Join us Thursday, December 9 at 12pm PT as we welcome Club One Island’s Creative Director, Celeste DeVaneaux to the Metanomics Community Forum. Club One Island is a visually appealing interactive weight loss and behavior change program based in Second Life, and they’ve proven that you can lose real weight by learning new behaviors in a 3D online world.

Losing weight virtually: The 60 pilot-program participants for Club One Island were U.S. adults (age 20-70+) with a body mass index (BMI) of 35.17 as measured by health professionals, while the control group had a BMI of 35.70 (note: a person with a BMI of 30 is considered obese according to the CDC). The control group’s program had all the components of the virtual world program, including exercise, nutrition, behavior change and a support group, but just in a different environment. The average weight loss results from the program after 12 weeks and four one-hour sessions per week:

• Club One Island (Virtual World): Loss of 8.08 lbs, 3.88 percent body fat and 1.98 inches from waist
• Control Group (Physical World): Loss of 5.98 lbs, 3.63 percent body fat and 1.92 inches from waist

The participants also completed a survey to determine the impact of Club One Island on whether or not the program worked for them and how it impacted their personal lives. Below are the combined percentages of Somewhat Agree, Agree and Strongly Agree:

• Optimism: 100 percent – I have a greater sense of optimism about managing my weight.
• Control: 100 percent – I feel a greater sense of control.
• Worked Better: 80 percent – The program worked better for me than other things I have tried.
• Communication: 76 percent – I am better able to communicate my needs to my family.
• Positive Change: 71 percent – I have noticed positive change in my relationships.

Resources:
Club One Island Web Site: ClubOneIsland.org

You can join us in Second life for this event Metanomics Studio or watch it on our web site where it will be streamed live from the Studio.
Questions:
Jennette Forager, Metanomics Community Manager
jennfor@gmail.com

PLEASE NOTE – MIXED TEXT AND VOICE SESSION: The Metanomics Community Forum is a mixed voice / text discussion session. Please feel free to participate in voice or in text, to your preference. The facilitator and some participants will be using voice, so you may wish to enable voice in your viewer so that you can hear the voice portions of the session. Thanks for joining us!