Get paid to lose weight!

The Study: The Journal of the American Medical Association recently released the results of a study about cash incentives for weight loss. The results were very interesting but not surprising. 57 participants were randomly assigned to three categories: A lottery based incentive program, a deposit contract that allowed for participant matching that would pay out if goals were met, a group that simply performed monthly weigh-ins but had no additional incentives. The goal for all participants was to lose 1lb per week for 16 weeks.

The results: The two incentive groups lost significantly more weight than the control group. The two incentive groups lost on average 13-14 lbs while the control group averaged 4 lbs of weight loss. About 50% of the incentive groups met the goal of 16 lbs of total weight loss while only 10% of the control group met the goal.

Analysis: These results might have you thinking you need to have some one offer you money to lose weight, or you might want to try offering money to people you know if they lose weight. This really touches on the constantly debated issue of whether or not money is a motivator. This study would indicate that to some extent the money motivated people to lose more weight than they would have otherwise. Now let me give you the rest of the results. Within 3 months of the conclusion of the study, participants in the incentive groups found their weight changes fall more in line with the control group indicating that they did not sustain the weight loss they experienced.

Chew on that for a couple days and in my next post I’ll address this money as a motivator issue and include some recommendations when it comes to motivation.

Stay tuned…