, giving up all fried foods, sweets and alcohol.

Her enormous weight gain, said Gapa, 33, a single parent with a 16-year-old son, followed two unsuccessful marriages. She first married at age 16.

“People have to reach out and help others,” she said. “And that’s what I’m trying to do. I have the need and desire to help people talk this problem out by telling my experience and things that worked for me.”

Gapa, who is in public relations for ICN Pharmaceuticals in Costa Mesa, has written accounts of her weight loss in Cosmopolitan, Shape, Weight Watchers and Women’s World magazines.

“My life is going well,” said Gapa, who is 5 feet, 8 inches tall and once modeled large-size clothes when she weighed 210 pounds. “I got complacent with my weight and quit dieting and quit exercising.”

But she saw the health value of a trimmer body and started dieting again, dropping to 170 pounds. That threatened her thriving livelihood as a model.

“I became a large size model at the right time and was making a lot of money, but my agent told me I’d have to gain 40 pounds back if I wanted to continue getting assignments,” she said.

Instead, Gapa went on a five-year weight-loss program.

“I wasn’t healthy and I couldn’t run if I tried,” she said. She condemns the media that suggest that women should “be happy with whatever size they are.”

On the other hand, she said, the notion that there is a “socially acceptable form women are supposed to have is ridiculous. What they call the normal look is unattainable for many women.”

No matter what the media print, she said, “the bottom line is that being heavy is unhealthy.”

You couldn’t ask for any more excitement and tension than the championship game at Cypress High School’s sixth annual softball tournament.

The Gahr Gladiators, with DeDe Weiman pitching, scored a 1-0 victory over the Kennedy Fighting Irish and pitcher Cheryl Longeway.

Neither pitcher allowed a hit.

Along that line, superstar southpaw softball pitcher Michele Granger of Valencia High School, interviewed after pitching a double header, said she has been traveling a lot recently and wasn’t 100%.

That was after she pitched no-hitters in both games, winning 7-0 and 4-0.

One was a perfect game, the sixth in her high school career to go along with 30 no-hitters.

The bride is supposed to wear “. . . something borrowed, something blue.”

But Elthere’s Bridal Shop told Fullerton police it wasn’t borrowed. Some soon-to-be bride stole a $580 gown.

The price tag was left behind.

Acknowledgments--Kirk Seabold and Debra Herschberg, both of Yorba Linda and both Esperanza High School seniors, were named winners in the Quill and Scroll National Writing/Photography contest. Kirk won in the editorial cartoon classification, and Debra won in the editorial category.