Key To Weight Loss: Cash + Competition

Losing weight is hard, unless it’s lucrative. That’s the conclusion of researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who ran a comparison of two weight-loss strategies. A UPenn news release reports that the first strategy paid people $100 per month for each month that they met their weight-loss goals. The second strategy offered groups of five people $500 per month for each month they met their goals, but in the second group, employees who met their goals received the balance of money unearned by employees who did not meet their goals. At the end of the six-month study, the group cash incentive led to a weight loss that was approximately seven pounds greater than the individual cash incentive. Read more from UPenn.