People Drop Pounds Faster for Cash, Group-Based Incentives Produce Quicker Results

For those of us who renewed our Weight Watchers subscription as part of our New Year's resolution, a new study shows that it's these kind of calorie-cutting incentives that help keep everyone in the weight loss game. Throw some money in there, and people are likely to start shedding pounds even faster, according to a recent study.

Researchers compared employees who received $100 per month for each goal they met of dropping at least one pound per week. Another group received $500 per month amongst a group of five co-workers who would be able to split the money for those who met that same goal.

"People may be more motivated to achieve a particular goal when a particular resource that had been allocated for them is given to someone else if they don't achieve their goal," said Dr. Jeffrey Kullgren, the study's lead author from the University of Michigan Medical School and the Ann Arbor VA Health Care System, according to Fox News.

The researchers worked with 105 obese hospital employees, offering the individual incentive, the group-based incentive (without knowing who else was in their group) or not to receive any reward for losing weight.

Participants weighed-in each month for about five months. By the end of the study, people in the no-reward group had lost an average of just over one pound each. Those who were offered individual incentives had shed 3.7 pounds, on average, compared to 10.6 pounds among those with group-based incentives.

The possibility of earning more than $100 if their group members didn't lose weight, in addition to the element of competition, may have driven those employees to make the most significant changes, Kullgren's team reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

However, while these studies provide interesting insights into the potentials of new weight loss programs or groups, researchers still have many questions regarding which program is best suited for certain people.

 "There are hundreds of different ways you can think about doing it. I don't think there's a consensus about what the best way is," said Robert Jeffery, who has studied financial incentives at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Yet, one thing rings true-people love money, and rewarding them with it is more likely to get people off the sofa.