Back in 2009, a friend of mine had this fantastic idea to host a Biggest Loser Weight Loss Competition at work.
We quickly gained 10 coworkers eager to participate.
Not only was the weight loss games competition a lot of inexpensive fun, but it helped coworkers to become healthier.
It was so exciting to watch people lose weight throughout the course of the competition and to see morale build among the eleven of us.
And let me tell you, the weight loss results from a little competitive fun were impressive – the winner of our competition ended up shedding an astounding 12% of their body weight in just 12 weeks!
I wanted to share with you how to host your own competition for very little money (not only very little cost but read on to find out how you can actually get rewarded with money for your weight loss!).
Read all the way through, or skip ahead to the section you want to read about most (I won’t tell!):
And also? You'll want to consider adding a money incentive to lose weight. Check out HealthyWage.com, where you can give money incentives to your employees/friends/group mates for getting healthy and losing weight.
So, you’ve decided you want to set up a Biggest Loser Weight Loss Competition at work (or in a group – family and weight loss competition with friends are fun, too!). Or maybe you’re not quite sure, but the idea excites you.
There are a few things you need to decide on and set into place before you move forward.
You don’t want to rock any boats at work (at least not in a bad way). Make sure your management team is on board with this competition – especially if you’ll be using company property or time, company email, or company-anything to do so. See the next section for how to get your management to say “yes”.
Hard to host a competition without any competitors! Come up with an idea for how to campaign for this. A flyer (paper) for the lunch room area, next to the vending machine, and even in a company newsletter is a great idea. Another option is a blanket email – make sure you have permission to send these out. See the next section for how to get your colleagues to sign up and participate.
Create a contacts list for each of the participants so that you can quickly email them with exciting updates + info throughout the competition. More on this later, in the section “Weight Loss Challenge Ideas to Keep Everyone Motivated”.
You need a scale, a clipboard (nice to have), a poster, and a camera.
You likely don’t want to do your weekly weigh-ins in front of everyone (at least not all participants would like that, anyway). So, you’ll need the corner of an office room, or private cubicle where you can do the weigh-ins.
You’ll want to have a kick-off and wrap-up celebration event – see below, “How to Host a Kick-off Event”.
And also? You'll want to consider adding a money incentive to lose weight.
Check out HealthyWage.com, where you can give money incentives to your employees/friends/group mates for getting healthy and losing weight.
You can also participate as an individual, outside of work (get a group of friends together!).
If you're running a corporate weight loss challenge, then the two obstacles you might have in getting this all set up are finding people who want to participate, and getting your management to okay the process.
Here’s a few tips when trying to get management + colleagues on board:
You’ll want to approach your HR department. Point out to them the benefits of this competition – that people will become healthier, which will likely lower the company’s overall healthcare costs (the part they pay for employees).
If you think your managers will be responsive to this, then go ahead and get the signatures of all interested people. It might help your case!
Research your employer’s health care plan, and see if they have a wellness program that could coincide or supplement your Biggest Loser Weight Loss Competition. For example, our health insurance plan through my husband’s employer is Cigna. They have this awesome Wellness Program where participants earn up to $450 in gift cards each for doing various healthy activities, such as tracking weight loss (ding, ding, ding!), water intake, watching 15-minute webinars on health subjects, or going for preventative health exams.
Does your company promote community projects and volunteering? Come up with a few ideas of how this competition will tie in with those values, such as something we did at our building during the competition – a walking trash-pick-up event. The walking part helped employees meet their health goals, and the trash up counted as a community event for the company. See the section on Fun Weight Loss Games + Bonus Ideas for how we added even more fun to this event. Hint: our wellness program gives out a $25 gift card for each volunteer event we do, so this could count towards something like that!
Yes, you read that right. We’ll talk about this more in the section “Weight Loss Challenge for Money”, but just know that if you add a money incentive, you’ll likely get more sign-ups!
Pssst: You will definitely want to check out HealthyWage.com, where you can give money incentives to your employees for getting healthy and losing weight. Ultimately, this will decrease your health care costs – what a win-win! Hint: right now they're having a $100 prize boost, if you sign up by 2/07/2021 through this link.
Now it’s time to establish your weight loss competition rules so that everyone knows what to expect, as well as how to win.
But first, who is going to enforce these rules? You’ll want to designate one person as the weight loss competition ringleader (this was my job in our competition! This was so much fun.).
As ringleader, it was my responsibility to be there every other Monday at 7:45 a.m. for the weigh-ins, to record the weigh-ins on a clipboard from week to week, to calculate the percentages, to send out the emails, and to keep the winner a secret until the big reveal.
More so than all of this, I took it as my personal job to keep everyone motivated (without overstepping boundaries; if someone decided they no longer wanted to participate, that was a-okay).
It was sort of like holding the competition space for everyone.
Any good competition has rules so that everyone knows what’s involved.
In our competition, we decided on the following rules:
We wanted to make our competition 12 weeks long. There are lots of 30-day weight loss challenges out there, and that might work for your group. For us, we wanted to really see a change in our lifestyle and habits and felt that 12 weeks was best.
We made weigh-ins mandatory (talk about a great way to make everyone accountable!), and scheduled them for Monday mornings, every other week (we also established the weigh-in time as 7:45 a.m.). I would arrive to work a bit earlier than usual, and take people as they came in the door.
