It's all about losing the weight with excessive pounds and obesity ravaging the Black community, 5 families take charge of their lives and accept the 'Ebony/Jet weight-loss challenge'.(SPECIAL SECTION: HEALTH & FITNESS: EBONY/JET CHALLENGE)

When besieged by a crisis, it is not a time for us to mince words. So let me be transparently honest. We are killing ourselves and don't even realize it. I'm not talking about homicidal killings, for they are no comparison to the death toll that we are racking up on a daily basis because of our poor eating habits and refusal to be physically active. Thousands of our Brothers and Sisters are dying every day from illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and some forms of cancer--illnesses that are largely preventable with small lifestyle changes and a big determination to live.

I have personally gone through all of the emotions when I think about all of this senseless suffering and death. I'm angry that we say we love ourselves and each other, yet do things to our bodies that will only cause harm. I'm sad that so many of us lie in hospital beds, lonely and fearful about these illnesses that are destroying our bodies and taking us too soon. I'm hopeful that we will do what we have done since our arrival on the shores of this country--be strong and resilient and fight with every ounce of strength in our bodies to put an end to this needless suffering and leave a much better world for those who will come behind us.

The numbers are paralyzing--almost 80 percent of our women are overweight, nearly 70 percent of our men, 25 percent of our little girls and 18 percent of our boys. We are the heaviest we have ever been, which is why our life expectancies are shorter and our rates of related illnesses top the charts in almost ever), category.

In the words of civil rights advocate Fannie Lou Hamer, we must be "sick and tired of being sick and tired." No more talking; it's now time for action. This is why I started "The 50 Million Pound Challenge"--a free, national initiative to get us all to lose a collective 50 million pounds. The "EBONY/Jet WeightLoss Challenge," a project focusing on five families and their struggles with weight, joins our efforts to improve the health of our people.

Over the next six months we are going to share with you the journeys of change of these courageous people. They are like many of you, regular people with regular problems, and they are now determined to lose some weight and begin to live healthier lives. I have met and talked with all of them and customized individual weight-loss plans that are based on my diets, The Fat Smash Diet and The Extreme Fat Smash Diet.

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I'm hopeful that the successes some of us find in losing weight and spreading the gospel of health will become contagious and spread across the country from community to …