The Matis Adventure Boot Camp Challenge is in its last week having kicked off on 25 May in Cape Town and has seen three ladies competing to make the biggest overall lifestyle change that meant not just losing weight but getting fit too.

The challenge finishes on 4 September where the winner will be announced at the Matis Adventure Boot Camp Wellness Seminar at Suikerbossie Restarurant in Hout Bay. Consulting life coach to the Matis Adventure Boot Camp Challenge as well as one of the speakers at the Seminar, Rafiq Lockhat, explains the psychological link between food and being overweight and why it's so difficult for some women to lose weight and for others not.

Link between food and being overweight

It's almost spring again and with the wild flowers popping up everywhere so are all the adverts for every kind of slimming aid. It always amazes me how each year, with monotonous predictability; these products find their way into our media.

A pill to burn fat, a powder to make you shed kilos or a potion to curb your appetite and an appliance to guarantee you look like a supermodel in less than six weeks.

Desperate to be thin

Women desperate to be thin by summer buy these products turning them into best sellers. No doubt some women do lose some weight, only to see the kilos come plodding back a few months later. Demoralised and disappointed these women then just give up and give into their cravings, blow up like helium filled balloons and become miserable and bitter — only to repeat the cycle again next spring.

The sad fact, clearly, is that fad diets and 'get thin quick' products just don't work in the medium- to long-term. The problem, in the opinion of many weight-loss experts is that obesity has been consistently conceptualised as a physical condition resulting from a deficiency in will power. This of course means that when a woman does not achieve her goal weight she is likely to see herself as a failure and set herself up for future failure.

So why is it so difficult to lose weight? Again, according to the experts, there are three categories of people who gain weight:

1) Those with a genetic predisposition to excessive accumulation of fat.
2) Those who make poor food choices.
3) Emotional eaters.

It is the emotional eaters who seem to struggle the most. What exactly is an emotional eater? These are women (men too, obviously) whose overeating is strongly connected to psychological difficulties.

Commonly, when daily life events are experienced as stressful those of us who try to relieve stress by eating than tend to overeat. Usually, when we don't want to face emotions like anger, sadness or guilt some of us eat to push those feelings away. The problem is that these feelings will keep coming up, so we have to keep eating to control those feelings; rapidly decreasing our chances of ever losing weight consistently.

Some experts consider fat to be a symptom, (e.g. like a phobia) of underlying psychological issues. These need to be resolved first for success to be achieved.

Some of our psychological difficulties with food arise very early in childhood, due to the relationship we had with our parents and food. Were we overfed or threatened with hunger? Did we live with food manipulative parents? Was food used as a reward?

Interesting research by Dr George Blair-West has shown how many people have deep emotional attachments to foods that they love. He calls it 'High Sacrifice Fattening Foods' — foods that people perceive as a big sacrifice to give up for the rest of their lives.

His research indicates that this often leads to resentment, which then leads to a rebellious attitude towards the diet programme. Any programme done with resentment rather than enthusiasm is bound to fail.

So if you are one of those women who have consistently struggled to lose and keep weight off, it will be important for you to learn what your emotional and psychological attachment to food is first, than you can factor this into your programme and greatly increase your chances of success.

The Matis Adventure Boot Camp Challenge finalists have not only had to attend boot camp five times per week for three consecutive camps each lasting four weeks, but they have had to follow a personalised eating plan devised by dietician, Kim Hofman and attend monthly life coaching sessions with Rafiq. In this way they are hoping to achieve the overall lifestyle makeover that incorporates all elements of what is means to be fit and healthy. For more information go to www.adventurebootcamp.co.za