North vs South in the Fatboy Challenge

The modern culture is littered with quick fix solutions. Unfortunately, these solutions do not apply to every sphere of our lives, a good example being weight loss. How good would it be if there was pill, or powder, or portion that we could take to lose weight. Or even an app that could speed things up. Unfortunately, work has to be put in to shed some weight and the North vs South Fatboy Challenge, a weight loss programme which is supported by Yarona FM and Botswana Public Officers Medical Aid Scheme (BPOMAS), encourages that. The challenge started on March 02 and the grand finale is billed for August 08.

 
The challenge was initiated by the local radio station, Yarona FM, as a charity event but it changed to become a corporate event in 2013 after BPOMAS showed interest. Last week, Jack’s Gym was a hive of activity when 210 participants showed up to shed off extra weight.

 
TimeOut caught up the challenge organizer, Tshepiso Sekate, who gave a background of the challenge. “The Challenge has been running for the past 8 years under Yarona Fm as The Fat-Boy Challenge. Participants came predominantly from the media industry. In 2013, BPOMAS, who were running a similar programme, The North-South Challenge, took interest in what we were doing and after talks the two events were merged. That’s how the North vs South Fat Boy Challenge was born.

 
According to Sekate, the programme has since been extended to different towns ans semi-urban areas: Palapye, Orapa, Francistown, Lobatse, Jwaneng, Mahalapye and Gaborone to make it accessible to people across the country. “The criteria for the selection of participants are that the person has to be obese, registered with any medical aid scheme, and should be between the ages 18 and 40 years,” explained Tshepiso Sekate.