City embarks on a weight loss challenge

Simone Samuels

simones@caxton.co.za

The City of Joburg is challenging residents to take a proactive stance towards healthy living and particularly obesity.

Through the Go Jozi Go Active Healthy Lifestyle initiative, the city council is introducing its citywide Weight Loss Challenge in a bid to provide its residents with an opportunity to improve their lifestyles through healthy eating and physical activities.

The Weight Loss Challenge is set to provide participants with practical healthy living strategies by teaching them how to prepare food, and giving them healthy eating and exercise plans.

According to the city council, obesity was a chronic disease and an estimated 1.1 billion adults around the world were overweight while 312 million were obese.

Obesity was major health risk contributing to coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, diabetes and some forms of cancer and was the second leading cause of preventable deaths, it added. The city council noted that about three in five South Africans were overweight or obese.

Meanwhile, a study released by the University of Witwatersrand found that South Africans had become more obese over the past 30 years and the country was considered the most obese country in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The study recommended a 20 percent tax on sugar sweetened beverages as the first step in tackling obesity, especially in young adults. The study estimated that this move could result in 220 000 fewer obese adults in South Africa.

The city council’s Social Development Department has been promoting and educating communities about healthy eating and participating in physical activities since May last year. However, the city council moved to introduce its first Weight Loss Challenge in a bid to actively engage the public.

According to the city council, the campaign, which would be launched at the Moletsane Sports Complex in Soweto on 30 August, would be undertaken in all regions across Joburg.

However, the dates and locations of further weight loss challenge events had yet to be announced.