obesity & fitness

We implement and manage corporate obesity & fitness programmes.

Why we became involved in this sector
Many of the patients at our clinics are overweight and suffer from a condition called the metabolic syndrome, caused by their excess body fat. This increasingly prevalent condition makes you more prone to developing heart disease, diabetes and various other degenerative diseases. Because of their weight and poor health, most of these patients require daily prescription medication and receive additional insurance loadings. Some are even refused medical cover. As healthcare professionals, we needed to help our patients lose weight in order to help them improve their health, increase their life expectancy and reduce their healthcare costs.

Most weight-loss programmes show poor short term results. Their long-term results are even more dismal and did therefore not suit our requirements. Yet, statistics prove that most overweight people are constantly trying to lose weight.  Why do so many try so desperately and so few succeed? We required an answer. In addition, we also wanted a more effective weight-loss programme.

Our own research
Our first step to finding a solution was to activate a research programme. For our research subjects, we deliberately chose the most difficult cases, in other words, non-responsive overweight individuals who had failed to lose weight on standard weight-loss programmes. In addition, seeing that many of our patients were sick, severely overweight people, we wanted to work with sick, severely overweight people. This gave us the opportunity to find out which obstacles prevented these individuals from losing weight. At the Institute, we started calling these obstacles “stumbling blocks”. Fortunate individuals only had one stumbling block. Most of our patients, however, had a combination of different ones. 

Once we understood the common stumbling blocks in greater depth, we were able to develop remedial solutions for each one. In other words, we could place stepping stones to help our patients circumvent or conquer their stumbling blocks. Once this strategy was in place, our patients started achieving better results. Seeing positive weight loss results also proved highly motivational to our patients, especially for those who had a long history of desperate failure.

Single strategy approaches don’t work that well.
We kept on testing and developing new weight-loss concepts over six years. Each time our patient’s weight-loss results improved. We found that the single-strategy approach was not really all that effective. Combining different weight-loss strategies simultaneously, delivered far better weight-loss results. Having almost trebled our weight-loss results at our own clinics at that stage, we were eager to introduce our concepts to an external environment.

The opportunity soon arrived. A large financial corporation had been offering their employees a routine annual wellness screening for the last five years. Each year the main areas of concern within the group were always the same, namely high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and stress.  In 2009 the management decided to assist their employees by initiating a weight-loss challenge.  Compared to motivating an employee to seek their own solution, this was obviously a much bigger responsibility and they requested outside assistance. Because of our experience in corporate health and wellness, we were asked to help them with the process.

Combining different weight-loss strategies more effective
Hundreds of overweight employees volunteered to join the weight-loss challenge. After some deliberation a final group was chosen. According to the World Health Organisation’s classification, virtually all of them belonged to the most severe category of obesity, namely class III. Because of their excess body weight, they all suffered from various stages of the metabolic syndrome, which statistically equated to a considerable increase in their mortality rate. The challenge lasted twenty five weeks and upon completion, the winner had lost 59.6 kg. This equated to 36.4 % of his original body weight. Forty five percent of the contestants had lost amounts of weight in excess of 30 kg.

Besides achieving these outstanding results, the most gratifying aspect for us as healthcare professionals was that by decreasing their average Body Mass Index by 17.1%, all candidates had dramatically reduced their risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer. Their cholesterol levels and blood pressure came down, lowering their healthcare costs and insurance loading even more. As determined by routine psychometric tests, each contestant also achieved significantly better scores on emotional contentment scales at the end of the contest, as compared to the beginning, an important requirement needed to maintain the intrinsic motivation that we all need to take care of our own health. As healthcare professionals, we were finally satisfied that we had achieved our initial objective, namely to improve health, rather than cosmetic appearance alone.

Success versus failure
Since then we have done numerous corporate weight-loss programmes at many large local companies like ABSA and SAMANCOR, and three different international trials conducted in the United Sates. All our trials have achieved similar success rates and our weight loss results have since become quite predictable. The average programme lasts 25 weeks and 7 out of 10 candidates will successfully lose weight, often a third of their original body weight. Most of these candidates will also be able to reduce, or sometimes even discontinue, some of their chronic prescription medication. Afterwards, each successful candidate will also report that they feel significantly more energetic and emotionally more content as compared to how they felt in the beginning.