How to Get Paid to Lose Weight
Let’s have some real talk, shall we? Losing weight seems like a constant discussion that occurs everywhere we turn.
Dozens (nay, hundreds!) of blogs discuss the newest diet fads. The nightly news features a regular report on studies that prove how important a healthy weight is to your quality of life. Chat around the water cooler often incorporates lengthy discussions of what CrossFit WOD kicked someone’s butt that morning. Basically, you’re surrounded by dieting, working out, and losing weight.
Here at Wealth of Geeks, we’re not opposed to encouraging everyone to have a healthy lifestyle. We fully support anyone’s endeavor to be their personal best. However, if you’re going to talk to us about weight loss, there’s one key factor we want to know. Where’s the money?
So, being the people we are, we will help you generate the motivation you need to stick to your resolution.
How will we do this? We’re going to tell you how you can make money by losing weight and get paid to walk.
So, strap on your cross-trainers and your ankle weights. We’re about to get physical and teach you how you can earn money while you lose weight.
How to Get Paid to Lose Weight
Start a Group Challenge With Friends or Family
The most straightforward way to earn money while you lose weight is to start a diet group with your friends, family, or co-workers. You can do this by asking if anyone in your social circle would like to join a group challenge and if they’d like to raise the stakes.
If you can form a group of at least five friends, and you each throw in $20.00, you can quickly establish a $100.00 prize for whoever loses the most weight.
Just remember to set a timeline for the weight loss (think three months) and some ground rules (i.e., weekly weigh-ins). It will be a way to do a joint activity with people you spend time with and help you stay accountable to your goal.
Apps that Pay You to Lose Weight
Achievement
Achievement is an app that directs you to use multiple other health-related apps to lose weight. The breakdown goes like this. You join Achievement and create your own personal account. From there, you download apps (you have over 20 choices) that all pertain to your health and fitness journey. You use each app to record your efforts in several different methods.
For instance, you can log meditation, your food intake, or your workout through each of the respective apps. At the end of the day, you’ll earn a point total for how many ways you logged your efforts for the day.
For every 10,000 points you earn, you receive $10. You can choose to redeem your points through PayPal, a direct deposit to your bank account, or by donating the money to your favorite charity.
The cool thing about Achievement is that it emphasizes and supports a well-rounded approach to health. It’s popular knowledge that health isn’t just the number on the scale or the size of your pants. It’s the big picture of the combined status of your emotional, mental, and physical health.
Achievement hits the nail on the head with this method of payment for increased well-being.
DietBet
DietBet is similar to our suggestion of a Challenge Group. With DietBet, you receive a reward for your weight loss based on the amount of weight you lose. Through virtual groups, you bet on your ability to lose a specific amount of weight within a particular amount of time. Then, you face others who have similar goals in a challenge to see who can most effectively reach their goal.
You can do DietBet with a group of total strangers or with your friends and family. It’s flexible in that you can choose the monetary amount you want to risk and the specific goal you want to achieve (i.e., loss of pounds or loss of overall body fat).
The steps toward using DietBet are straightforward. You join the site and create your user profile. Then, you weigh in and record your weight with a digital photo of yourself standing on a scale (with the number clearly showing). Once you’ve completed steps #1 & #2, you can join a DietBet.
You’ll find yourself in a community with like-minded individuals who all have their focus on the monetary prize. At the end of the allotted time, you’ll weigh-in again and provide a photo again. The winner earns the pot, or DietBet divides the pot amongst all the winners. At the very least, you’ll win back your initial investment if you achieve your goals.
DietBet has a cool sister company called RunBet. RunBet helps individuals become accountable toward their running goals by operating in the same fashion as DietBet. RunBet could be a handy app to use if your preferred work-out method when trying to lose weight is running, and you need a little extra motivation to stay on track.
HealthyWage
HealthyWage has notoriety as the best way to earn money while you lose weight. It also has an easy and straightforward platform. You sign-up with a team of 5 people, or HealthyWage will find a team for you to join. The way to win is to achieve the highest percentage of weight loss. This works to your benefit because it considers your starting weight instead of rewarding whoever loses the most weight.
HealthyWage also has a long-term incentive to keep your weight off by offering you your initial investment back if you keep the weight you’ve lost off for at least six months. This means that regardless if you win your bet, you still have the chance to earn your money back.
We like that little add on with the six-month challenge. While money is a great reward, the ultimate reward in weight loss is achieving a true, long-term change. HealthyWage encourages and rewards that, which is a cool way to acknowledge this engaging moneymaker’s real purpose.
STICKK
STICKK is a little different model than any of the other platforms we’ve previously discussed. As opposed to being weight-loss centric, STICKK is goal specific. This means that the app does not function to help people lose weight. Instead, the primary purpose is to help people achieve their goals.
