Using competing teams is a great way to motivate and support your weight loss goals.
Weight loss competitions are a good way to motivate people to lose weight. However, going strictly by pounds lost is not fair to all participants. For instance, a 350-pound individual would need to lose more than a 130-pound individual. There would be no way for the lighter person to compete against such participants, since losing comparable weight would be impractical and dangerous. Therefore, measuring the percent lost equalizes the weight differences. Forming competing teams offers support and encouragement from team members, while maintaining the competitive motivation between teams.
Instructions
1. Group members into teams of two to 10 participants. Maintaining even numbers is not as important, since ultimately you will be calculating an average percent loss among team members.
2. Set a time period for the weight loss competition, which would be sufficient to achieve results. As an example, you might state the competition will run 100 days from start to finish.
3. Weigh each individual at the beginning of the competition.
4. Weigh each individual at the end of the competition.
5. Subtract each person's ending weight from their start weight to calculate the number of pounds lost. As an example, if one member started as 180 pounds and weighed 160 pounds at the end of the competition, he or she would have lost 20 pounds.
6. Divide each person's weight loss by their original weight, and then multiply by 100 to calculate the percentage. In the example, the 180-pound member, who lost 20 pounds, would have lost 11.1 percent.
7. Average each team's weight loss percentage by adding the members' percentages and dividing by the number of members. As an example, if one team had members losing 11, 10, 20, 15 and 22 percent, you would total those figures to produce 78, and then divide by five. This results in an average weight loss of 15.6 percent. Repeat this calculation for each team.
8. Compare each team's average weight loss percentage, and declare the team with the highest average percentage the winner.
Tags: weight loss, each team, team members, average weight, average weight loss, competing teams