I began to spend more money on weight loss products that were supposed to help me lose weight without any serious effort or hunger. Needless to say, these products just didn’t work. I even joined gyms and sports clubs, but after a couple of visits, I lacked the will power and just couldn’t manage to make the time to go anymore. I also spent money on various body-shaping underwear, which not only made me get tired quicker, but also made me feel bad. I began to earn less money because my pay is directly dependent on the number of customers served and the procedures performed. That was the last straw. I used to promise myself that I was going to lose weight. I even promised family and friends that I was finally going to lose weight once and for all. Obviously, they began to lose faith in me. They basically would say, “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard that before.” I was very frustrated. But finally this frustration turned to determination because of a challenge. This time, I had my heart set on it and bet my sister that I would lose 30 pounds within 6 months. I pledged £500 to her as collateral and as proof of the seriousness of my intentions. We agreed that I would lose the collateral if I failed and that she would return it and give me an additional £500 as a prize if I reached my goal. Wow. What a difference an incentive makes. It truly motivated me to lose the extra weight and fat. I lost the extra weight and my weight has been stable for a year already. Not only sports and balanced nutrition but also eating a healthy diet with weight control in mind helps me maintain my weight. And I am proud of my “new body”.

So, this is the story. I have been working in construction for many years. I am a specialist in interior finishing. I am paid by piecework (for parquet or tile laid, or drywall installed), so the more I work, the more I earn. The composition of my team changed, and some of my colleagues quit their harmful habits. Soon, I found myself to be the only smoker in a work team of five people. I used to go out for a smoke about every hour. We work in different sites, so sometimes it’s convenient to have a puff on a balcony or in a yard close to the site, but when working in large office buildings or shopping centers, I used to have to walk quite a distance to a place where smoking is permitted, so my smoke breaks used to take longer. At first, my colleagues found it funny and they used to tease me about my addiction, especially when I grabbed a cigarette when it was raining or freezing outside. However, after a while, it was no longer funny to them and was replaced by annoyance about the working time wasted. My team members calculated that I spent an average of one working hour smoking every day, and the value of that hour was £18. We came to this conclusion by dividing my average monthly wage, which amounted to approximately £3000, by the amount of working days. I used to earn about £120 per day. None of my coworkers or my boss liked the situation. The perception that I not only smoked away the £10 spent on a pack of cigarettes, but also an additional almost £20 was an unpleasant surprise to me too. We started to look for a way out. The foreman decided to use shock therapy and divided £380 of my wages among my coworkers who worked while I smoked for one month. That was effective. I understood that financial motivation works best for me and I made a contract with my boss. We agreed that he would pay me £760 if I quit smoking, but he would reduce my wage by £380 if I failed. It worked. I haven’t smoked for a year already and our work team is the most effective and earns the most in the whole company.