We’re big fans of the Fat Cyclist and, if you’ve been following along closely, you might recognize him from the aftermath of our 1000th UVI, when Henrik Wist won our $1000 and then paid it all to charity. So we were really excited when he asked us to help him run a weightloss competition with teeth. (We’re also big fans of teeth!)
The short version of how the contest is going down is this: you’ve got to ante $20, which goes to the World Bicycle Relief charity. Beeminder’s regular rules still apply. [1] If you go above the road you pay the price, as always, but we’re donating half of any pledges paid by contestants during the contest to World Bicycle Relief as well. In addition you get a score, and a chance to win a prize from Fatty.
In his own words:
Of Points and Prizes and Data
For the duration of this contest, you can earn points. Here’s how:
- 3 points: Every day you’re on the right side of the yellow brick road (a blue dot), you get three points.
- 2 points: You get 2 points every day you out perform the yellow brick road (a green dot). Yes, you get fewer points for losing weight too fast. This isn’t a contest about crash dieting; it’s a contest about being slow and steady.
- 1 point: Every day you’re on the wrong side of the yellow brick road (orange dot), you get one point.
- 0 points: If you go off the yellow brick road or don’t report your weight for the day, you get 0 points.
During the registration period (now until midnight, March 11), points are for practice. On March 12, everyone’s points reset to 0 and the contest begins in earnest. Whoever has the most points on June 21 wins a pair of what have become my favorite cycling luxury item — Rapha Classic Bib Shorts (or the women’s equivalent thereof). If there’s a tie for first place, I’ll draw from the winners randomly. If I win, I’ll buy the shorts for myself.
If you, dear Beeminder User, are interested in joining up please check out the full details from Fatty himself. Or you can dive straight in.
One more thing: if you’re already beeminding your weight, you’ll be able to pick your current weight goal, rather than starting a new one. If you have an old weight goal you want to dust off for the contest, just visit the goal page on Beeminder and restart / unfreeze it first, then when you go to join the contest you’ll pick the goal you want and ante up to get added to the leaderboard.
Good luck!
Footnotes
[1] To be precise, we’ve actually changed the weight loss rules slightly for the purposes of this contest. Your yellow brick road will have a fixed width of 2 pounds on either side of the centerline. After some discussion this seemed most fair, since the width of your road affects the points you accrue.