Biggest Loser -- 8 Weeks and Counting

We're eight weeks into our Biggest Loser program and the 36 participants have lost 2.64% of their starting weight -- 170 pounds. Weight loss by individuals has varied dramatically as you can see in this chart.

We've been announcing an individual and team winner each week. At the individual level, it has been nice to see six different names announced over the eight weeks. One of our teams, Team MoGo (Moms on the Go), has taken the lead from a team perspective. They're down 4.72% of their starting weight (49 pounds.) Most of the members of this team have been active in the past and they're working hard to take off weight gained after having children. I often see them exercising together. 


We have held two team challenges, which I still intend to write about, and have a third one schedule for this Thursday. We have also held two educational sessions -- one on small changes you can make to cut calories and a second on motivation and willpower. Team leaders are doing a portion control exercise with their teams. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures of that to share next week. 

What Can We Learn from Baseball to Keep Employees off the DL?

A few weeks ago Bob Merberg recommended an article from the Nutrition Journal about the harms of weight loss intervention -- Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift. I was still pondering it and wondering if we're incorporating measures that are true indicators of health in our wellness program when my son's copy of ESPN Magazine arrived. It was the analytics issue. I love that stuff and the whole Billy Beane, Moneyball thing, so I snatched it up to read before sending it on to him. This article caught my attention -- The hurt talker: Training guru Stan Conte dreams of a day when a team has such powerful injury data, it goes all season without using the DL. Could it happen? Where might this sort of predictive modeling take us next?