Since I have been so up and down with my weight recently, and my crappy attempts at sticking with diets, I came up with a pretty elaborate rewards system to hopefully help keep me motivated until I reach my goal weight. I outlined my new plan on my blog at www.robislosing.blogspot.com, but I will share what I am doing here as well...

Each week on Monday, I weigh in. I set a goal that I would like to reach by the following monday. I then set up a points system where different things I do can either give me points or taketh away.

POINT REWARDS

5 Points will be awarded for the following:
-Reach target weight that was set for the week.

2 Points will be awarded for the following:
-10 Miles run/walk in one week.
-20 Miles biked in one week.

1 Point will be awarded for the following:
-14 sodas or less consumed in one week.
-No alcohol consumed in week.
___________________________________
POINT DEDUCTIONS

5 Points will be deducted for the following:
-Fail to reach weekly target weight.
-Gain more than 2 lbs in a week.

3 Points will be deducted for the following:
-Fail to go to the gym at least twice in a week.

2 Points will be deducted for the following:
-Eat out at a restaurant more than once per week.
-Drink less than 21 glasses of water in one week.

1 Point will be deducted for the following:
-Meal eaten out at a restaurant.
-Alcohol consumption.
-Fail to make at least 4 blog entries per week.
______________________________________________

I will be setting up rewards for certain point levels hit...

For example, 100 points gets me a new MP3 Player, 200 points earns me a Steak Dinner, etc....

I haven't settled on what my rewards will be yet, but I think having a system like this will really urge me to do as good as possible. Do you think this is kind of silly or do you think it will actually keep me motivated?

It all depends on whether you continue to enjoy keeping such detailed records, or whether that becomes a burden in itself.

Exactly. But I feel like in order for me to keep focused, I need to be active every single day in thinking about doing the right thing. I lose focus too easily and that is why I have been failing lately. This will make me participate on a daily basis.

I guess it depends on how good I make my rewards too, lol.

That sounds like a great idea, Rob - at least in the short term. Hopefully this will get you going with good habits and then you will just do the stuff out of habit instead of tedious record keeping. Great job on coming up with this idea. I might think about using a modified version of it myself.

True, but don't forget to make them take a reasonable amount of time to achieve, so that you stay motivated.

You're above system lets you gain a maximum of 8 points in one week, but easily lose over 10. With your current system, if you use the above sample goal of new mp3 player at 100 points, it will take 12.5 weeks assuming you do perfectly every week and never screw up.

I like reward systems, and think they work extremely well for certain people, but they need to be well balanced. Try thinking of some smaller goals that will be reachable sooner to keep you going (like a new cd, or movie, or running shirt).

Also, you may want to look at your points system and make it a little more even of rewards vs punishments. If I were you, I'd also decide before you start if you can get penalized twice for the same thing. Right now, if you go out to eat twice, that is minus 4 points (-2 for eating out more than once and -1x2 for each eating out). Then, if you have 2 beers while eating out, you're now at -6 for the week. Ouch.

But the idea is awesome, and I think I might set up something similar for myself. 5 points if I make it through my to-do list for the week would be a great start, because I have tasks that were suppose to be done three weeks ago now... procrastination is not good.

Yea, I am going to play around with the point values and rules, but was just trying to guage if the idea is a good one. I need to look at it closer and refine rewards and deductions, but I think a plan like this is really going to work for me.

Plus- I am in Data Analytics. I actually enjoy keep statistics and record keeping, so I'm not worried on that front.

Ohhh, you're one of those people. Hehe.

Yeah, I'm in computer science, and firmly believe you can never have too much information. :P I think maybe this evening I will try to work out a point system as well.

I'm doing pretty well, and have stopped focusing at all on weight. But on days I don't have set training, I often end up sitting in the same chair for a huge percentage of the day with my laptop. Not really a bad thing, but I'm not really getting any thing done... More, I think I'd use a points system to focus on my time management issues.

Being too anal about this stuff has kind of hurt me, because as soon as I fail at all, I have to restart my entire diet, erase all my blog entries, and start fresh. That is why I am having trouble. But I think since laying out these points will make say "ok just need 10 more miles on the week to get a couple of points" and I honestly think that alone will get me to the gym.

I guess whatever works and gets the job done is the right thing to do.

It is kind of rediculous that I have made so many new accounts and have "started over" so many times. But I guess that's just me.

Well, don't forget "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." (George Santayana)

It's not a bad idea to keep the old information around, kind of as a reminder as to where things went wrong last time and how to prevent that from happening this time.

That's true. I guess I could have kept my original account as a reminder of where I was to what I can be. I may still do that, who knows, lol.

I think the only thing I would worry about here is making some of the rewards weight oriented. As I'm sure many here can attest even after a "perfect" week it's still possible to maintain or even gain weight. I wonder if by associating a negative point value to that and "wiping out" any positive points gained by exercise and diet that you'll come to resent this.

