6% Team Challenge Post: We Won.

We won, and by the skin of our asses. Figuratively speaking, not literally (but honestly I cannot be sure of my teammates)

Last June, I organized a team for the Goal Smashers Team Challenge at Healthy Wage. I went on my Facebook groups and told people that I was doing this challenge and asked if anyone would like to join. I had 4 takers. So we had a team of 5 people to enter this challenge with.

It’s a risk to team up with people you meet on social media and that you have never seen for something like this. So the $70 fee you pay is something you have to be prepared to part ways with, in case you have somebody ghost you because they are gaining weight. When one person does that you generally are in deep trouble because the remaining people all have to work much harder to overcome the ensuing zero contribution to the 6% team average.

In our case, we had a person who gained weight–but he never went AWOL on us–he was always there, and we all knew what was going on with him. His father died of illness in the middle of the challenge. After the funeral, he had to administer his estate and clean out his house out of state. Even now he is dealing with his father’s estate. The adversity was sufficient to derail his progress on losing weight. But he was always there for the team.

It was an honor working with everyone on this team. If I do this again I will seek these folks out to join me. If I do this again. If. Gotta think about it, but it looks like a pretty big “if” to me right now.

How the 6% team challenge works

Players sign up with a $70 fee. They form teams during sign-up or after it.

Teams consist of 2-9 people. There are generally 2 weeks for players to join, leave, and reform teams. All teams have one or more captains, who can jettison any team member who seems to have issues that may jeopardize the chances for the team to win.

After the first 2 weeks of the challenge, teams are frozen and all members are stuck with each other for the remainder of the challenge. So this paragraph should get a big CAUTION flag. I’ll note here that one bad sign is when a member does not do a starting verified weigh-in, which is required for the team to compute an average. If a team is frozen with one member missing a starting verified weigh in, then that team is SOL and JWF (hat tip to George Carlin for those abbreviations, who never had a need for something like Healthy Wage in his time on earth. RIP).

The verified weigh-out period is similar to those of other Healthy Wage games: within any of the final 15 days of the challenge you can submit the verified weigh-out, most commonly through the video feature in the mobile app.

I used the weigh-out window on the team challenge differently than how I use it on the many 6% individual challenges I have participated in. On the individual challenges, I weigh in a soon as my weight is at goal or less–fortunately for me, that is on the first day of the weigh-out window in most of my challenges–and when I verify, I am done with the challenge.

For the team challenge, I weighed in about 6 times. Each time, I weighed less than the last time. The final verified weigh-in is the one that counts toward the team average.

As soon as the verified average hits 6%, the invitation to electronically certify that you performed the challenge legitimately is provided to all team members. At that point the team is done–although team members should maintain their weight until the referees had a chance to review and vet the weigh-ins.

At the end of the challenge, the team average is computed by averaging the percentage weight losses of all members. The average is rounded to the nearest tenth of a pound. So if you finish at 5.95% or better you should be winners.

Any members who do not do a verified weigh-out count as 0% for computing weight loss average. So if any members gained weight during the challenge, they should refrain from weighing in because a zero in the average is better than a negative percentage.

This situation applied to my team. The member who was on bereavement gained a lot of weight, but in the last two weeks tried to lose more than he gained so that he could contribute to the team average. Ultimately he wasn’t going to make it back to his starting weight, but at least he kept us appraised, so I could tell him not to weigh in, and the rest of us knew how much extra we needed to lose to make up for the zero in the average.

Contrast this situation with somebody who ghosts your team. It’s like being on an offensive drive in the last minute of a gridiron football game, in which you have to move the football a sufficient distance to score a game winning touchdown. In our case we knew what was required; my contribution was an 18-hour fast on the last day to get a few more tenths of a percentage point.

At the end of the challenge, all members of winning teams split the pot equally. Note: this means they take all the members of winning teams and put them into one group and count everyone in that group, and they divide that sum into the pot listed on the dashboard to calculate an equal share of money for these winning team members.

Right now there appears to be 31 people splitting a $3,203 pot, which will be awarded on September 18. That’s $103.32 back on a $70 bet, or 47.7% return. I’ll report back on the official figure when it comes.

If you do this, hear are my pointers:

• Pick your team members well. If you don’t know them personally, see if they are heavily active in you social media groups.
• Make sure you know the rules and take advantage of them–ratcheting down weigh outs, not weighing out when you gained, adjusting your team composition in the beginning when you are able to, etc.
• Stay in touch with each other and have fun! It’s only $70 gone if your lose; don’t get too frustrated about it

Thank you Bruce, Kim, Tammi, and Lori for a great team experience!