Lose It or Lose It

Starting Today, We're Using "Delta-Based" Goals

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:17:00 -0400

Pretty soon after we launched Lose It or Lose It, we realized that if you miss a goal, it’s easy to start getting deeper in trouble. Let’s say you’re trying to lose two pounds a week, and your starting weight is 200 pounds. Your first weigh-ins go great: you start the plan at 200 pounds, then weigh in at 198, 196, and 194 pounds. But the next week, instead of making your goal by weighing in at your goal of 192 pounds, you weigh in at 194 pounds again, two pounds over your goal. You miss the goal, and pay your penalty.

Now, the way things were, next weeks’ goal is the same no matter what — you’d have to weigh in at 190, two pounds less than you were supposed to weigh this week. You’re left with four pounds to lose. Miss that goal, and you’re left chasing a moving target, with the goal getting steadily farther away. Like Rerun chasing the pickup truck at 0:53 in the What’s Happening intro:

We think that this is a bad situation for everybody. If you start to get seriously behind, the program isn’t motivational any more, it’s just a drag. What’s the incentive to make good choices if you’re gonna lose no matter what you do? Since we want a site that works, not just a site that extracts money from unhappy people, we’re changing the way the system handles goals after a missed weigh-in.

Starting today, here’s what’s changed:

If you make your goal, nothing has changed at all. Hurrah! Make all your goals, keep all your money, brag to your friends :)
If you miss a goal, next week’s goal will be one, two, or three pounds less than this week’s weight (instead of the “written in stone” goal that it was before.)

Here are some examples to make things clearer:

Using the example above, you’re on a two-pound-a-week plan, and you started at 200. If this week’s weigh-in goal is 192 pounds, but you weigh in at 194, then next week’s goal will now be 192 pounds, instead of the 190 pounds it would have been before.
Or, to use another example, if you’re on a one-pound-a-week plan, and this week’s goal is 180 pounds, but you weigh in at 181 (missing your goal), then next week’s goal will be 180. Not 179, like it would have been before.
To summarize, your goal for each week will never move faster than the one, two, or three pounds per week that you committed to. Miss a weigh-in, and your new goal is to weigh one, two, or three pounds less than you do right now.

We think this is the right way of handling it, and we hope you agree. Please let us know if this seems unclear, or if you really hate the way it works. Of course, if you LIKE this way of doing things, then please let us know that too! :)

Congratulations Tinta on your FLAWLESS VICTORY

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:29:29 -0400

User Tinta just completed his Lose It or Lose It plan and made his goal on all ten of his weigh-ins. We’ve started calling a FLAWLESS VICTORY. Not only that, but he made it look easy, with nothing but a laconic smiley-face on each post.

Great work, Tinta! Your official, can’t-be-purchased Lose It or Lose It FLAWLESS VICTORY Nerd Merit Badge is on the way!

We love it when folks make their goals and keep their money, because then we don’t just have a weight-loss-motivation site with a funny premise. We have a weight-loss-motivation site with a funny premise that actually works, which is a much, much more important thing to be involved with. We love it when people lose lots of weight with LIOLI. It’s working for us, and it’s working for these folks! Hurrah!

Get Your LIOLI Feet on Facebook!

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:49:03 -0400

If you’re like us, you have one group of friends that you talk to on Twitter, and a whole other group of friends, family members and old school chums that you talk to on Facebook. Those Facebook folks are just itching for an opportunity to cheer you on. And now it’s easy to do that!

We’ve added the ability to add your weigh-ins to your Facebook news feed. Get your friends and co-workers to “like” your effort, and to give you all sorts of encouragement! Here’s John’s last weigh-in from this week, as it appeared in his FB feed:

To turn on Facebook integration, sign in to your account and click “Settings” at the top of the screen. You’ll find a “Facebook” link on the left. Click that, then grant Facebook access, and you’re ready to get lots of help and encouragement from your extended Facebook network!

Voice Reminders With Twilio!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:33:00 -0500

Every Lose It or Lose It user gets a daily reminder: “STEP AWAY FROM THE CHEESEBURGER!” we exhort our users. “DON’T CONCENTRATE ON THAT TWENTY POUNDS, just concentrate on the two pounds you need to lose for your next weigh-in!”

Users can get their reminders either through email or SMS. At least, they could until we discovered that Clickatell, had been accepting our SMS messages for delivery BUT NOT SENDING THEM since February 25th!

