Weight loss challenge websites wanted

March 5, 2010 3:10 PM

My office wants to a "Biggest Loser" style weight loss challenge. Any good websites we could use to track people's progress?

Ideally, we'd want a site where:

-People can enter in their progress
-People's weight isn't displayed (the ladies insist on this)
-Graphs and other infographics generated from the data would be nice, but not required.

So, any suggestions?

posted by reenum to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

There's a mefi group on Dailyburn.com, it might work for you.
posted by Billegible at 3:12 PM on March 5, 2010

Oh - and there's an option in your profile to decide what info gets shown and to whom - so the ladies could keep their numbers to themselves.
posted by Billegible at 3:14 PM on March 5, 2010

Hacker's Diet on line. User can select whether to have their data displayed or not.
posted by Mitheral at 3:17 PM on March 5, 2010

You can do this on zeaLOG , but the weights would be shown. BUT...you can make your entire group chart private so no one outside of the participants can see it.
posted by Edubya at 3:59 PM on March 5, 2010

I think this site is trying to do what you're looking for. I have no actually experience with it so can't account for how good it is, but thought the concept was interesting when somebody mentioned it to me.
posted by jimmereeno at 4:47 PM on March 5, 2010

A super simple way to do it would be with Google Spreadsheets. Instead of showing weight, people could enter in their percentage of body weight lost.
posted by smalls at 4:48 PM on March 5, 2010

I hope this fits within the AskMeFi guidelines -- I think it does -- I would caution strongly against having an office-based weight loss program, even if technically voluntary. Areas of concern include medical privacy, equal employment opportunity, and the encouragement of conversations in the workplace about size, body, and eating that you really don't want to be encouraging in the workplace. Any reward could raise questions about the "terms and conditions" of employment. And, also, it's really not a great idea. Imagine all of the ways that individual employees of various sizes and physical conditions and/or disabilities might feel pressured, criticized, or excluded by such a program and the associated measuring activities. Imagine what your hypothetical HR expert or lawyer would say. I would urge you to take any weight loss program out of the office.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 5:11 PM on March 5, 2010

Just to counter ClaudiaCenter, with all due respect: Lots of workplaces have wellness programs that specifically include Biggest-Loser-style contests. The one where I work is, in fact, run by the HR department. My understanding is that it helps lower group health insurance premiums.
posted by BeerFilter at 6:58 PM on March 5, 2010

Lots of workplaces have wellness programs that specifically include Biggest-Loser-style contests.

Whether "lots of workplaces have ... Biggest-Loser-style contests" is irrelevant to whether it is a good idea for workplaces to have Biggest Loser style contests.

There's no consensus about whether these types of weight loss programs are even healthy. And aside from that, doesn't it create a somewhat inhospitable environment for heavy employees who have no interest in worrying about weight loss (and people's expectations for your weight loss) at the workplace? I think any program at work that has to do with body size, shape, etc., is inappropriate.
posted by jayder at 6:50 AM on March 6, 2010

Whether "lots of workplaces have ... Biggest-Loser-style contests" is irrelevant to whether it is a good idea for workplaces to have Biggest Loser style contests

I seem to have missed where the OP was asking about that. I was responding to the esteemed ClaudiaCenter implying that running a Biggest Loser contest is a terrible idea, it'll make people uncomfortable about their bodies, and how it could expose the OP to a lawsuit or something. You know, the part where she's not answering the question at all and trying to railroad the OP's question with FUD.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:39 AM on March 6, 2010

My colleagues and I just did this. We're cheap so we went with Thintopia. Definitely no frills but free. It keeps individual graphs and a group one, and tracks percentages, not pounds.

But even if you're using percentages, after a few weeks, it's easy to figure out what percentage represents one pound for someone so if someone were really nosey they could determine what that person's original weight was. But *I* would never do something like that...
posted by wallaby at 9:35 AM on March 6, 2010

Daytum is an awesome data wrangling, graph producing machine. You can make it do pretty much anything you want to do by defining your own types of data (pounds lost, for example) and viewing the results in a myriad of ways (bar charts, stacked line graphs, you name it). Plus, it's pretty.
posted by rebekah at 5:03 PM on March 6, 2010

I would suggest Lose It Or Lose It. I lost 20 lbs on that site, it works really well!
posted by oxide at 2:45 AM on March 19, 2010