Challenges Help

What are challenges?

Challenges are what Skinnyo is all about. Trying to lose weight can often feel like an up-hill struggle. It takes time and patience and an awful lot of will power at times. Quick fix crash diets offer little respite as the weight never seems to stay off, and all you're left with at the end of the day is an insane craving for biscuits.

At Skinnyo we've been through this and are just as fed up with the seemingly eternal cycle of starting and failing a diet as we're sure you are, and we want to try something a bit different.

Our challenges work by adding an extra element to losing weight. For starters you have team mates, who are all in the same boat as you, and who are there to offer support and companionship throughout the challenge. Use the Challenge page to share tips and recipes, to congratulate and commiserate, or just for a good old natter.

As well as your own team you've got another, opposing, team. Let your natural competitive drive push you to be the biggest loser and get your team to the number one spot!

What different categories of challenge are there?

There are now a wide range of challenges on Skinnyo to make it as easy as possible to find one that will interest you:

General Weight Loss: Looking to lose weight for a date, event or any other reason.
Local Support Group: For organising a get together in your local area.
Food, Drink & Diet: Dieting or changing eating and drinking habits.
Outdoor Exercise: Walking, running, cycling and other outdoor activity.
Gym Exercise: X-Trainer, rowing, weights and other gym routines.
Home Workouts: Fitness DVDs, yoga, pilates and more.
Computer Games: Kinect, wii fit, zumba fitness and the new generation of active games.

How I do start a challenge?

Starting a challenge couldn’t be simpler, click on “start a challenge” under the main challenges tab at the top of the page and follow the instructions from there.

How do I join a challenge?

Don't want to run your own challenge? No problem! There are plenty of public challenges created by others you can join. Check them out at the "find a challenge" tab, it's by far the best way to make new friends on skinnyo.

How do I leave a challenge?

You can leave a challenge at any time, you can find a red link at the bottom of the left hand column that will remove you from a challenge if you no longer feel like you want to participate.

How do I delete a challenge?

If you decide you would no longer like to run a challenge you can delete it by choosing the 'edit challenge' tab and selecting 'delete challenge'. Alternatively you could hand the reigns over to another player by contacting us with the details.

How do I update my weight in a challenge?

You can find the “Update My Weight” box at the top right of every page on Skinnyo. Updating your weight on the site will update your weight in all the challenges you’ve entered. How do I invite people to a challenge?

You can invite people to challenges in four ways:

“Invite friends by link” Send them the link via email or tweet and they will be invited to join.
“Invite friends from facebook” A facebook pop up box should appear, sign in and click who you want to invite, just click send and they will get the invite next time they log into facebook.
“Share this challenge on twitter” this creates a tweet including a link to the challenge that people can use to join.
“Post this challenge on tumblr” this pops up your tumblr post page with the challenge details already filled out for you to share.

These options can all be found in the left hand column of every challenge page.

How are the winners decided?

The way we calculate challenge winners is by the total weight lost during the challenge, not by your overall weight at the end of the challenge. So don't worry, people of all shapes and sizes can challenge each other, no matter what your starting weight may be.

Can everyone in the challenge see my weight?

On Skinnyo we only ever show your weight differences to other users, never your actual weight. So you don't ever have to worry about people knowing more than you want them to. The only place that you can see your full weight is in your personal diary.

What’s the difference between public and private challenges?

With a public challenge anyone on Skinnyo can join and take part, if you want to restrict who joins the challenge with you then you need to select the private challenge option, this gives you complete control of who can join and private challenges will not show up in the challenge search.

Why can I only have a maximum of 16 people in my challenge?

We restrict the number of players to sixteen as beyond this challenges could become confusing and difficult to manage. This limit may be lifted for special challenges in the future.