Dietbetting in the News

Think You Can’t Lose Weight? Wanna Bet?

 “DietBet is the newest site to allow users to bet on their weight loss. The goal is to make dieting a game, according to founder Jamie Rosen.

Mom blogger Amy Oztan started a DietBet with a few other bloggers earlier this month, and has lost almost 9 pounds. “There were so many times when I wanted to just say screw it, but I didn’t want to be the loser,” she says.”

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Losin’ It: Taking It Off For Charity

“The DietBet website turns dieting into a fun competition. And by "fun" I mean "lets you risk losing a pile of money to ensure that you lose weight." DietBet put up $5,000 dollars that I, the Dilettantes, and five other bloggers were all competing to win.

And if we were successful at losing 4% of our body weight in one month, the winners (losers) would share the pot and a percentage of the winnings with a charity of our choice. We all selected DC Central Kitchen because we love what they do, and it somehow seemed perfect we were eating less so others could eat more.

Anyway, after all of this, it all came down to our weigh-in last night. And true to our freakishly competitive form, we were all successful at losing at least 4% of our body weight. And because I'm on a roll, I'm going to continue with my healthy habits to get back to my fighting weight.”

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Gaining by losing weight: the best ways to lose weight

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Dieting for dollars

That social accountability is the basis for DietBet, a weight-loss-wager website that launched Dec. 19…DietBet founder Jamie Rosen says users can send messages encouraging one another and track progress through an online scoreboard.

"It becomes this fun social experience that's the opposite of what people think of dieting," he says. "It's not lonely or solitary.”

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Diet betting websites help losers win

DietBet.com is the latest site on the scene with the motto of "Lose weight with friends while taking their money." It launched in December and already has hundreds of people signed up in various contests.

"Ours is not winner-take-all like 'The Biggest Loser' show," said founder Jamie Rosen. "Anyone who reaches their goal at the end of a four-week challenge splits the pot. It doesn't matter who crosses the finish line first. We're not making this like a gambling pool, but actually trying to help people lose weight."

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Isn’t It Ironic?

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My 2012 Resolution - More Gambling!

“I'm kicking off 2012 by making a bet with myself, The Dilettantes and several other bloggers invited to participate in this challenge. DietBet is offering winners (those who lose at least 4% of their body weight in four weeks) the chance to split a $5000 pot between themselves and the charity they've selected .(In our case, DC Central Kitchen.) …. For competitive people like us, this is a great way to kick off our New Year's resolutions.”

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ONE MONTH LATER, ALMOST 9 LBS GONE!

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TODAY’S AGENDA: KEEPING UP THE MOMENTUM

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WHY I’M SCARED TO WEIGH MYSELF BEFORE CES

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MY NEW WEIGHT LOSS STRATEGY: I’M TALKING ABOUT CARBS

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Another weigh-in, this one with some serious cash at the end

An offer from DietBet.com came along at exactly the right time.It’s no secret that I’ve been trying to lose weight for the past few months.

DietBet.com has put up $5,000 for a blogger contest, and I’m thrilled to be one of the seven participants. Half of any money I win will be donated to charity. The goal is to lose 4% of my starting weight, or slightly less than eight pounds. I’ll be blogging my progress along the way.

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FitLinks: Yoga for Strong Legs, Bet Your Friends to Lose Weight & More!

“Bet your friends that you’ll lose weight? What a fun—and lucrative—idea! —DietBet”

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My Final Weigh In for the #DietBet Mom Bloggers Challenge

“It’s hard to believe that it’s the end of the DietBet Mom Bloggers Challenge. What a roller coaster of… I know I still have a very long way to go, but I’m definitely off to a great start. And, I owe it all to DietBet and their Mom Blogger’s Challenge.”

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DietBet Challenge – End of Week 3 Weigh In

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DietBet Challenge – End of Week 2 Weight IN

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End of Week One Weigh-In #DietBet

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Taking On the DietBet Challenge

If you haven’t heard of DietBet, you soon will. I have been selected as one of the participants in the DietBet Challenge along with 6 other mom bloggers… For this challenge, DietBet put $5,000 into the pot and let us pick our charities. They also let us decide how much of our winnings would go to charity. I love the idea of winning for someone else, so I was really excited when they approached me about this.

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DietBet: What I Learned From Losing

“Someone else doesn’t have to lose in order for me to win. Actually, I already believe that. This competition just reinforced this belief. At this point, I think that everyone who was competing in this challenge met their goals. That is amazing!

The great news is that ALL 7 of the bloggers that participated in the DietBet competition won. (That makes me even happier that I met my goal. I would have been so embarrassed if I would have been the only one that didn’t meet her goal!)”

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“It’s About To Go Down…”

“I’m so excited that I’m participating in the DietBet Blogger Lose to Win Challenge, an online social dieting game sponsored by DietBet this month… I won’t tell you how much my starting weight was last Wednesday. I will tell you that I have already lost 4.4 pounds since I implemented my “do you diet” on Thursday of last week.

(I will also be sponsoring two Foodie City Mom readers in my own personal “DietBet” next month. It’s TOTALLY unrelated to this promotion/on my own dime, but I think that it will be fun so stay tuned…)”

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DietBet allows you and friends to wager on your weight loss

Enter DietBet, a new social media game and website where people compete to see who can lose a given amount of weight in a four-week period with a cash prize as their reward.

“We think it’s a tool for dieters to get motivated and have fun,” said Tina Basle, vice president of strategic alliances at DietBet. “People are keen to get fit and lose weight and keen to engage socially with one another.”

“No one is going to put their kid through college using DietBet, the main focus is on dieting,” Basle said. “If you’re a gambler, go to Vegas.”

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I’ve lost a sack of flour!

