But what is gamification?
In layman's terms it is putting something into a game context: giving yourself some sort of prize for an achievement. There doesn't necessarily need to be financial or physical reward but whatever it is there should be some incentive for you.
To quote Wikipedia in their explanation:
Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts
So examples of this could be a new pair of trousers when you lose XXkg or allowing yourself a special dinner out when you have reached a certain checkpoint.
To go further into the Wiki description there are apps that encourage their users/members to exercise more getting specific points for various activities.
How I Progressed with Gamification
I don't have any of these apps per se, but the activity band did have a similar sort of offering. With the activity monitoring the challenge for me was to reach 100% activity per day (13 000 steps).Another incentive that made the weight loss a challenge was an actual competition with a friend to see who could lose the most weight over the time frame. Again this might not work for all but the challenge was a cash prize.
The prize was based on the condition that the person with the highest weight loss did at least reach 10kg. If this was the case, then it was 10€ per kg. This was a great incentive for me, but we were both driving each other on to reach our goals - ultimately it wasn't actually the money that was the driver.
So there you have it. A couple of ways to gamify your weight loss program and make it a bit more interesting.
Have you tried this?