How to Lose Weight – Find Someone to Pay You for Results

We know it’s difficult to acquire and maintain the necessary willpower to follow a restrictive dietary regime in order to lose weight. Eating unwisely is probably close to cigarette addiction for some people. But who would have thought that monetary incentive would be a successful tool? Philadelphia scientists, apparently. They’ve published their results of a study of financial incentive for weight loss in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Fifty-seven obese volunteers (body mass index, or BMI, of 30-40) were randomly assigned to one of three programs:

monthly weigh-ins (control group);

a lottery incentive program (the participants played a lottery and received the earnings if they achieved or lost more than the target weight);

or a deposit contract (the participants invested their own money, which they lost if they failed to achieve weight goals).

The goal to be met for each person was a loss of 1 pound (0.45 kg) a week for 16 weeks.

Compared with the control group, the lottery group lost an average of 13.1 pounds, and the deposit contract group lost 14 pounds. Roughly half of both these incentive groups met the target, i.e. a 16 pound weight loss; only 10% of the control group met this goal.

Sadly, 7 months after the study end all 3 groups had relapsed, to a greater or lesser extent; the lottery group had lost 9.2 pounds, the deposit contract group 6.2 pounds, and the controls 4.4 pounds. It looks as if one would need a steady source of income (financial incentive) to continue the good work . . .