Avoiding "Cheaters" in Office Weight Loss Competition

Supplements don't work, so it doesn't matter if they're banned or allowed.

The real problem here is turning weight loss into a competition.

Supplements don't work, so it doesn't matter if they're banned or allowed.

The real problem here is turning weight loss into a competition.

I think it is less about the actual competition and more about the accountability and group dynamics. Groups have been shown to achieve greater success than individuals. I join the company "competitions" all the time to either motivate me to lose a few pounds or maintain my current weight over the holidays and I could personally care less about the money/competition.

Not sure its possible to make everyone act reasonable and expect them to all be honest about it. I imagine the longer the run of the competition, the less likely people will resort to measures like dehydration and such? Or if they do, it might not be enough to catch up to those who work hard for the duration.

Make a contract and put in there that unsustainable diets, or fad diets will result in automatic disqualification with no return of money put into the pot,

To avoid unsustainable cheating, say the winners of the contest must maintain that weight loss for an additional 6 months after end of contest, or the money reverts back to next years contest.

That will obviously encourage everyone to be healthier long-term after the weight loss, and also help avoid people doing things that are not "lifetime" okay.

The problem with saying 1200 calorie daily minimum food intake is that some people might be choosing to do something like the 5:2 since many people will have different things going on in their lives outside work. Perhaps use the words "minimum 1200 calorie daily average over the week".

And be specific when you say no supplements. For example, I take a multi-vitamin everyday. Some would call that a supplement because it supplements my vitamin amounts. Or protein shakes could also be called supplements. I would word it as weight loss pills or other formulas.

I also agree that people should have to weigh in a month or two after the competition and have maintained their weight lost status - especially tricky over the Christmas holidays but if the goal is to actually help workplace productivity and health, then I still think that's the way to go. Have 90% of the pool distributed at the Dec. 18 end date and keep 10% back for the top winner 2 months after that.

If you want to concentrate on sustainable weight loss, then make it part of the competition.

ex 1:
after ten weeks (using your timeline, it can be modified) everyone is weighed. The "winner" is the person that has lost the greatest percentage of body weight. However, in order to collect the person must stay within X% of their final contest weight for Y number of weeks, with weekly weigh ins as an optional condition. maybe X=10 or 20 and Y=8 or 13. If the "winner" does not sustain the weight loss for the additional Y weeks then everyone that does sustain the wight loss moves up a place.

ex 2:
similar to ex 1, but instead of determining the winner after ten weeks, everyone is weighed after ten weeks and then the winner is determined by the combination of the person with greatest percent loss and the smallest deviation from contest weight.

Just some ideas that could help incorporate sustainability into and office pool.

"Stay within X%" is harmful because it will discourage someone who has made progress from continuing that progress after the contest is over. It could, of course, be reworded to say that one does not "weight x% more."

The problem with that idea, though, is that it extends the contest. If it is a 10 week contest, it is a 10 week contest, not 20 weeks. If one wants to make it a 20 week contest, then do that. If one wants to make it a 20 week contest where those who lose weight in the beginning win, and those who lose more weight in the last 10 weeks don't win... then do that (most people would not like it).

I agree with the sentiment that the whole source of the problem is that it is a weight loss contest. It doesn't matter what type of weight is lost (water, fat, muscle), and it doesn't matter how that weight is lost. The solution is not to do a weight loss contest at all. Instead, do an exercise contest - have people track how much and what type of exercise they are doing and the most time exercised is a winner. Or a food contest... more complicated, of course.

Ultimately, though, a simple weight loss challenge is a terrible idea and this is what you will get. For example, I have type 1 diabetes. There was once that I lost about 50 lbs. in a weekend... something that very few people are even capable of doing. The intent was not to lose weight (I was a teenager and just got fed up with the disease, so I stopped taking insulin). I went into DKA and was in the ICU with a BG of 938. In laymen's terms, I nearly died. But after rehydrating and everything else, I was able to keep 40% of that weight that was lost. Is that safe? Of course not! If I did that, and lived, could I win? YES!! So of course this is flawed.

You should say no supplements, and nobody can restrict their calories to less than 1200 per day

My work did a fitness challenge instead of a weight loss challenge. It was based on how much time you spent doing activities for fitness, with a daily limit of 2 hours. We were on teams (our choice), as them you could encourage others on your team. My team ended up winning, with no cheating, but we were a group of people that worked out a lot anyway. We discouraged a lot of people in the challenge. They ended up coming up with additional incentives to keep people going. They gave gift cards to those who did the least conventional exercises, or most increase in time exercising from one week to the next. We didn't know ahead of time what those would be given for. We were neck and neck with another team, which kept us motivated, but third place was well behind. Teams was good, but they decided if we did it again, teams would be assigned to break up the active ones and possible make us team leaders instead.

I think these contests need to be a minimum of 16 weeks. This way it's harder for fad dieters and those doing extreme calorie cutting to win, and it's more likely to promote a sensible weight loss. Your contest should run past New Year's to keep everyone mindful of eating over the holidays.

I won my work competition and lots of people made jokes that I "cheated" but I was just the only person trying.

There is no way to avoid "cheating"... having a weigh in spaced out over months would make it harder. And when it's an office thing, there is an honor system to it... it's not like a Biggest Loser thing where you can do blood tests and watch them round the clock etc.

All I can think to do is come up with a metric that rewards doing it the right way. Like lets say, you get 1 point for percentage weight loss, but 2 points for ____. Where blank is some positive gain that you can't "cheat" at. Like percentage of body weight benchpressed, or number of situps in a minute, or speed running a mile, etc. That ensures that if all you do is take laxitives and drink lemon water for a month, sure you'll lose some weight but probably won't get any other points.

In short make it a fitness challenge, not just a weight loss challenge.

12 week comp = max 15% weight loss (of beginning weight), and to discourage last few weeks frantic weight loss x % max in four weeks.

The Dietbet 6 month competitions have a limit of the amount of weight you can lose to avoid being taking things to the extreme. Maybe a policy like that would work. http://support.dietbet.com/forums/217936-dietbet-10-feedback/suggestions/4347389-what-are-the-disqualification-rules-for-dietbet-10

Wow. Who woke this one up?

The girl didn't cheat. She successfully executed a fad diet to extremes. There's no magic supplement, her weight loss was eating 500 cals/day.

Just accept that the 'favorite' didn't win and move on.