The Best Incentive to Lose Weight Is–You Guessed It: Money

Did it really take a professor at the Wharton School and Penn’s School of Medicine to tell us that the best way to lose weight is to make us pay up if we don’t?  Apparently. But as this piece in the New York Times explains, several dotcom entrepreneurs are putting the theory to the test–and the first test, of course, is whether there is a viable business model there. Sites like StickK invite the hopeful to back up their commitments to a variety of goals–losing weight, quitting smoking, apologizing to someone–with cash money that goes to a friend or charity if they succeed, and to someone they don’t like if they fail. The Times also directs our attention to two other sites, fatbet.net and makemoneylosingweight.com, for dieters who want to bet against each other. Sound like fun? Sound like money? Sound like revenge?
Read more in the New York Times.