January 1st: Dear Diary, today is the day. I fully intend in make better, healthier eating choices and hit the gym every day in 2011. I haven’t completely worked out the details, but I’m sure it doesn’t involve hotdogs and sauerkraut balls. I’m gonna do it. It’s gonna be awesome and I will soon be shiny and glowy. Amen.

January 2nd: Dear Diary, while my resolve to eat better and get to the gym didn’t exactly get off to a great start (Damned you, New Year’s Hotdog and the following food coma!) today is going to be different. Today I will become awesome and shiny and glowy. Amen.

January 13th: Dear Diary, I am neither shiny, glowy or awesome. I suck at this Resolution thing.

January 24th: Dear Diary… ah, forget it.

Enough of this wishy-washy “I’ll start tomorrow” BS. Post-holiday slothy-ness syndrome (PHSS) is bogging me down with the motivation and mental prowess of a wet paper-bag – and it’s got to end. (In my defense, PHSS – also referred to as PHD – post holiday depression – is in the Urban Dictionary. That’s good enough for me.) But let’s move past my trying to validate the medical seriousness of PHSS and get to what I really need. A kick in the… um (keep it classy,lady)… pants.

Ask and ye shall receive, in the form of Boston-based Gym-Pact. And while the word ‘pact’ brings all my commitment-issues bubbling to the surface, I brush those aside to bring this amazing concept to the attention of you… my trusty readers!

In an article in the Boston Globe entitled “Harvard Grads Turn Gym Business Model On Its Head; Fitness Plan Members Pay More If They Don’t Work Out,” – (Good God! Who titled that thing!) – Gym-Pact is a service offering “motivational fees,” and while said ‘fees’ sound suspiciously like the ridiculousness that is a ‘convenience fee’, read on and I’ll explain the ideas brilliance.



It seems super-smarty 2010 Harvard graduate Yifan Zhang and her classmate Geoff Oberhofer were getting their educational dollars-worth in a behavioral economics class one day when they woke up long enough to hear the professor expound that consumers are more motivated by immediate consequences than by future possibilities.

It seems Oberhofer and Zhang saw PHSS (and similarly imaginary excuses to not workout) as a motivational issue. If gym customers already saw membership fees as money spent, then missing a workout doesn’t have any immediate consequence – no bigs, right? But what would happen if missing that workout did have a consequence? And that consequence could seriously dip into your new shoe fund? (*gasp!)

Enter Gym-Pact, a pilot program that launched in October with two small groups of participants at Planet Fitness Gym and Ballys Total Fitness in Boston. After negotiating a rate with each of the gyms and then paying the membership fees for each participant (some brand-spanking-new gym members), Gym-Pact got each participant to commit to working out at least four times a week. If the guinea-pig failed to show up for any of the four scheduled workouts in one week – they would owe Gym-Pact $25 clams, on top of that if the participant dropped out of the program for any reason other than injury, they would owe an additional $75 clams. Do the math people – continuing to shirk off the New Year’s Resolution could add up to a lot of clams.



And while Gym-Pact is still in it’s initial phases and will likely undergo tweaking in regards to collection attendance data, the fee structure and members goals – this is an idea that could make sticking to your workout plan a lot easier and not sticking to it a lot more painful. It’s like modern-day masochism. Delicious.



'til Next Time!