Maybe just base it on the behaviors that you want to encourage--because those are the things you can actually control

That's a great point. I hadn't thought of it that way at all, but it makes way more sense to set up a system over things you can definitely control (working out, getting tasks done, eating healthy...) versus everything else. I will use that when making my own system tonight.

I wanted it to be kind of like The Biggest Loser though. Like each week I set a goal and work all week to try to reach it. The only week that I am setting a very hard goal is this first week, but only because there is always a large drop off after the first week. Then I will set weekly goals of 1 to 2 lbs.

My reward system is this... For every lb I lose, I deposit 10 bucks into a seperate savings account. When I've lost all the weight I want to lose, I'll have about a grand to go shopping with and buy a new wardrobe! Works for me... BUT, I like to SHOP... A LOT

My 2 cents..
a- I agree that you should identify some smaller rewards that will keep you motivated until you reach the ipod. How about 1 song per week for the ipod or something like that? Baby steps.

b-What entails the steak dinner reward? That in itself is not bad, I'm assuming (maybe incorrectly) it's all the other things with the steak you are referring to. If you are going to reward yourself with food (which I don't think is a very good idea because you're setting up a good food/bad food mentality when the goal should be balance in your eating) reward yourself with 1 food treat not a whole meal. If you overindulge I can pretty much guarantee you will not feel good about yourself and that will take away from your motivation.

c- Your body doesn't know what day you get weighted in on so setting up weekly weight loss goals may not be beneficial to your esteem. How about a bonus point if you are down but recognize that usually what's showing up on the scale is last week not yesterday.

Rob and Neesha I am in computer science too and I am the exact same way... love making lists and spreadsheets about what my diet/exercise plan is going to be The only prob is maybe spending more time planning than I actually spend 'doing'!!! I also got a Garmin GPS watch for running lately it is ssooooo cool you can see little graphs of pace/heart rate/elevation on your computer after your run - and a little map of where you went - AND the watch transmits all the info to your computer WIRELESSLY!!!!! Wow, I am such a nerd...

Anyway... I agree about not leaving it too long until you can get a reward. I did this thing with coloured stickers on a calendar where I put one sticker for healthy eating, one for drinking enough water and one for exercise - and I planned on getting at least 19 stickers per week (healthy food + enough water every day and also exercising 5+ times). Then if I got the 19 stickers I was allowed to have a cheat meal... I think a cheat meal once a week is ok! And good for the metabolism apparently... But whenever I had a cheat meal I put a red sticker so I could make sure it was only once a week!

I know what you mean though Rob about wanting to delete all your 'diet history'... I had a few too many red stickers around mid June and I got kind of depressed looking at the calendar... couldn't wait for July to start so I could turn over the page hehehe

Oops, I kind of rambled there and forgot what my point was

I was going to say that when I did the calendar thing I got the reward (the 'cheat' meal) if I stuck to healthy eating & exercise - it wasn't dependent on weight loss. I totally agree with others who said that you shouldn't base it all on weight loss - because you could have done really well all week but still not lose weight for whatever reason. Then you would have no reward, even though you did good

Okay, so I started working out my version of this idea last night/this morning. I'm not going to focus on weight, but instead on developing healthy habits.

So far I've come up with the following:
1 Point for each of the following:
- 15 minutes of cardio
- 5 minutes of strength
- tasks completed minus tasks left (but no negative numbers allowed, so always bottoms out at zero, also can't decide weekly or daily)
- every day I record my diet/exercise in a journal

I'm thinking 1 point = $1 that I can cash in on whatever. However, this may be too generous, as right now I average about 5 hours of cardio a week which would be $20 alone. So maybe 50c instead? I like the idea of equating it to money so that I could use it for various rewards as I go along, like a new dvd, cd, wii game, etc. Money for things I want but don't need. :P

Any ideas/suggestions?

Sounds like a good plan. My problem is that typically if I want something, I either figure out a way to make the money work, or if I can't then I just decide that I don't want it. Haha. I'm funny like that.

Rob,

I like your idea of a rewards system, but agree with some of the comments about keeping things reasonable. One suggestion might be to gain points for gains, and lose points for negatives, but keep the points neutral for 'no change.' You have that you would lose points if you didn't make your target weight. What if you just got no points gained or lost. If you gain weight,then you can deduct. Also,maybe make the gains and losses of points a little more equitable. I understand completely being hard on yourself, but you also want to actually reward yourself too!

How's this going for you Rob?

I think that this is a great idea!

However, if it was up to me I might tweak it a bit.

My personality is that I am quite impatient, so I would probably want some more short term goals to keep me on track and something I could win on a weekly and possibly even daily basis.

Thats just me though. I like recognition and don't like waiting for it.