http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100105/hl_time/08599195089600
Cash for Weight Loss: Website Pays People to Slim Down
There are plenty of reasons for Welmoed Sisson to lose weight. She'd feel better, be healthier and fit into that skirt she wore 20 years ago before she became obese. She knows all this, and yet there may be only one incentive powerful enough to get the 49-year-old resident of Gaithersburg, Md., to pass on the delicious steaks her husband cooks. The motivator? Cold, hard cash.
Financial incentives are the latest wellness craze, inspiring at least some of the nearly two-thirds of Americans who are overweight or obese to try to ditch their potato chips. A few years ago, in an effort to cut overall health care costs, companies started dangling gift cards, free cruises and even cash prizes to employees who shed excess pounds. Now an independent website is offering to pay anyone who drops a certain amount of weight over the course of a year. (See the top 10 new diet books.)
Since HealthyWage.com launched in October, Sisson and some 5,000 other hopefuls have signed up for the site, which gets corporate sponsors to give a cash reward to obese users who during a specified time period move from an unhealthy to a healthy body mass index (BMI). (This typically translates into a weight loss of between 30 and 80 lb.) Members can either sign up for free - according to a company rep, the final deadline to enter the next 12-month challenge is Jan. 20 - and win $100 or "super-size" their weight-loss incentives by putting as much as $300 of their own money on the line in order to up the stakes to $1,000
Hmm.....is it "free" cash if you have to lose weight to get it? Or is it a "Hot Deal"?
Cash for Weight Loss: Website Pays People to Slim Down
There are plenty of reasons for Welmoed Sisson to lose weight. She'd feel better, be healthier and fit into that skirt she wore 20 years ago before she became obese. She knows all this, and yet there may be only one incentive powerful enough to get the 49-year-old resident of Gaithersburg, Md., to pass on the delicious steaks her husband cooks. The motivator? Cold, hard cash.
Financial incentives are the latest wellness craze, inspiring at least some of the nearly two-thirds of Americans who are overweight or obese to try to ditch their potato chips. A few years ago, in an effort to cut overall health care costs, companies started dangling gift cards, free cruises and even cash prizes to employees who shed excess pounds. Now an independent website is offering to pay anyone who drops a certain amount of weight over the course of a year. (See the top 10 new diet books.)
Since HealthyWage.com launched in October, Sisson and some 5,000 other hopefuls have signed up for the site, which gets corporate sponsors to give a cash reward to obese users who during a specified time period move from an unhealthy to a healthy body mass index (BMI). (This typically translates into a weight loss of between 30 and 80 lb.) Members can either sign up for free - according to a company rep, the final deadline to enter the next 12-month challenge is Jan. 20 - and win $100 or "super-size" their weight-loss incentives by putting as much as $300 of their own money on the line in order to up the stakes to $1,000
Hmm.....is it "free" cash if you have to lose weight to get it? Or is it a "Hot Deal"?