STICKK requires its users to create a goal and formulate concise steps of action toward achievement. We think this is cool because it forces you to identify what you want and how you’re going to get it. This is important in goal setting, in any capacity, as a goal without a plan is simply an idea.
After you’ve made your goal and your plan, you create a commitment contract. Once you’ve made your contract, you invest in yourself by placing a monetary value on your achievement. If you accomplish what you set out to, you win back your investment. However, if you fail, your money goes toward a pre-selected person, charity, or organization of your choice.
This part is a little tricky. If you outlined that your money should go to a charity you care for genuinely; you might not be motivated to reach your goal. That’s why STICKK advises its users to make the loss something that will hurt you – like dictating that the money will go toward a person or a group that you despise or oppose.
This is a pretty unique twist on the situation. Sometimes consequences beyond failing to reach our goal are the little bit extra kick we need to put in the work.
Walgreens Balance Rewards
Walgreens Balance Rewards, like Achievement, focuses on encouraging well-rounded, healthy lifestyle choices. Therefore their program focuses on big-picture wellness and not merely losing weight.
You can earn points from Balance Rewards by shopping at Walgreens or filling your prescriptions at their pharmacy. You also have the ability to earn points through their Healthy Choices option, which presents users with a healthy weekly challenge.
If you’re someone who craves variety, Walgreens Balance Rewards may be the perfect fit for you to commit to a healthier lifestyle. You earn points for each option of use, with 1000 points equaling $1.00. Regardless of what you want to accomplish, having a Walgreens Balance Rewards account may be prudent for anyone who regularly uses a pharmacy and wants to earn extra cash by going about their regular business.
Tips to Thrive While Losing Weight
Of course, joining all these programs will only earn you money if you lose weight. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered there, too. Here are some tips that will help you achieve your weight loss so you can collect the cash.
Track Your Work
The keys to success in any endeavor are consistent and accountable. What this means, concerning weight loss, is that you need to be on top of your game if you want to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself.
With weight loss, you have to use a few key tactics to ensure you’re aware of your progress. First, you will want to make sure you are tracking your exercise. When it comes down to the bottom line, weight loss is about burning more calories than you consume.
So, you have to know how many calories you’re burning through exercise and daily activity. A great way to track this is to incorporate a digital device such as a FitBit, an Apple Watch, or a Garmin Watch. All of these devices will help calculate how many calories you’re burning throughout the day. This information will help you determine if you need to burn more through increased physical exertion.
Another tip you’ll want to use is tracking your caloric intake. Identical to knowing what you’re using, you’ll want to know what you’re taking in. MyFitnessPal is an excellent platform with an app that you can use for free to track what you’re eating.
It’s super user-friendly in that you can even look-up dishes from popular restaurants to figure out how many calories you need to budget for your pizza dinner. Also, it includes counts for alcohol, which comes in handy, especially around this season of abundance.
If the digital format of tracking your intake isn’t for you, consider keeping a basic journal. Record what you’re eating, when you’re eating it, and what your exercise schedule looks like. This will allow you to see what areas of your routine you can clean up and improve upon.
Utilize Your Resources
You have resources in your community who want to help you achieve whatever you set out to accomplish. It would help if you used them for your weight loss journey to have a cheer squad to help you on your rough days.
Consider joining an online community that offers support to those trying to lose weight. Whether it’s a Facebook group or a paid program, like Weight Watchers online, you can find others who are in the same boat as you are and can empathize with your journey.
Your support doesn’t need to come from the anonymous, though. Engage the assistance of your friends and family when it comes to being accountable for your goals. If you’re open and transparent with what you want to achieve, you will have a better chance of succeeding. You will also have people who are willing to accommodate your changing needs because they want to help you establish healthy habits.
Find a Technique That Works For You
We’re going to say this louder for the people in the back. Just because the keto diet is the newest health craze does not mean it is the only way to lose weight! If you’re not a fan of that particular eating plan, don’t do it.
Studies show that long-term weight loss results from lifestyle changes, not an outcome of temporary fad diets. That’s why it is so important that you make changes to your day-to-day routine and not force-feed yourself nothing but bacon for three months.
This rule applies to exercise, too. Find something you enjoy and not something that tortures you. Yoga is not for everyone, and neither is ultra running. But, you don’t have to do one extreme or the other to achieve your goals. Find your happy medium and what works for you and your lifestyle.
You’ll find much more happiness and success if you stick with a program that fits in with your preferences instead of enduring daily torture to achieve a goal that may be fleeting the second you stop.
The Bottom Line
Weight loss isn’t easy. If it were, it would be commonly referred to as weight gain! We’re joking. In all seriousness, weight loss is a tough endeavor, and it takes a lot of motivation to do the work to make it happen.
Consider engaging in a weight loss plan that allows you to earn money to help your weight loss journey. You’ll come out a winner in two ways; you’ll tighten your belt and fatten up your bank account.
This article is originally on Wealth of Geeks.
