Competition

It’s something we all deal with on a regular basis. The competition for the best job, the best raise and even in our home lives when we, consciously or subconsciously, try to keep up with the Jones’. Everyone wants to be the best. We crave the recognition and rewards that come from our hard work. For the most part this is a healthy way of motivation but there is one problem. Where do you draw the line at healthy competition and competition that is harmful to you and those around you?
We as a society compete in various sports as we go through life and if, you’re somewhat of a couch potato like me, you enjoy watching sports on the boob tube. My personal favorite is football. Those muscular men in those tight pants, grunting and groaning and slamming into each other really gets my gears going. I yell and scream at them just as loud as my DH does and I root my team to victory time and time again. I root for them but the Bengals don’t always listen to me. The competition on the football field is fierce. Who can throw longest and catch the best? Who will have the best play of the game and win the most points for those playing fantasy? Most importantly, competition over who will win those much coveted Super Bowl Rings and be named MVP. They fight for their place in the Pro Bowl and take their hits and bruises along the way. They expect to get hurt. This is inevitable.

For those of us non-pro football players competition isn’t supposed to hurt. You don’t go into a competition expecting to come out with a physical ailment. You study hard to get the best grades and to beat your study partner. You work with a vocal coach with dreams of becoming the best of the best and even winning American Idol. If you have trouble with your weight you enlist the help of a friend to keep you motivated and over time the motivation turns into a contest. Who can lose the most weight the quickest? Here we find the problem with competition. It can be taken too far.

Recently my place of employment offered a corporate sponsored contest. It was modeled after the popular television show The Biggest Loser. The contest lasted for 15 weeks and you could enter in a variety of different ways. You could enter as an individual, as a team or as both. I chose to enter the contest in both categories. When it came to the individual contest, I knew that my lack of motivation wasn’t doing to lead me to finish first. I was still interest in monitoring my total weight loss percentage so I signed up. I joined a team with two of my friends at work, Alice and Sarah. Sarah and I had worked together previously and had become good friends and Alice was someone I knew through the grapevine before she moved to our department. After working with them both for over a year, I thought that I knew them reasonably well. I did not, however, know just how competitive they really are.

I consider myself fairly competitive. I like to be the best in my career and in my personal life I set goals for myself that I make it a point to reach. I knew that joining with other people would help to push me to reach my weight loss goal and when we found out that the coveted prize was a paid activity of our choice promoting physical activity we got really excited. I started the contest strong, vowing to myself that I would cut out all sweets and other tempting goodies. I lost a steady two to three pounds a week and was thrilled with my progress. Alice and Sarah also came out swinging dropping twice my totals each week. I’d like to tell you that with hard work and determination, I caught up with them but that’s not the case. They kicked my ass. I was very glad that they were on my team and not competing with me.

The contest ended today. Our team won the team division and Sarah and Alice were both in the top ten in the individual contest. They both dropped over ten percent of their total body weight and are looking slimmer and happier. Most importantly we are all healthier now than before we started the contest. Winning is great and something we all worked long and hard to accomplish but it isn’t everything.

The woman who won the individual contest lost of 21% of her total body weight. She is my height (5’10) and absolutely skeletal. It sickened me to watch her accept an award for weight loss, when from the looks of her, she had no weight to lose. The point of the contest was to get into a healthy BMI and to feel better physically. I know what a healthy BMI for my height is. I’m constantly aware of it and that is why I was so eager to join the contest. The winner of the contest was not a healthy BMI. She was underweight and it made me so sad to think about. She won the contest but at what cost. Being underweight is almost as dangerous as being overweight. In both situations your body is unable to function and eventually you will develop serious physical ailments. The competition that helped over two hundred of my co-workers take the first step towards a healthier lifestyle could have very well been the excuse for this woman to dive into something more dangerous.

I wonder if the creators of our workplace contest thought about adverse affects of the weight loss goals or if they were too focused on the goal to see potential flaws. If they did see the potential flaws, are they going to step up and take responsibility or should it even be something of note? I’m glad that our team won. The competition helped and motivated us into taking healthy steps towards our goals but for the girl’s sake, I really hope someone recognizes the problem before it gets too far out of hand. Competition isn’t always a good thing.