I read about Stikk.com in some magazine in a waiting room. Basically, you commit to losing X amount of weight over Y period of time, and check in every week. If you don’t meet your goal, the website charges you credit card a pre-agreed-upon amount and gives it to whoever you want. It can go to a charity you love, a charity you hate, an individual, whatever you want.
Since I’d gained 10 pounds (gasp!) since moving back to the States in March, I decided to give it a go. Committed to 2 lbs last week, or $15 went to some right-to-life charity. No way in hell I’m giving those idiots my money. I lost the 2 lbs! yay! Another two this week, then I’ll make my goal a pound a week.
Anyone else doing this? I’m finding it a great motivator, as I hate wasting money more than I hate exercise.
Yeah, it’s honor system, or you can have a friend do it for you if you’re not honest enough. I’m honest enough, though. If I start lying, the tool becomes worthless.
Damn. This is pretty cool. I canNOT move my last 12 pounds of weight, and I know exactly why: dessert at the end of every dinner. Skinny Cow or not, I can’t have it if I’m trying to shed those last 12 pounds.
I don’t think that kind of tool would work for me because the temptation to lie would be too much for me when I didn’t lose the weight.
More than once I’ve tried to get together a group of people who all need to lose a bunch of weight and do a Biggest Loser style thing where we each chip in $100 and the person who loses the largest percentage of weight walks away with the money but no one is interested enough to pursue it with me. I think that would work because it builds in support, competition, and an actual cash prize but finding people to participate is very difficult.
According to Freakonomics, 80% of people who bet against themselves to lose weight end up losing their bet:
In the comments section, some people speculated that this may be because weight loss is not a direct controllable outcome (as opposed to hours spent exercising, or portion control, or what have you).
That’s interesting, and I’d like to see the actual study, because that blurb doesn’t give much detail (but I’m not willing to pay $30 to see it). Are the test subjects trying to get money or trying not to lose money? Because what I read said that people do much better trying not to lose money that they already have than trying to get money they don’t.
This times article says that 85% of the people on stikk.com report winning their bet when they use the anti-charity option. Now, I’d say about half of them are lying. But still, even if 30% win the bet, it’s a better success rate than most diets seem to have.
I’m confident this will work for me because I do know how to lose weight and keep it off. I was at this weight about 5 years ago and have been about 10 lbs lighter since. It just now crept back up on me because I haven’t been exercising much in the past few months. Anyway, so far I’m hellbent on not losing that $15. I’m super-cheap like that.