Episode Details

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In Part 1 we started discussing the “Million Pound Challenge” created by Toby Cosgrove and Dr. Michael Roizen in which they are “challenging” an unknown number of people to collectively lose one million pounds. In part 2 we’ll discuss the program itself. (If you haven’t read part 1, I recommend it to fully understand part 2.) As always I’ll indent the quotes from the website so that you can avoid harmful weight stigma if you choose.

They explain the program as a 3-step process:

Step 1: Enroll Your Org

Register your health system. Get access to a variety of resources in the Million Pound Challenge Tool Kit for your entire team.

Step 2: Your Staff, Your Way

Employees can use the tools provided, join their own programs, work with providers—whatever works. Your organization decides how to structure participation.

Step 3: Track Progress

The only requirement? Track results with a monthly check with your Challenge coordinator. Watch as individual effort becomes collective momentum toward one million pounds.

This is where they make things incredibly clear - literally the only requirement is to track weight loss. This isn’t about health metrics, there is no way to make this program weight neutral or to focus on health - weight loss is the only metric and tracking it is the only thing the program requires.

And when they blithely say “whatever works” let’s be clear that a century of research finds that, unless their goal is to create weight cycling, nothing does.

So there is no common intervention and all they are tracking is weight loss. Right. And how is weight loss tracked? Per the FAQs (emphasis mine)

“Your Challenge ambassador must log your team’s results monthly with your assigned Challenge Coordinator—this is the only requirement. Individual weights remain completely private. Only aggregate organizational totals are posted on the community leaderboard so you can see how your organization compares nationally.”

Um, they aren’t private if you have to share them with your company’s challenge ambassador (and I have serious concerns that someone who would sign up for that job may be the last person that a coworker would want to tell their weight.)

Workplace programs (or any programs) that include a weight loss component have significant risks to physical and mental health, including through eating disorders. But programs that compel people to compete solely on the basis of weight loss, as this one does, can actually encourage participation in dangerous behaviors in order to create weight loss.

Measure your organization’s progress, celebrate your success stories, and recognize your top-performing teams. Join leaders at quarterly events, Chamber Summit, Aspen Ideas Festival, and HLTH to keep momentum strong.

Do. Not. Do. This. Another huge issue with this, and all workplace/organization weight-loss challenges, besides the issues with disordered eating and eating disorders and weight cycling, is that it can single out people who aren’t participating or “achieving” in ways that create a hostile work environment for them.

It can mean that those who have chosen an evidence-based weigh