This year's 100-Day Challenge TV reality show saw Vejay Steede win after losing 77 pounds and several waist sizes.

Aside from being a reality show winner, Mr. Steede is a fine poet and writer whose work has been featured in this newspaper, although his full-time job is teaching. Now, if medical research is anything to go by, he will be able to do those tasks and many more in a healthier way — and he should live longer too.

That's because he and the other contestants are now less at risk for diabetes, heart disease and a host of other ailments, provided they continue the path they have started. The same goes for the many hundreds of people taking part in the Argus 200 Challenge, which culminates on May 24. For all the fun, prizes and the like that comes with these contests, the real message is a deadly serious one. Bermuda residents in general are obese, unfit and vulnerable to a host of life-threatening diseases largely because of unhealthy lifestyles.

These are due partly to cultural habits, but are exacerbated by the Island's prosperity, which has the tendency to turn us into hard drinking, junk food eating couch potatoes. Some of us make it even worse by smoking. That in turn leads to diseases like heart disease and diabetes which can have other side effects too.

That not only leads to shortened lifespans or disability, but it comes with a massive medical cost as well, which all residents pay for through increased health insurance premiums, hospital charges and the like. In this case, a penny of prevention really is worth a dollar of cure. So Mr. Steede, female winner Nakisha Gilbert, the organisers of the Challenge and all of its sponsors deserve credit for a magnificent effort. It is to be hoped that it will inspire others, young and old, to keep fit, eat sensibly and live healthily.