1. "I had tried everything else."
“I came to HealthyWage because it was one of the few diet techniques I hadn’t tried. I had tried everything else. I did it as an experiment. At $20 a month, I had the accountability of other diet programs for a lot less. And it worked. It’s the one thing that finally worked for me. And I’ve thought a lot about why that is. Because, really, I did a million other programs. And I got excited about them while I was doing them. But then I wouldn’t stick it out. Ultimately, I think I was looking to pay someone to fix the solution from the outside. In the end, HealthyWage was the one thing that forced me to look inward and fix it from inside myself. There was work that needed to be done, and nobody could do that work but me.”
—Melissa
2. "I needed an extra bit of motivation."
“When I found HealthyWage, I had just had a baby, and I was dealing with a lot of adipose tissue on my body. A lot of fat. And I wanted to start [losing weight], but I needed an extra bit of motivation. My sister found HealthyWage — I’m not even sure how — but she started looking into it and thought, This actually looks like a good idea. And so I thought, OK, let’s give it a shot.
"And I was very, very excited to reach the goal that earned me the jackpot payout. That was awesome. And then it was even more awesome because I found out later about round two. They sent me an email saying ‘If you didn’t lose all the weight you wanted to lose, we now offer round two for the HealthyWage jackpot.’ And I thought, Well, yeah! There’s still a little more to go. So I’m doing it again. What better investment than to invest in yourself?”
—Stephanie
3. "The money aspect was something tangible to me."
“You don’t lose weight because you bet money; you lose weight because you decide to lose weight. But the money aspect was something tangible to me. Every month, seeing the money come out of our bills helped me stay focused. It was the catalyst that turned into some serious action for [my wife and me]. We got involved in a gym at home that’s become our hobby. Instead of coming home and watching TV or going out to eat somewhere, we go to the gym together.”
—Mat
4. "It took away the ability to extend the timeline and make excuses."
“One of my coworkers told me about HealthyWage, and, honestly, when she first told me about it, I was skeptical. I told her, ‘OK, well, if you actually get this money, you let me know.’ And she did. She lost her weight and got her money. I was like, ‘Well, that’s pretty awesome. OK, yeah, I’ll try it.’ So I told my husband about it. He was also pretty skeptical about it. But we said, ‘OK, let’s go for it and see what happens.’
"Prior to HealthyWage, I would lose a little and then gain a little and then lose a little and then gain a little. The motivation to stick with it just wasn’t there, or it would come in waves. With HealthyWage, it not only gave me a personal weight-loss goal, but it gave me a monetary goal as well. And money is a very powerful motivator! It took away the ability to extend the timeline and make excuses. I couldn’t set a fluctuating goal; there was a hard target I had to hit."
—Brooke
5. "Let's bet on ourselves."
"My husband approached me about HealthyWage. He’s a very frugal person, so he’s quite motivated by money. We knew we needed to lose some weight. I have health issues. I have type 2 diabetes. I take blood pressure medication every day. I knew changes needed to be made, but I wasn’t sure how to take the first step. But my husband loved the idea of, ‘Hey, let’s bet on ourselves. This will really motivate us to do something.’
"And it did motivate me! We immediately changed a lot of things. One first goal that I set was that I would stop drinking all sugar drinks. If it had sugar in it, I wouldn’t drink it. I thought that wasn’t a big deal because I thought, I don’t drink that many sugary drinks, but I found the first week that I had to say ‘no’ every single day. I was actually drinking a sugary dink every single day: a juice, a tea, or something. It surprised me. It made me realize I actually make a lot of really poor choices every day, all the time.
"The whole thing was like I couldn’t do this big, extreme thing. But when the time came, I lost 52 pounds. I won my fitness goal. I won $600, in my pocket. And my husband won as well. He actually lost 80 pounds. It was a fantastic experience.”
—Ginny
6. "I said, in one year, I’m going to be able to do this race."
"I put together my own HealthyWage. I wasn’t looking to get rich, but it was just enough. I decided I was going to lose 36% of my body weight in a year. And to tell you what really sparked it: I had some friends that did a ginormous bike tour that goes across Iowa. It’s a huge, huge seven-day tour. And I told my friends that I would do it. But I couldn’t because I was too big. It was very defeating at that point, where I said I’d do this and then I just couldn’t do it. That’s when I decided to get into HealthyWage. I said, in one year, I’m going to be able to do this race. And that was the motivating factor. It was health. For me, for my kids, for my wife. But it was also for my friends, so I could this. And now I’m training for my first century ride, which is 100 miles!"
—John
7. "I knew what to do. I just couldn’t find a way to actually do it."
“In 2015, in June, I was in a car accident, and I rolled over. I fell asleep at the wheel. One of the reasons that happened is I was in such an unhealthy place. Before, I would always roll my eyes when anyone would say, ‘I had a moment of clarity’ or ‘I had a wake-up call’ or anything like that. But the car accident was an actual, real wake-up call.
"I already knew how to diet. I knew what to do. I just couldn’t find a way to actually do it. And so, at first, I joined a bootcamp workout group. I lost about 40 pounds on my own. And then I saw a thing about HealthyWage on TV, and I thought, No. There’s no way. That can’t possibly be something that people give that amount of money for. So I went to their website and researched it. I thought it was kind of crazy, but I read every single legal print that they had. I did my due diligence! I felt confident that HealthyWage would be something that would be sustainably motivating, which had always been my issue: staying motivated.
"And I did it! I had almost a year with HealthyWage, and that helped me set up a really good system of checks in my life. It’s a habit now."
—Jennifer
Ready to bet on yourself? Enter your information in the HealthyWage Prize Calculator to find out how much you can win!
Enter how much weight you want to lose (10–150 pounds, minimum 10% of your starting weight), how long you’ll take (6–18 months), and how much you want to bet per month ($20–$150/month) — the calculator will determine your potential prize, up to $10,000!
All images courtesy of HealthyWage