PORT ANGELES — On Aug. 25, six days before his self-imposed target date, Dave Ramey reached his one-year goal of shedding 100 pounds.
On Wednesday, the 57-year-old Port Angeles real estate broker and a group of friends celebrated both his weight loss of now 102 pounds and a fundraising effort that marked his achievement.
“We’ve been through many years of thick with you,” said Jim Saarinen, a friend and supporter.
“We hope to be there for many more years of thin,” Saarinen said.
Donations that started as a way to mark Ramey’s weight-loss milestones became a fundraising effort that netted $3,775 to charities.
Port Angeles Food Bank will receive $3,675, and $100 was designated for the Salvation Army.
“One hundred pounds is a significant milestone but not the end of my journey,” Ramey said Wednesday.
He plans to lose 50 more pounds in the next year, he said at the small party he hosted at his office at Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty.
In September 2010, Ramey, who is 5-foot-11, stepped on his doctor’s scale and found that he weighed 367 pounds — about twice the recommended weight for his height.
“My scale [at home] doesn’t go that high,” Ramey explained.
By Aug. 25, he had reached his goal of losing 100 pounds.
On Wednesday, he found he’d lost two more pounds, weighing in at a relatively svelte 265 pounds.
Throughout his weight-loss odyssey, Ramey donated food to the Port Angeles Food Bank and soup kitchens in the area.
“It’s symbolic — I’m giving the weight away to never get it back,” Ramey said at the time.
He began by donating 25 pounds of food when he reached the 25-pound milestone.
When he had lost 50 pounds, he donated 50 pounds.
In July, Ramey reached the milestone of 75 pounds lost — and donated 125 pounds of food to the food bank — a number he reached by adding all three milestones together.
For the 100-pound mark, Ramey wanted friends to help him donate a ton of potatoes to the food bank but was brought up short by a single question:
Does the food bank need a ton of potatoes?
Ramey said he realized that the food bank has purchasing agreements that allows it to buy food much more cheaply than he and his friends could.
Also, he learned that the food bank not only serves more than 8,500 families and individuals each month, but it also provides food to area soup kitchens.
So, he changed his plan.
Instead of donating food, he wanted to find 100 friends who would make cash donations to the food bank when he lost 100 pounds by his target date of Aug. 31.
He did, and they did.
“I have hit the 100-friends-for-100-pounds goal, as well,” Ramey said.
Donations came from all over the country, he said, from Bremerton and Seattle, as well as from out-of-state areas including Carmel and Sonoma, Calif.; Nashville, Tenn.; Washington, D.C.; and Denver, Colo.
Ramey created his own weight-loss program, alternating between Slim Fast and Smart for Life weight-loss products, and with the addition of something he calls AIM.
“AIM is ‘accountability, inspiration and motivation,’” Ramey said.
It’s hard to lose weight when there is no motivation or people to help with accountability, Ramey said.
So he became accountable to his co-workers, friends and family.
They nagged, teased and encouraged him to finish what he started.
Once he became accountable to other people, it became harder to just give up, he said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
