Developing a Fair Contest

[Aberrenceb]

Well I'm new here (unfortunately I typo'd my name when signing up and threw a b on the end, but that's ok) and my main reasoning for showing up is to ask a few questions. : )

It seems you guys know what you're doing as a collective group, anyway. Also I just adore the idea of message boards!

Quick background information: We're all in college at a school for engineers. There are three guys and a girl. I personally don't think BMI is an accurate portrayal of health, but two of us would be considered "obese" and the other two "overweight" in reference to BMI.

None of us really care about BMI or the number on a scale, we all just want to look good and more importantly feel good about our bodies. That all said, here we go!

My three roommates and I are wanting to plan a weight loss competition between the four of us. We think this'll help motivate us to lose the weight.

I personally wanted it to be a monthly contest, where every month the person who lost the most weight at the end of the month gets a prize. Current ideas for prizes are winner gets a certain amount of money or just gets their booze paid for the next time we all go out together.

The problem is my girlfriend and I have lost weight together before and she was very demotivated by the fact that I lost weight nearly twice as fast as her. She would brag about losing 10lbs and feel proud. Until somebody asked me how much I lost and they went crazy over me losing 20lbs and she felt her weight loss wasn't as significant.

This said, I'm 6ft 230lbs and I'm aiming to get down to the 180-200 range. I will not reveal her weight but at the absolute most she's 20-25lbs overweight.

I know guys tend to lose weight faster than girls, and also that people who are obese will lose weight faster than people who are just slightly overweight. I want to make this weight loss competition, but I don't know how to make it fair to everybody. As it stands now, myself and my other "obese" roommate would likely win every month just because we have more pounds to lose than the other two.

So my ideas for making it fair consisted of at the beginning of each month taking the weight down, and then normalizing the weight loss at the end of the month by dividing our weight loss by our starting weight. That way, if I was 250lbs and somebody else was 125lbs, if in one month I lost 10lbs and they lost 5lbs we'd be on even ground.

However this still doesn't take into account that guys lose weight faster than girls, so I don't know if that truly makes it fair or not.

Basically this giant long post is my attempt to present my situation to all of you and see if anybody can come up with an idea to help me out : ). I've only come up with the one so far.

Also, hi! I've needed something like this for a while.

 

[Korrie]

what we do here, when we have a big challenge competition (not our monthly challenges) we go by percentage of weight loss. Thats what they use on biggest loser.

To determine percentage of weight lost: You'll need to divide the NUMBER OF POUNDS LOST by the starting weight ....then just multiply that answer by 100 (to get a percentage)

40 /330 x 100 = 12.12%

.

 

[San2]

I agree, you want to go by percentage of body weight lost rather than numbers. It gives a much better idea of what you have really accomplished, and makes it easier to compare without feeling as if one has done so much better than the other.

I mean, I tried to lose weight together with a friend. She's not anywhere near as overweight as I am, and in the first month, I lost a hell lot of weight while she lost a lot less. She was very discouraged, but when we did the percentages, it showed that we were losing nearly at the same pace. In the subsequent months, when the water weight and whatnot was gone, and my weight loss slowed down, she beat me in percentage every time, even though she lost less pounds than me.

 

[Aberrenceb]

Ok great! So percentages it is.

Since it wasn't mentioned by either of you, can I assume that the difference in speed of weight loss between men/women is insignificant? I just want to make sure this is a fair competition.

 

[San2]

As far as I know, men lose slightly faster, and fluctuate less. Not sure how to compensate for that to be honest. :/

 

[cindero]

Well, you could work with a 'handicap' system as in golf to compensate for that

 

[flourless]

If you want to look good, and feel good, and numbers aren't the point - why are you making your competition about numbers? What about picking an assortment of goals: percentage weight lost, days exercised, miles/steps walked, glasses of water drunk, vegetable servings eaten, new physical activities tried - whatever items you can all agree on contribute to "making you healthier". Then at the beginning of each month, draw a goal out of a hat. Each of you is likely to find some goals easier, and some harder. Once each goal has been drawn once, you can throw them all back in the hat and start over.