The cult of the Big Loser

Around February 2011, Asfaq Tapia tweeted that he had lost ten kilos and a substantial amount of inches extra. That tweet inspired B50 (name withheld on request) to think about using the social web to track weight loss for charity.

Ten months later, B50 has found a team of passionate individuals running ‘Big Loser’ — an initiative that is helping approximately 90 individuals shed the excess weight as their “sponsors” pledge money for every kilo lost to charity.

While increasing obesity is often attributed to a sedentary lifestyle, which, in turn, is attributed to developed technology, it is this same technology that is forcing people to rethink their meals, choose enjoyable physical activities and most importantly, lose excess weight in a healthy manner for a better lifestyle.

“B50 would regularly tweet about how a corporate lifestyle left us without much time to ourselves and often complained about the unhealthy life most of us led. So, when he tweeted what would it take for people to take up that getting-healthy challenge and stick with it, it caught my attention,” says Sasha Gusain, a 30 year-old health blogger who offers weekly tips on weight loss and fun facts about exercise and nutrition through the Bglsr (BigLoser) Podcast.
Participants in this year’s long initiative that wraps up in February 2012 tweet out their experiences - be it related to diet, exercise or challenges they face. Sponsors fulfill their roles as motivators by encouraging their participants.

“On social media, people like to help out. You might call it armchair activism, but if it gives you tangible results offline, it becomes effective,” said Sasha, who has been observing conversations on health and nutrition on social media for quite some time now.

“We are not experts, we are all buddies helping each other. The first-step was people expressing a desire to lose weight, which worked as a hook. After people found sponsors and started talking about it, it organically culminated into an eco-system,” says Gusain.

Chhavi Sachdev, a media professional, helps bring out a weekly podcast for the initiative which features a recap of major fitness events by participants in B50’s voice, while Sasha steps in to talk about fitness tips. The podcast also announces a big loser of the week.

“Big loser of the week is any person who has made significant contribution towards the initiative, so it could be a participant or even a sponsor,” explains Sasha. The Big Loser of the week not only gets to enjoy celebrity-dom with an interview on the website, but also gets goodies like biscuits, soy milk and magazine subscriptions, courtesy corporate sponsorships.

“Encouragement is addictive. The prizes are just an icing on the cake, but the real cake is the way participants feel about themselves,” says Sachdev. As they take their presence on social networks seriously, getting associated with such movements is a low-cost, low-risk proposition for corporates and brands.

“The brand association and the positive rub-off of the movement can be beneficial because even though the reach is small, it gets you huge impact with minimal risk,” says Girish Mallya of Next Gen Publishing - one of the sponsors for the Big Loser of the week.

“For companies and products who don’t have the resources to run their own social media campaigns, such initiatives work wonders,” he adds

“Corporate sponsorships for such movements on social media are the next step,” says Sachdev, an early adopter of the microblogging site.

Once the movement wraps up in 2012, Big Loser will continue with a new phase with a better understanding, Gusain hopes.

“The effort to try and stay fit will make the community stronger,” says Gusain.

The city is getting healthier, with or without social media, but with movements like Big Loser, Gusain thinks that people can make right decisions about what is good for them and what isn’t. “The obsession with looking good can be good or bad, but with a community built on learning through experiences, you can make well-informed decisions for yourselves,” says Gusain.

You can follow the developments of this first-of-its-kind initiative on Bigloser.in or follow
twitter.com/bglsr for updates.