In the spirit of "Biggest Loser", the company I work for started a Weight Loss Challenge. They did one late last year and I managed to lose a couple of pounds, but this one happens to correlate pretty well with my training for the Wonderland Trail. Basically, people are competing to see how much weight (as a %) they can lose.
Every Friday at 10am, we weigh in on a scale in the HR Manager's office. Last week was the first week, and as of today, I've lost about .6 lbs. Now, I'm not going to get too excited yet, for this weigh in is based on whatever clothes I'm wearing (no shoes), however much change is in my pockets, and how much coffee I've had to drink. I'm thinking that the margin of error is at least half a pound. At least this competition isn't as bad as a previous employer.
There was a similar effort going on at the company I used to work for, Intermec, called "Fat Boys Club". This was all about men gambling, with a secondary emphasis on losing weight. Every week, during weigh in, they'd through their money into a pot, and whoever won that week would get half, with the remaining half going to the pot at the end of the contest. If you dropped out, you didn't get your money back.
What made it a bit brutal, though, is that the guys figured out that you really didn't have to lose any weight if you could ensure that your fellow contestants gained weight. So you'd come in and find a dozen donuts on your desk, or be invited to go to a local greasy spoon for lunch "because of the fine work you do", or come in and find a big candy bar on your desk. Of course, when weigh in would come, guys would starve themselves for days, not drinking anything and trying to purge as much as possible. There were guys weighing in who were just about ready to faint because of dehydration.
As I said, this was a bunch of guys, so their common sense took a back seat to the thrill of competition. Hopefully, this challenge doesn't degrade to that.
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