App Makes Losing Weight A Social Challenge

By Social Media Editor Melony Roy

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Have you tried social dieting?

DietBet is an online weight loss challenge where participants lose weight together. Vice President of Business Development Matt Daniels explains how it works.

"DietBet was intentionally designed to not be a winner take all format so everybody that's in the game has the same goal which is to lose four percent of your starting weight so you can have a 250 pound man playing in the same game as a 150 pound woman and at the end of the game all of the people that reach that goal will split the pot," says Daniels.

Ninety percent lose weight during the four-week social game, averaging 5.4 pounds.

"There's a lot of social accountability at work that's really fun to see the players posting photos of a healthy salad that they ate or talking about a workout they did or the fact that they skipped dessert," Daniels explains.

Since its launch in January 2012, DietBet is used in 50 countries and players have lost more than 40,000 pounds.