"For Jonathan Ramos, it meant trading his daily snack cake for kickboxing class. He dropped 33 pounds.

"I haven't had one since I started the program, but I still crave them," he said."

HELLO!!! Craving means that you are depriving. Deprivation only leads to bingeing. Which leads to guilt. Which leads to one of two things: extreme compensation OR apathy (saying, oh eff it and get off the "wagon.")

I'm all for companies offering free gym/exercise classes for those who may enjoy it, but to offer a contest with a monetary reward for lowering a meaningless number???

What's next?? Offering $1000 for someone to raise his/her IQs by 50 points in 8 weeks? Or his/her SAT score by 500 points????

Does anyone besides us realize how insane this is????

Apparently not.

As much as this stuff sucks, isn't it nice to feel among the enlightened few? ;)

I love your examples. LOVE THEM. You are on fiyah tonight!

I don't even know what to say. I'll be looking forward to seeing the followup article about how many of them develop, shall we say, "unhealthy habits."

Sarah,

Or they could have visited my workplace. They all talk about lowering healthcare costs, etc, but at the same time, you lose productivity because everyone is too hungry to think straight or too busy discussing WW Points with their colleagues to accomplish anything, anyway.

And yes, doing a follow up to see about any 'unhealthy weight loss methods' would be informative, indeed.