After confronting their portliness during a Maui family trip, Ballard buddies John Dirks and Adam Orkand made a friendly weight loss wager - and stumbled on a successful weight loss method. According to the Times, the two made a bet to slim down to 200 pounds - the loser (or "non-loser") would pay the winner $200. After three months of tracking with spread sheets what they ate, exercise, and weighed (along with periodic ribbing), both men met their goal and have kept the weight off for a year. In December, the two decided to share their successes by creating a web site www.FatBet.net, which allows the public to place their own "fatbets."
While the site is gender-neutral, Orkland said the site was originally created for guys: "Men are often in denial, thinking they're still in shape for football when they're actually carrying 20 or 30 extra pounds." The site uses metrics to chart your progress with graphs, and a message feature lets users post motivational - or snide - comments to other competitors. This is based on research that showed "people who are successful at weight loss 1) make their efforts public, 2) pay attention to the process and 3) make it fun." If you were trying to lose weight, would this method motivate or discourage you?
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