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Losing Eight Lbs. of Holiday Fat For a Good Cause

“Like most of the segment of the population that comes equipped with breasts and a babymaker, I struggle to keep my weight under control… DietBet has put in $5,000 for a blogger contest and yours truly is one of the seven participants. Whatever I win (and I plan to win because if there's anything I like almost as much as food, it's competition), will be donated to my favorite charity, HOPE Worldwide. So all I have to do is lose eight pounds in 28 days. Piece of cake.”

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DietBet Taps Seven Bloggers For Weight Loss Game

“Dietbet.com, an online social dieting game that gives players the opportunity to win money through weight-loss competitions, is working with seven women bloggers to give them the chance to lose weight and earn money for themselves and for their charity of choice.”

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January 2012 Activity -- DietBet progress report -- Of course she had to go to Chile -- though perhaps Hungary would have been more appropriate...

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January 2012 Activity – DietBet

“If this post ends abruptly, it’s likely because I passed out from hunger and exhaustion as a result of Day 1 of the DietBet competition I and my fellow Dilettantes were conned intohappy to join for the month of January…The Dilettantes are playing for a very worthy charity, DC Central Kitchen.

DietBet actually provides this—short, 4 week competitions designed to help you lose those last few pounds, or jump start a bigger weight loss program. As Dilettantes, it fits well with our attention spans and ability to commit (although it would be great if we could do it in under an hour and then go for beers).”

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Money: The Root Of All Resolve

While it seems extreme and a little faddish, a popular way of dieting sweeping the internet is by registering on a betting site such as DietBet and FatBet and competing against your friends over who will get to the target weight first in a set amount of time. Money is involved, which is always a good motivator.

In fact, a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that those in a weight-loss incentive group (where a cash deposit was added) were not only more likely to lose weight they were also more likely to keep the weight off - after seven months those in the incentive groups weighed substantially less than they did at the start of the study, while the control group did not.

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Free help available with New Year's fitness resolutions

For anyone who has made a New Year's resolution to lose weight or simply wants to improve their health in 2012 free help is available… But weight loss doesn't have to be all work. According to Jaime Rosen, founder of the website Dietbet.com, it can be fun when turned into a friendly competition.

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Making a Resolution? Diet Betting May Offer Incentive to Lose Weight

You have only days until you start your New Year's resolutions, and we're going to bet a lot of you have resolved to slim down in 2012 ... A new kid on the block is DietBet, which offers to host your challenges ...

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Win Money and Lose Weight?

Money may not be able to buy you love, but it turns out it can help with weight loss.

Research has shown that, when it comes to dropping excess pounds, there’s nothing like cold, hard cash to keep you motivated. In fact, dieters who have a financial incentive to lose weight are nearly five times more likely to make it happen than those with no incentive.

Inspired by the statistics, there have been a new wave of websites that offer monetary rewards for weight loss. The latest to jump on the lose-to-win bandwagon is DietBet—the online social dieting game, which launches mid-December, that lets players win money through weight-loss competitions. People place wagers on reaching a healthy goal weight and everyone who achieves the goal wins a share of the pot. It’s like fantasy football for dieters.

Founder Jamie Rosen came up with the concept after witnessing the painstaking process friends went through to plan their own diet bets and deciding to streamline the process with an online source. “We wanted to make that all a million times easier for the game's organizer and also more fun,” says Rosen.

Dietbet also offers innovative features, such as the Daily Carrot—a motivational and amusing daily tip written by comedy writers from Harvard Lampoon—and a message board, where users can trash talk, share photos and keep up with each other’s scores. “The reason we started DietBet was the observation that nobody in the world likes to lose weight but everyone loves playing games,” explains Rosen. “So we put a lot of attention to making it a fun, social game experience.”

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Dieting? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is

It was an eight-player example of a diet bet, in which those seeking to lose pounds give themselves a new incentive: money. If they don’t lose more weight than the competition, they lose cash. Internet sites that facilitate diet betting have seen an increase in traffic, and recent studies have supported what Mr. Ee and his co-workers discovered: diet bets work for many people who couldn’t seem to shed pounds any other way.

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Getting Paid To Lose Weight Or Quit Smoking

A study in the December issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people who had financial incentives to lose weight were much more successful at dieting than those who did not … An increasing number of dieters are entering formal wagers with friends or co-workers to bet on weight loss goals.

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Betting Against the Bulge

The financial incentive is one thing, of course, but what seems to supercharge the effectiveness of the method is an element of public competition -- the bigger, the better -- between friends or between foes, with the latter scenario perhaps being the more motivating one. “When you go public and make a big to-do about something you are planning to do, like lose weight, a lot of people know about it, and the stakes get raised,” says Jamie Rosen, a founder of MakeMoneyLosingWeight.com. “In addition to there being money involved, just the fact that there is humiliation at risk is also compelling.” The desire to win -- or at least not lose -- any amount of cash, combined with the dread of losing face, can lead to some stiff competition and mind games. Rosen says he’s heard about offices where workers competing for a cash prize for the person who loses the most weight will do push-ups in front of one another’s desks and surreptitiously leave chocolates around, hoping to break their adversaries.

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Wager on losing weight? A Bet Where You Can Win and Lose (Video & Print)

A recent study by the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia confirmed "cha-ching," with an element of risk, can be a strong motivator for losing weight.

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Eat This Cake And Face a £200 Fine

makemoneylosingweight.com [is] designed for communities of dieters who want to challenge one another. A group of friends or colleagues sign up, everyone puts a set amount into a pot and makes a commitment to lose a certain amount of weight. After a pre-arranged period of time, whoever is closest to his or her target weight takes the pot. The websites provide a forum for publicly tracking weight.

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