Without the SMS reminders, our users were in imminent danger of re-lard-i-fication! What might they do if we are not constantly nagging them to make good choices?

Randy heard about Twilio, a cloud-telephony service that lets your website actually call your users on the telephone and play MP3 files to them (that’s to start with; there’s a whole bunch of XML stuff you can do, too.) What we needed was an option to replace SMS — and fast!

So during lunch we ran around the corner to the local AM radio station (WCHE 1520 in West Chester, PA), and asked them to let us record some voice reminders to send as outbound telephone calls through Twilio. John (on the left) and Randy (on the right) are recording one of the message that YOU will hear on your phone when you sign up for a 10-, 20-, or 30-pound Lose It or Lose It plan!

Here’s the message we were recording in the picture above.

MAN, did we have a good time doing this. Especially with JT, the morning-host DJ and studio technician, to clean up our goofy recording and make us sound like we actually know what we are doing. Thanks, JT! We’ll be back to record more reminders! And thanks, Twilio, for making it so easy to solve our SMS emergency!

Voice reminders should appear as an option in your preferences starting this weekend — as soon as Randy stops raging long enough to be able to see his monitor again!

UPDATE: I got my voice message delivered tonight, and I wasn’t fast enough on the draw, so my phone sent it to Google Voice. Here’s the transcript that GV emailed me a minute later. My favorite bit: “now that you’re ON THE ZAR”!

"This has been the oddest and smartest holiday season I’ve ever had food-intake-wise."

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:09:38 -0500

““This has been the oddest and smartest holiday season I’ve ever had food-intake-wise.””

- Ellen

New-year irresolution

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:14:00 -0500

New-year irresolution:

Have problems sticking to a weight-loss plan? It could be because you keep procrastinating! The Economist has some info on why this may be happening. Use Lose It or Lose It to force you to not procrastinate for the next 10 weeks and lose 10-30 lb!

Not Considered Beautiful Anymore?!

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:26:37 -0500

The site Beautiful People just kicked out 5000 members for gaining weight over the holidays (Mashable and Techcrunch). If you are no longer considered beautiful, don’t worry, we’ll still love you and welcome you with open arms! If you use our Lose It or Lose It to lose some weight, they may just take you back. That is, if you want to go back :).

View Community Weigh-Ins!

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:57:19 -0500

We just pushed an update that allows users to see other user’s weigh-ins. Just click on the “Community” tab at the top of your profile to see how other people are doing. This is currently only visible to Lose It or Lose It users.

If you don’t have an account yet, check out the landing page where we show four random profiles on each page load:

Thank you and we hope this update enhances your Lose It or Lose It experience!

Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:59:39 -0500

Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.:

Derek talks about how stating your plans makes you less likely to accomplish them because in your own mind, that is the same thing as actually doing it. Makes sense… however, I think you should announce your plans to lose weight then use Lose It or Lose It to stick to it!

I can’t believe I found this! I was struggling recently...

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:25:15 -0500

I can’t believe I found this! I was struggling recently with peeling hard-boiled eggs and thought there had to be a better way, and there is! You can also use old(er) eggs but that is a pain to keep track of.

Previously it was a little bit difficult to see who was using...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:28:00 -0500

Previously it was a little bit difficult to see who was using Lose It or Lose It. We will be adding some features that make it easier to find other users, starting with some profiles on the landing page!

Thank You AWEsome Beta Users!

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0500

I wanted to take this time to thank the handful of beta users that helped iron out some of the rough edges of Lose It or Lose It before it was released to the public. They had to deal with all sorts of weird things like

Having to enter multiple usernames/passwords just to use the site
Limiting their accountability friends to those of us already using the site
Being the first ones to say what their weight was publicly
Browser bugs (yuck!)

