Biggest Loser -- The Pledge

When we announced our Biggest Loser program, I had no idea what kind of participation we would get. Would 10 people sign up (or even 50)? In any event, 99 greatly exceeded my expectations and our budget.

I was thrilled, but a little concerned when I starting hearing that some folks signed up, but weren’t really committed. Probably not too surprising; this can happen when people have no "skin" in the game.

We addressed this with our exercise classes by charging folks $5 per class, but we didn’t want to charge staff for participating in the Biggest Loser. Instead, we drafted a participation "pledge" that everyone had to sign before participating in the initial screening. While a couple of people chose not to sign it, the group as a whole did so gladly; the pledge has given us a little leverage when we need to remind folks to enter their weekly weight. It has worked pretty well so far...