The $60,000 diet challenge commenced Dec. 1, 2008 with a simple wager. Ted Frank and I both wish to lose 60 pounds. We both think nine months is a reasonable time frame in which to accomplish that goal. And we're each big stakes that we can, and by implication, that the other of us cannot.
The stakes are these: For each pound I lose, Ted owes me $1,000. For each pound Ted loses, I owe him $1,000. Our respective liabilities are capped at $60,000, so neither of us could run up the score by losing more than 60, or end up further in the hole should we actually gain weight over the period.
Extreme? Yes. But we find the stakes a useful incentive. As Ted put it in designing the challenge:
The Frank Plan features a combination of elements of the tontine; the Stephen King short story "Quitters, Inc."; and the Karlan/Ayres program you might have seen in some economics blogs or Slate.
In "Quitters, Inc.," a mafioso gets people to quit smoking with a
98% success rate by extortion and credible threats of harm. ("But even
the unregenerate two percent never smoke again. We guarantee it.") Too
violent, illegal in most states.
Under Karlan/Ayres, which they set up at stickK.com, one commits oneself to do X and a financial penalty for failing to reach X. I don't like this: there's no upside, their contracts tend to be binary and it's too hard to structure gradated contracts. The Frank Plan solves each of these problems.
So, here are the challengers:
- Ted Frank, starting weight of 279, goal weight after nine months of 219
- Ray Lehmann, starting weight of 265.8, goal weight after nine months of 205.8