Thank you AWESOME BETA USERS! Here they are in the order in which they signed up and a little bit of info about them:

John Young - John is the owner of TIkaro Interactive, Founder of Guerilla Drive-In, Cofounder of Nerd Merit Badges (with me!) and an all-around creative-smart-friendly guy. You can find him on Twitter as @tikaro and on Lose It or Lose It as tikaro (he’s the high-roller at $1500!).
Brian Orme - Brian is a huggably nice guy who has helped make Lose It or Lose It better by submitting a lot of feedback. You can find him on Lose It or Lose It as FlabMaster (he is currently losing the most weight!)
Jim Haigney - Jim is a beetamer extraordinaire (he tames bees and convinces them to give up their honey… it’s delicious!). You can find him on Twitter as @westchesterdead and on Lose It or Lose It as westchesterdead (He is also our #2 invester! Thanks!).
Ellen Peters - Ellen is an opera singer, how cool is that?! We just saw her and the Philadelphia Singers perform “Christmas on Logan Square” and it was FANtastic! You can also hear her singing with Opera Company of Philadelphia or helping people set up vacations at Untours! You can find her on Twitter as @ApatheticAlto and on Lose It or Lose It as ApatheticAlto.
Rebecca Schmidt - Besides being a magnificent Support Counselor at Lakeside Education Network, she is also my lovely wife! You can find her on Twitter as @bexs and on Lose It or Lose It as bexs (she is the only one without an avatar :).
Mike Mangino - Mike is the owner of Elevated Code and a marathoner (that means he can run further than I typically like to drive)! You can find him on Twitter as @mikemangino and on Lose It or Lose It as mmangino.

Thanks again you guys for being so awesome and helping make Lose It or Lose It better!

Post-Thanksgiving Reality Check Promotion!! Since we really...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:46:29 -0500

Post-Thanksgiving Reality Check Promotion!!

Since we really really want to help you lose weight, but we also love chocolate (!), be one of the first 100 people to sign up at Lose It or Lose It by 11:55 PM EDT on Friday, November 27th, 2009 (the day after Thanksgiving) with $250 or more on the line and we will send you a box of 4 chocolates similar to above from Éclat Chocolate! Signing up and starting your plan ~nowish means you ALREADY lost 5, 10, or 15 pounds by New Years!

To qualify, you must be 1 of the first 100 people to do both of the following steps:

Sign up at Lose It or Lose It (There is a $50 cancellation fee so don’t sign up with the idea to immediately cancel your account! We love you too much to let you do that!) You can sign up whenever you want and weigh in for the first time after Thanksgiving!
Fill out the form over here to get your chocolates!

Thank you and we CAN’T WAIT to have you lovely people as our users :)

"Oh the irony. I gained 3.8 lb. this week. I’m convinced that eating pizza three times..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:22:00 -0500

“Oh the irony. I gained 3.8 lb. this week. I’m convinced that eating pizza three times in the last week and dealing with the 3.8 lb. of cheese impacted in my colon is the reason why this has occured that, and I didn’t exercise at all this week. I can’t tell you how humiliated I feel right now. Really. It’s like I’ve been transported back to middle school when all the popular kids used to laugh at me and call me fatty - and I really hated those days.

Oh well…this just means I need to try harder next week. I really think you’re on to something here. I think this can work for you as well as for people trying to lose weight.”

- Jim Haigney

Why Lose It or Lose It is Going to Make You Less Fat!

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:11:00 -0500

Today I am launching my latest labor of love, Lose It or Lose It! I created Lose It or Lose It because I wanted to be less fat and help others be less fat! It is a collection of tools that I realized I needed to lose weight and keep it off.

You have to understand, I have been fat all my life. I needed something where I could decide up-front I wanted to change and then be punished above and beyond the norm of being fat if I didn’t stick to my commitment. That is where the investment part comes in. I put up $450 to lose 20 lb over 10 weeks, if I don’t, not only do I stay the same fat Randy, I will lose money! I will essentially be paying rent on my fatness!

How does it work?

Purchase a plan by choosing dollars per pound and pounds per week. The key here is choosing a dollars per pound that will result in discomfort if you don’t make your weekly goal.
Set up some accountability friends that will help keep you accountable and will receive emails about your progress every week.
When you are ready to start your plan, go to your profile page and follow the instructions to weigh in for the first time. You will need to provide your weight and a clear photo of your feet on the scale. We trust you, we just like pictures of feet.
Weigh in every week for the next 10 weeks around the same time of your first weigh-in. Don’t worry, we’ll remind you via email when it’s time. Just make sure you are at or below your goal for that week and you won’t lose your money!

After you’ve set things up, be sure to head to your settings to add Twitter to your account so we can tell everybody who follows you about your progress!

Best of all, Lose It or Lose It is 100% FREE if you make all of your weekly weigh-in goals! Take THAT Weight Watchers (just kidding, we don’t actually compete with you ;)!