How I lost weight by pledging to give money to a political party I loathe
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Version 0 of 1. My life so far in 2014 has been like an episode of the Biggest Loser. I don't have Michelle Bridges spurring me on, though. I have a Nobel Prize-winning professor emeritus of economics at Princeton University, Daniel Kahneman. When I wanted to lose weight this year, I knew I did not need ordinary motivation. I needed super-powered motivation. Kahneman won his Nobel Prize for work that showed human beings dislike losing money more than we like getting it. This is called loss aversion. It is one of the big findings of behavioural economics, and one of the ways in which human behaviour violates the rationality expected of Homo Economicus. So what I did was make a bet on myself. If I failed to lose four kilos in January, I would forfeit $500. I made this my public pledge, broadcast on my blog, for the whole world to see. But to whom should the money go? I couldn't just give it to a charity. Then I could justify eating cheese, claiming I was doing good in the world. I could just take the cash and throw it in a bin, I thought. But then, that's not a moral thing to do. I finally hit upon a motivation even more powerful than that: giving the money to the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts party. The party who surfed into a six-year federal parliamentary term on the back of just 0.51% of first preference votes. The Party whose platform's first real policy is this tortuosity: We will not accept proposed legislation that places the Australian family Lifestyle at risk. This includes the average Australian family’s right to modify and restore vehicles based upon their own freedom of expression; we do expect these restorations and modifications to be safe. The party that went on to do a deal with the Palmer United party, ensuring they will vote as a bloc. The prospect of sending cash to them makes me shiver. Now, I am not a rev-head. Despite spending several Januarys in Canberra when SummerNats, Australia’s biggest horse power party, is on, I have never been tempted to attend. In fact, I only got a driver's license at age 25, when my career took me to our nation's capital. After I moved back to the civilised embrace of Melbourne, I soon returned to riding the rails and riding the bike trails. All went well for a while. But 2013 was more rails than trails. Combine that with a steady office diet of peanut M&Ms, Tim Tams and the usual tsunami of muffins, and I was altogether more roly-poly than was wise. It was action time. Okay, it was not action time. I waited, gorging myself on everything in my path during the Christmas period. Then on the last day of 2013, I uploaded my weight to the internet and made my public pledge: four kilos off in January. People on social media gasped, doubted and offered advice. "Wow, a kilo a week is a big ask. Lots of luck," said one. Another was willing to conspire to keep money out of the hands of the Motoring Enthusiasts: We can talk about how much you can safely dehydrate yourself to keep your integrity. It would be outside the spirit of the challenge but within the rules. Something to have in your back pocket! I didn't cut out any foods, but I focused on portion size and wrote down everything I ate. As it turns out, the motivation has proved very solid. I've posted my weight online daily, and it has tumbled. The execution has been haphazard, though. My estimates of the energy value of home-cooked foods were at first a bit off, so I ate a lot of very tiny portions. That left me lying in bed at midnight, my mouth filling with the sour taste of saliva as my body refused to accept it had eaten its last meal for the day. I lost weight very quickly before I got my kilojoule-counting eye in, and my significant other reports I was "exceedingly cranky." In the end though, that early discomfort has led to comfort. I reached the four kilos goal by 20 January, leaving me 10 days in which I hope to lose another kilo or so as a buffer. But then, I see a risk. After the Motoring Enthusiasts stop looming with every mouthful I take, what then? Will another, bigger bet be needed to keep me from the dreaded yo-yo? Will I have to live my whole life under the yoke of loss aversion? Will that stress drive me back to the peanut M&Ms? |