Since the first days of Lose It or Lose It two years ago, we’ve had people ask us: “Hey, it’s great that I lost weight. Now how do I use the same effective motivational technique to keep the weight off?”  ”Hey Randy, how do I lock in my progress?” “Hey guys, do you have, like, a zero-pounds-per-week plan?

Well, we do now! Starting today, you can either choose to LOSE weight by making a measurable weekly commitment, or you can MAINTAIN your weight by making a measurable weekly commitment. We’re calling it (no surprise here “Keep it Off or Lose It”,) and you can choose it as an option when setting up your plan:

Keep It Off or Lose It is almost exactly the same thing as a zero-pounds-per-week weight-loss plan, except that the goal from the first week does not reset if you miss a weigh in.  So if you weigh 150 pounds at your first weigh in, you must weigh 150 pounds or less at each and every subsequent weigh in.  Maintain your weight, and keep all your money!  

Everything else about the plan is exactly the same.  If you’re on a plan now, you can lock in your progress when you re-up.  If you want to take control of your weight without changing it, give it a try!

Check it out on the “New plan” page over at Lose It or Lose It!

Lose It or Lose It isn’t a weight loss site, it’s a weight loss motivation site.  We think it’s a winning formula: a ten-week goal broken into ten one-week deadlines, with each one set against a simple “lose the weight or lose your money” ultimatum.  The money helps take willpower out of the equation, and (we believe) the act of uploading a photo makes the whole thing “real” in a way that a graph doesn’t.

It’s fun to look at all the folks actually putting their money where their mouth is. Well, their feet are.  So Randy put together this page which we’ve nicknamed “Feats of Motivation.” It’s updated in real-time, showing all the weigh-ins on the site. You can click to explore and see how folks are doing:

Check it out at:

loseitorloseit.com/feats.

Lose It or Lose It is all about protecting your current self from your future self. At the moment that you set weight loss goals, you have tons of motivation to do what it takes to reach them. But what about pursuing those goals over time? You know that your future self might not do very well at sticking to the weight-loss plan when faced with overwhelming temptation, so, in the moment in which you make a mental commitment to these new goals, your current self sets up some penalties to help keep your future self on course. That arrangement is exactly what I needed when I started Lose It or Lose It two years ago and it has helped me lose and keep off a significant amount of weight. I am not the only one, either. Lose It or Lose It has helped a whole bunch of people lose weight — over 2500 pounds have been lost so far!

However, putting up money and making your weigh-ins public is not for everybody. We know and understand that not everyone who needs to lose weight is going to want to use Lose It or Lose It, and we’re ok with that.

Over the years, we’ve talked to quite a few of these people, and, after thinking about what they’ve said and looking to our own experiences, we have come up with some alternative ways of using Lose It or Lose It and its core tenets in order to help people lose weight.

Making Lose It or Lose It Anonymous

One of the big concerns that people have about Lose It or Lose It is that the program is public. I think that making your goals public is a good way to add an extra incentive to help you reach those goals. After all, once you tell people about your goals, they know that you are trying, and that knowledge can add the extra motivation you need in order to stick to your goals. Plus, your friends will encourage you as you try to make progress.

However, some people will never be comfortable letting people know that they are trying to lose weight. Now there is a way to still use Lose It or Lose It’s monetary penalties and accountability friends, yet keep your identity a secret. How? Well, first you need to make sure that you don’t use your real name when you register. Avoid any usernames that you have used in the past. Also, don’t link your account to Twitter or Facebook. Since you are taking these measures, adding accountability friends to help encourage you becomes extra important. Otherwise, no one else would help keep you accountable, since you are using the program anonymously.

When you end up doing well and are proud of your success, you will always have the option to change your username and start telling people about the progress you made.

Just Weigh In Every Day

One of the habits I’ve formed over the last two years is weighing myself every morning. Your weight is governed largely by the little decisions you make every day, and it helps to know how those little decisions are affecting your progress. When I know I’ve gone astray from my plan, I tend to skip weighing in for a few days. Skipping weigh-ins further hurts my progress toward my weight-loss goals.

The tool I use to weigh in is an iPhone app called Weightbot. It is really simple and works great for me. I’ve also seen people use the Withings scale or even their Wii to weigh in and record their weight.

Some of you are going to say “but weight isn’t always the best thing to measure!” and you are right. However, I’ve always thought of Lose It or Lose It as a tool for people that need to lose or keep off (oh wait, could that be a feature hint?!) a significant amount of weight. When you are at that stage, weight is a good measure of how you are doing. That being said, you could also include progress photos and weekly fat measurements to balance things out a bit.

The goal of this practice is to form a habit of measuring your progress on a regular basis. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gained 60 pounds in college if I had weighed myself at least once.

Add Some Spice

If you are struggling to remember to weigh in or are scared to step on that scale every day, consider adding a little bit of LIOLI spice — enlist your significant other and friends to help keep you accountable.

