The Economics Way of Fitness - The Final Month

In My $1200 Weight-Loss Gamble I described how I planned to use my own advice from How Economics Can Help You Keep Your New Year's Resolutions. For the month of June, I had two challenges. First was to deal with a specific dietary issue:

After a few days, the results were striking - all the hard working I was doing was being offset by all the calories in the couple glasses of red wine I was drinking every night at dinner. The calories from alcohol were the problem.

This is probably an overly drastic solution. I am trying to make sustainable changes to my lifestyle and this one may not be sustainable. But I thought I would try it anyway.

I resolve, that until July 8th, I will completely abstain from alcohol. In order to make that stick, I need a penalty. As a member of the Pigou Club, I thought this solution was appropriate:

For every day I drink alcohol, I will send $100 to NoPigou founder Terence Corcoran.

I am very happy to report that I did not have any problems with this one. In fact, it has been two months since I have had red wine or any other type of alcoholic beverage!

And the second challenge:

Between July 1st and July 8th I must have a body fat percentage of under 15.62. If I fail, I must pay a total of $300 in fines, to be paid according to the wishes of the following 3 blogs

It occured to me this month that by simply just telling you how I did that there is a bit of a credibility gap. What we need here is third-party verification.

Because of that, I go in for a full-physical exam tomorrow, which will include the following:

• Cardiovascular Fitness Appraisal by VO2max estimation
• Body fat composition by 7-point caliper test, BMI, and Waist-to-Hip Ratio

Two weeks after the physical, I will receive a print-out of all my results. I will post them here, so you can see for yourself if I met the June goal.

I hope you can wait until then!