Losing Weight Tips That Really Work

A recent Wharton School/VA study finds that "cold hard cash" is one of the best losing weight tips out there. And it's the immediacy of the payout that seems to make the difference, not the amount of money involved.

Kevin G. Volpp, MD, PHD, director for health incentives at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and colleagues report their findings in the Dec. 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Behavior-change efforts are often futile because those [some] changes might help you sometime in the future, but the average person has trouble making that future reward relevant today," Volpp tells online health resource WebMD. "Cash reward programs offer a chance to change behavior and get a reward right now."

Who wouldn't be for that?

When it comes to human nature according to Volpp, we have trouble giving up something today to get something in the far off future.We are more motivated to act by rewards dangled right before our eyes.

The study, involving two major weight loss schemes included 57 obese 30 to 40 year old subjects, both men and women, who wanted to lose weight.

The goal was to lose 16 pounds in 16 weeks, and subjects were randomly assigned to a control group (paid $20 per monthly weigh in) a lottery based system (with 1 in 5 chance of winning $3, a 1 in 10 chance of winning $100) or a deposit contract group that had to put up a self selected amount of their own money, which they got back (matched by the researchers) if they met the weight loss goal each month.

The subjects in the study weighed themselves each morning and called the weight into researches. Each month, they would report to the facility in person for a weigh in.

By the end of the 16-week study period, the subjects in the weigh in group lost an average of 3.9 pounds. About half the subjects in the cash-incentive groups met the goal of losing 16 pounds; with subjects in the lottery group losing an average 13.1 pounds, subjects in the deposit contract group losing an average 14.0 pounds.

Money talks it would seem.

All well and good of course, until the subjects were weighed again three months after the study ended. Many of the cash incentive dieters had begun to put the weight back on.

Volpp isn't concerned, "We don't think this has to run for a defined period of time and then be shut off," he says. "We could cycle people through different reward programs to keep things new and interesting.

There is lots of potential for this to be done long term. This would be important as we are constantly being hit with temptations to eat unhealthy, fattening foods.

That makes adopting good eating habits harder. So while a cash incentive is a good losing weight tip, to make the weight loss lasting, you have to make a conscious choice - placing real value on your own health and well being over the long term.

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