How would that work, exactly? Well, one plan we came up with is as follows… Find one of your closest friends and another person with access to your bank account. Tell the friend that you will email him/her a picture of your feet on the scale every day by noon or the person with access to your bank account will PayPal some of your money to that friend. The goal during this time shouldn’t be to lose weight, but simply to weigh in every single day. The only way you can fail is to not email a picture of your feet on the scale to your intended recipient.

And Everything Nice

There you have it, a couple of alternative uses for successful principles from Lose It or Lose It. If none of these options appeal to you, please contact us and we can help you work something out. I (Randy) am willing to personally help keep you accountable. In the end, we just want to help you lose (and keep off!) the weight.

It might have something to do with the Cadbury Creme Egg Milkshake that Randy invented and drank last week, but sadly he missed his goal of 203.2 pounds by five whole pounds. And when that happens, we pick a name and send them our money.

Brad Sarafinas, of Sarafinas Home Improvement happened to be in the office hanging a pull-up bar for us. Brad reached into the Big Silver Bowl of active users, and pulled out… LIOLI user llcooltej! Llcooltej, you get a hundred and twenty-five bucks of Randys money. Enjoy it!

Kevin Fitzpatrick’s Revenge

You might remember, in the video above, how LIOLI user Kevin Fitzpatrick missed a weigh-in, and we used his money to charter a sailboat for the afternoon. Good times, Kevin. We still remember the tang of the salty breezes.

But then, when we decided that we would start giving our forfeits to LIOLI users, you got your own back.

I (John) have been hitting a plateau — hard. I’m back to my end-of-college weight, but my beginning-of-college weight is on the other side of a BRICK WALL, and I’ve been struggling. So when I missed my weigh-in the other day and forfeited fifty bucks (ouch!), I pulled a name out of the big silver bowl and…

You win, Kevin Fitzpatrick. YOU WIN THIS ROUND.

I just noticed that our users have lost over 1 TON! That’s awesome! 

Oh, lordy. I (John) am hammering away at a plateau. I missed my weigh-in again last week, and so all the denizens of our shared-office space gathered around while we picked a name out of the bowl of active LIOLI users. The winner of my fifty bucks is… majikandy!  

This is frustrating, but I have to reiterate that (for me), the alternative to having accountability would be giving up and not getting on the scale for a year. At which point, I’d be right back where I started without LIOLI. I’m determined to get through this plateau, at which point (I sincerely hope!) every missed weigh-in will have been well worth it!

Lose It or Lose It helps you protect your current self from your future self. Wait, what? When people sign up for a ten-week plan, their current self is admitting that they can’t trust their future self to stick to a weight loss plan. They need help holding their future self accountable. That is why I created it. I would decide I wanted to lose weight, work hard for two to three weeks, then go back to being my normal self. My future self needed to be worse-off if I failed to follow through with my plans. 

This is often called a commitment device because it can help you stick to a commitment. If you are interested in how these work, check out the book Carrots and Sticks and listen to the Radiolab episode called Help!

Nuts! Double nuts! I (John) slept through my weigh-in on Wednesday. That means not only do I forfeit the stake for that week, I forfeit double for not weighing in (Randy and I believe that weighing in and missing your goals is a lot better for long-term motivation than just getting in that I’m-gonna-ignore-the-scale habit.

So, I reached into the Penalty Bowl, and I pulled out… user megd! Congratulations, megd, you get one hundred dollars of (ouch) my money. Enjoy it!

One of the things I’ve discovered over the last 16 months of using and running Lose It or Lose It is that sometimes, just showing up every day is enough to move you forward. I have been thinking about starting a Lose It or Lose It Lite where the only goal is to weigh yourself every day and if you don’t, the site would reveal your weight to THE WORLD. It is a similar concept to the existing Lose It or Lose It site, but requires no money. I think that knowing is half the battle in weight loss and many of the people that have gained weight over time did so because they had no idea they were gaining weight, I know that was my problem.

A few months ago Zack Kitzmiller (his LIOLI profile) did a round of Lose It or Lose It and through that, I discovered one of his sites called Streak.ly. Basically, you set up a list of things you want to do every day and try not to break the streak. I added “Weigh in” as one of my things* and have tried really hard not to break that streak (longest one was 109 days!). It helped me with my Lose It or Lose It goals because I knew on a daily basis how I was doing and how something I ate effected my weight. No longer would I show up on weigh-in day and be devastated that I was nowhere near where I needed to be.

So, long story short. If you are trying to accomplish some big goal, try using Streak.ly to help you do some little part of it every day. If you happen to be trying to lose weight or keep from gaining weight, add “Weigh in” to your list of things to do every day, because knowing is half the battle!

* The others are “Eat breakfast”, “Work on a side project”, “Exercise”, and just today “Write for ten minutes”.