A note: people did not have to participate in “mandatory” weigh-ins; but if they didn’t, then they were out of the running for the prize.
From the beginning of the competition, everyone knew how we were going to determine the winner. And it’s in the fairest way – part of the Biggest Loser Rules: the winner is determined by the overall percentage of weight loss.
This is the same way they used to declare the winner of Biggest Loser weight loss competitions!
Here’s how to calculate the percentage of weight loss each week:
Calculation: 270 lbs. – 250 lbs. = 20 lbs. 20 lbs./270 lbs. = 0.074 (or 7.4%).
You can make it a rule that everyone joins up for a HealthyWage competition as your own, personal, team in order to enter your office's competition. This adds a money component to it – meaning there will potentially be a cash prize won by the entire team! What great motivation + a fun way to get everyone working together.
When a team signs up, they compete against other teams. There are various prize tiers, but the teams that lose the greatest % of weight win cash prizes (top prize is $10,000 for the team).
The amount you win depends on your current weight and how much weight you want to lose (and other factors based on the couple of questions you answer in the calculator process). Your profit % can be as high as around 300% (tripling your money) or as low as 11% (if you are already at a healthy weight).
For kick-off events, you’ll need to accomplish the following:
You can time this event for a routine office meeting, over lunch if no one can spare extra time, or pair it with an office-wide walk to get things headed in the right direction.
If you want to really ramp things up (and get more participation), then offer money incentives for losing weight! I've got some great office weight loss challenge prize ideas, weight loss incentives with friends, and even family weight loss challenge prize ideas…but first, let's talk about how you can actually fund these incentives.
How to fund your weight loss challenge incentives money:
Now, how will you use some of the money you get together from above?
Twelve weeks (or however long you guys choose) is a long time to sustain excitement around a competition. Also, weight loss can be frustrating for some, especially when they work at it and lose hardly anything. Or worse, when they have gained a pound or two back.
So, it’s important to keep people motivated throughout the length of the competition.
As the Weight Loss Competition Ringleader, you’ll want to:
I created an email list of the people in our competition so that I could easily send our updates.
Then every other week, I emailed out the percentage loss ranked from highest to lowest (if people don’t want this information to be revealed, you could send out a range of weight loss percentages for the week, or a group total weight loss – both can be motivating!).
Periodically I would also include interesting articles tips/tricks on exercising, eating healthy, etc.
Choosing to start the competition while a popular weight loss television show season is starting can really motivate people as well as create something to talk about at the water cooler.
Popular weight loss shows include Extreme Weight Loss, The Big Fat Truth, Fit to Fat to Fit, and I Used to Be Fat.
Scheduling weekly walks during lunch could bring everyone closer within the group, as well as provide time for exercise for those who find it difficult to exercise after work/before work or on the weekends.
Depending on the comfort level of the group (take a poll, asking those who don't want to be included to tell you so), you could create a poster board with each person’s percentages + before photos. Display this in your cubicle, or perhaps by the scale.
I kept a poster board in my cubicle and surrounded it with people’s photos.
Periodically a player would come over and check out the stats or track their own progress.
Perhaps you guys can use part of the penalty money for gaining weight to purchase a set and keep them in the lunch room for people to peruse?
Something I enjoy about the actual Biggest Loser competition is the challenges that they give to the players.
While you certainly cannot build the types of stunts that they do, there are a few ways you can incorporate some fun into your biggest loser contest at work (and keeping this a surprise is pretty cool as well).
Ooohhhh – I just love that you’re in this section. It means you have a competitive side, something I can definitely relate to!
You give me a challenge or ask me to compete? And I bring my A-GAME. I'll bet you're the same!
So, let me help you bring YOUR A-game, coming from a person who held this competition at her office several years ago.
One thing us bloggers know is that when you make something public, as in declaring your big intention to the world in a place where people will actually see it, then magic things happen. Because who likes to fail in front of others?
Double this up by asking someone to be your accountability partner – it’s sort of like having your own Weight Loss Mastermind. Discuss issues you’re having, successes, secrets you’ve found, and what you want to try.
Did you know you can earn actual cash for meeting your weight loss goals? Man, is that cool! Check out HealthyWage.com for more info.
When you sign up as an individual, the amount of money you can win depends on the challenge. You're not competing with anyone or anything other than the personal goal that you set. Then if they hit their goal, you win your prize.
If you sign up for the Jackpot Challenge? All entries pay into the “pot” and everyone who meets the goal (6% weight loss, for example) splits the pot.
Psst: wondering where these guys get the money from to pay you? They’re funded by government agencies, insurers, hospitals, food manufacturers, etc. It’s totally legit! Here are some HealthyWage success stories.
We all know that any weight loss plan has to include getting your food intake under control. But this can be so hard when you’ve got a life to live as well (kids, work, chores, commutes, anyone?).
I’ve got your back with some stellar services that crept up over the last decade. These can really skyrocket your personal weight loss goals (not to mention, give you an edge in your weight loss competition).
Biggest Loser is such an inspiring show, and doing your own version of the Biggest Loser Competition at work can add to company morale, make work more fun, and most of all, help lots of people lose weight!
Bob and Jillian, we salute you.
