WSBT — The 12-week medical weight loss program ended a couple weeks ago. Kirk Mason, Cari Peugeot and Kelli Cheatham all survived the Why Weight? challenge and the friendly competition that came with it.

At the beginning of their journey, Memorial Bariatric & Weight Loss Dr. Scott Eschowsky said most of the country would be considered overweight right now.

"Up to 2/3 of people are actually overweight," he said.

Before beginning Why Weight, Kirk, Cari and Kelli were a little overweight — eating too much and not exercising enough.

Now, the difference is easy to see. During one recent WSBT First Thing in the Morning broadcast, Kirk Mason said he's doing a lot of painting at his house and a pair of old shorts just fell off one day.

During the program, Kirk lost 25.5 pounds, Kelli lost 14 pounds and Cari lost 13 pounds. Together, that's 52.5 pounds!

That means three months of hard work obviously paid off. They did it with the help of our fitness guru Greg, and dietitians Julie and Laura at Memorial Bariatric & Weight Loss Center.

That meant writing down everything they ate: keeping track of fats, proteins, carbohydrates and calories.

All three morning show personalities have lost a lot of fat everywhere. Kelli lost almost 22 pounds of body fat, turning some of that into muscle. Kirk dropped 19 pounds of fat and Cari lost about 7.5 pounds of fat.

But the competition wasn't based strictly on how much was lost. Kirk, Cari and Kelli decided to focus on the percentage of body weight they shed.

Based on the percentage of body weight lost, the winner of WSBT's Why Weight challenge is First Thing in the Morning Meteorologist Cari Peugeot. She dropped 10.9 percent of her body weight. She barely edged Kirk who lost 10.6 percent. Kelli lost 7.5 percent of her body weight.

To read all the stories from the challenge, go to the Why Weight? section of our website.