About

The game that's good for you

The criteria to play is simple: You have to like winning, you have to want to be healthy, and you have to have friends who want to be healthy (and like winning)!

It's not a diet!

Its a simple game - just find a couple of friends who want to commit to play for 5 or 10 days. Each person should put some money (we recommend £10) in a communal piggy bank, at the beginning of the game. Then one of you should be the moderator and record all food and drink consumed by each player as well as activity. All good deeds are rewarded by points - such as exercise, drinking lots of water, eating a variety of veggies and avoiding chocolate! All transgressions require the player to donate money to the Bank. So if you eat a bar of chocolate, you put £1 into the Bank of Health. If you don't exercise at all during the day, you put 50p into the Bank of Health. See our Keeping Score section for more on how to keep score!

If you do want to know more about healthy eating and excersize, Bank of Health recommends "It's Not Rocket Science" - a book which gives more informaiton about healthy eating and weight loss!

You can earn money!

If you win the game, you win the contents of the Piggy bank! How's that for incentive!

Shifting the focus

It helps to have a competitive streak and to keep talking every day to see how you are doing. By focusing on the money and the competition you have more motivation to do well - and the side effect is that you will eat better and exercise more - this game could add years to your life!

Winning the Game

The person who has the most points in the Bank of Health at the end of the allocated time wins. This means all the money in the Bank of Health, including the initial deposit and all the money from the players "bad deeds" goes to the winner!

The soft options

Its up to the players if they want to go for the "soft" version of the game - in this version, The losers can use the money in the Bank of Health to go to the shops and buy ingredients for and cook a healthy meal all players to share.

Another idea is to keep the money in the Bank of Health and do a "rollover" game - where players play another round, and the stakes are even higher!!

Download an example game here (PDF 252k)