LEXINGTON, Ky. — Tiffany Groves' epiphany about needing to lose weight came when she realized that she became breathless walking from her couch to the kitchen.

She was 15.

She weighed 294 pounds, which hung heavily even on her 6-foot, 3-inch frame.

Tiffany is now a University of Kentucky junior. And she weighs less than half what she did before: 139 pounds.

Toyota worker Tom Eul had his revelatory moment when he stepped on the scale and saw that he weighed 320 pounds.

Eul, 57, realized that he didn't know whether he'd be around to see his granddaughter grow up. "I was hobbling into work and hobbling back home," he said.

Eul is now 130 pounds lighter. His friends at work tease that he's half the man that he used to be. Almost.

Lori Simpson of Waco, Ky., "tried every diet known to man," she says, but her moment came when her health insurance company turned her down for gastric bypass surgery. She logged onto the Weight Watchers Web site and found herself a nearby meeting.

She was 311 pounds.

Now, 108 pounds later, she's hoping to lose at least 25 more pounds.

Faithe Warren-Agee got a daily reality check from her patients in a Lexington. Ky., stroke unit: "Do I need my food enough to be able to risk having a big stroke, not having independence at all?" she asked herself.

She did not need her food that much, she decided. So she lost 90 pounds.

Sometimes it's more subtle. P.J. Danhires of Lexington, who lost 50 pounds (her husband, Gregg, lost 80), just didn't realize how the weight had crept up on her. "I knew I'd gotten bigger, but I didn't know I weighed that much," she says of the shock of weighing in at 211 pounds. "I was once pregnant with twins and didn't weigh that much."

Mike Rogers of Winchester, Ky., weighed 307 pounds, then he said to himself: "I'm going to start today and see what happens." He figured that, while he was losing the first 20 pounds, nobody would notice.

Rogers lost 90 pounds and is today an advocate of high fiber, heavy walking and Fat Free Pringles.

Groves, Eul, Simpson, Warren-Agee, Danhires and Rogers don't claim particular wisdom in weight-loss technology or metabolic jump-starting. Instead, they use a technique almost frightening in its simplicity:

They eat less. They exercise a lot more.

We'll get back to the diet. What kind of exercise?

Eul swears by the 10,000-steps method, which works out to about five miles a day on the treadmill. He also has free weights, a "total" gym for more resistance, a stair-stepper platform, a medicine ball and an inflated beam for crunches.

Mike Rogers walks four miles a day five days a week. Bart Steele of Lexington — "I hate exercise."— spends a lot of time outdoors doing landscaping, and he takes the stairs instead of elevators. He's 98 pounds lighter than he was at his heaviest.

And Krista Alexander of Georgetown, Ky., who lost 57 pounds, doesn't belong to a gym but nonetheless stays active all day: "I walk the stairs, I walk the dog, I walk from Dillard's to Macy's (at Fayette Mall). I go for walks at lunch when the weather permits it and we just started taking ballroom dancing."

Hilary Miller works in as much as two hours of exercise a day in the early mornings. She takes "rest days" only two or three times a month.

"The body loves to exercise," says Theresa Barry-Greb, who works with groups that are learning "The Solution" system. The Solution focuses on establishing healthy limits and emphasizes "mastery living" skills, including adequate sleep, eating a balanced and appealing diet, and making time to "restore."

How do people lose extreme amounts of weight without pills or surgery?

Some swear by the Weight Watchers point system, but others embrace behavior-modification programs such as The Solution, and still others simply reason their way through, figuring that a reduced-calorie diet and increased calorie-burning via exercise must add up to something.

"It's all diet and exercise — unfortunately," says Faithe Warren-Agee. She runs and attends a spin class, but she also looks for other opportunities to stay active. "Even when I'm not working out, I'm doing things like walking the dog."

The news that a slimmer life is possible via the extensive consumption of skinless chicken breasts and obsessive use of treadmills and weights is hardly new.

But in a world where pricey gastric bypass surgery often is denied by insurance companies and the two big weight-loss drugs — Xenical and Meridia — are only moderate successes, diet and exercise might appear the old horses in the weight-loss stable. Still, they appear to work.

And by the way: Most who lose don't call the new eating plans "diets." They think of themselves as making permanent lifestyle changes.

"What had caused problems for me all my life was diets, diets that were too restrictive," Hilary Miller says. "When I couldn't stand it any longer, I would eat too much out of rebellion."

Many of those who have lost large amounts of weight still nurture a little fascination with junk food, although most of them have limited their sugar consumption. Lori Simpson likes an occasional order of Wendy's fries, which clock in at 7 points on her Weight Watchers allowance. Hilary Miller makes sure that she tastes every Christmas treat that interests her.

But these are exceptions to the game plan, not everyday eating. Krista Alexander says that it's important to allow yourself an occasional treat.

The rewards are, after all, more substantial than a chunk of Hershey bar.

"My husband stuck with me through the fat years," Lori Simpson says. "He never gave me grief about my weight. And he's about to get his skinny wife back."

What do people who have lost large amounts of weight have in common? If they do it without the benefit of drugs or surgery, two things: They eat differently. And they exercise a lot. Here are some of their tips.• Exercise: Make it a daily habit. Those who lost the most weight were most committed to their exercise routines — and indeed, they find it hard to skip exercising.• Sugar: No, a little chocolate won't kill you, but those who lost a lot of weight were careful about sugar and fat intake.• Fast food: Although Bart Steele still likes his McDonald's breakfast sandwich and Krista Alexander has the occasional cheeseburger Happy Meal, most of those with the biggest weight losses avoided fast food. They also kept track of their cheese consumption and eventually found they weren't as fond of burgers as they had been while heftier.• Keep a record of what you eat, and when you eat it. Steele scaled himself back from a McDonald's breakfast that included a breakfast sandwich, a cinnamon roll, hash browns and a large soda to just the breakfast sandwich and soda. These days, he's weaned himself from the soda as well.• Watch out for eating patterns that show you're eating out of emotion rather than hunger.• Look for calories in places where you don't think you're chalking them up. Several of our weight-loss champs gave up their sugared soda habit.