Office Weight Loss Contests: A Satirical Look

I think it's a good idea -- since we're more likely to listen to our peers/coworkers than our family members, for fear of embarassment if we don't.

For example, my dad gets teased at his work place for bringing in Asian food. (He often goes home to tell Mum never to put soy sauce in with the rice "ever again".) His coworkers who go drinking coffee and eating pastries (which I think is quite unhealthy) during the lunch break fit in perfectly.

P.S. Perhaps a grammatical error: "Have a health professional come in a provide a healthy living seminar." (I hate it when something like this happens!)

they have something at my job but they call it the fitness walk. its 3 months long where people from the office choose a time after work to take an hour walk 3 times a week. i think its a great idea; at an office, you are either rarely PERMITTED to leave your seat, or just dont get a chance to. i use my lunch break to excercise and my last 15 minute break to eat lunch. sometimes after sitting for so long all day, it makes you more exhausted when you get home and finally get to rest, so this burst of energy-enducing exercise is perfect for an office worker!

Weight loss contests can be a slippery slope - providing a breeding ground for unhealthy and obsessive behavior. The Office has become can't-miss-TV in our household. The focus of the first episode of the new season was a weight loss contest.

Why do you feel the need to tell everyone that you don't watch TV or that you don't own a TV? How is that fact relevant in any shape, form or fashion to the subject at hand? Of course, it isn't. You're just showing off; patting yourself on the back; making yourself look like a self-centered egotistical snob.

I think the only reason people choose not to own a TV is so they can run and tell everybody within earshot that they do not own a TV.

Our recent attempt ended in a disaster. We all threw in $50 there would be a cash incentive for the winner ($250 total). Instead of using body as a gauge, we used percentage of body weight loss.

Some guy, who used to wrestle in high school, dehydrated his body so much, that he was able to drop 18 pounds in 3 days. Here the rest of us ate salads and were exercising. He also made side bets with multiple co-workers up to $100 each about being the winner of our weight loss contest.

Needless to say, there was a lot of hard feelings when we decided the he forfeited because it was not in line with the original intention of getting healthier. Since then, no one wants to organize another contest. Previously, we would have a contest twice a year.

Thank you so much for this extremely informative post. I am a human resource manager in a software company. I have seen that Silicon Valley is teeming with software engineers gaining weight due to lack of movement for hours. Sitting before a computer and drinking endless soft drinks and coffee and having junk food has lead to the problem of increasing weight amongst software engineers. My company physician is also very concerned about this problem. We organized some counseling sessions and lectures on the topic of increasing weight but it did not do much good. Starting a weight loss contest in office with these valuable tips will surely go a long way in maintaining fitness amongst office goers. Thanks a ton for such an informative post!

I work in a lab at a hospital and we have a health club onsite. The health club often has promos like "For every hour you work out at the gym, you get a point. If you get 10 points, you get a free performance-wicking shirt". Or sometimes you can earn a Biggest Loser exercise DVD. It's not really geared toward losing weight per se; it's more about trying to get people to be healthier in general.

I used to work in a lab that did a "Biggest Loser" contest, but it ended up being kind of a failure. The lab was split into two teams and they got weighed every week. The team that lost the most collective weight at the end of the two month time period won a $200 gift certificate to Foot Locker. The thing was, I wasn't even allowed to join because I wasn't "fat enough", even though I totally wanted the $200 gift certificate. I wouldn't have lost any more weight, but I could've at least been there as moral support. It's not like I was going to purposefully gain a bunch of weight or anything. Plus, once the teams were made up, everyone wanted to switch teams and a bunch of people quit after the first week, so the teams had to be constantly re-done. In the end, I think they just ended up giving anyone that was still signed up for it a $25 gift certificate to Dick's or Foot Locker or something like that.

I'm not sure if I agree with the whole "disqualifying people for losing too quickly" thing though. Some people are very large and can lose weight REALLY fast when they first start out. They can be doing things the healthy way and just drop weight really fast. I don't think kicking them out of the contest would exactly be encouraging to them at that point.

One idea too is to not run any contests but to just start creating and encouraging a healthier work environment like offering nutritionist & trainer discounts, encouraging fit breaks or ride your bike to work, ordering healthier meals for lunch, putting healthier snacks in the break room, getting rid of the vending machine or replacing all the snacks with healthy ones.

MassAttack runs programs for workplaces who want to have an office diet type thing. We don't run it as a competition though.

That was funny! I love The Office.

Funny episode.

Weight loss competitions usually make me nervous... especially since I've been around some where the winner is not the one starting to make the most healthy choices. Can be disenheartening for those making healthy choices but not losing as much, and just plain unhealthy for those trying to win the competition no matter waht.

As for my own experience, it was not very good. me and my friends had a competition where a big price is at stake. Of course, each an everyone of us were very eager to win. Sadly, one of my friends stood up and said that he will surely win. A month later, i heard a news that my friend died from starving.

I think the idea is great, but with a different twist. My office has an incentive based wellness program, but the difference is that we are incented to track what we eat, how much water we drink, the number of fruit/veggie servings and you get points for doing so. We then bank our points and then can order prizes out of an awards catalog. In addition to tracking the healthy activities we do, we have an electronic pedometer that tracks all our movement, not just steps. This allows us to have a team based contest on the most activity minutes, not just steps or distance. As long as your foot is moving, it's tracking activity minutes. It's really quite fun and it's made a HUGE difference on all of us, so many healthy changes are being made.

I like the one about making it a long term contest. Too many people just yo-yo on these weight loss things and sometimes gain back more each time they finish the contest

OMG!!!

That show was great!!

LOVE this part;

"Michael: I can't do this by myself people! Kelly and I are the only ones who have passed out or almost passed out."

HAHAHA!!!

Welcum 2 my life!!