Two colleagues working for an Internet company in New York decided to start betting on who could lose more weight each month, in order to find an incentive for dieting.
As they could not find time to go to the gym or carry out regular exercising in parks or other exterior environments, they started competing and exercising right there in their office.
Ted, who started off at $252 complained that Brian used to leave his favourite chocolate bars on his desk to entice him into eating, while both men regularly performed push-ups during office hours right by their desks.
The first round was won by Brian who lost $18 the first week as opposed to Ted who only lost $8, including his $20 wager.
This weight loss competition took on magnitude and other colleagues joined in the betting and contest to lose weight.
The weight losses were carefully charted by someone outside the contest and each week a winner was nominated. Ted finally ended up second place behind Brian after he lost another six pounds.
The contest became a betting game to help stimulate the weight loss, where ten people would wager on who would lose the most pounds the following week, the betting took on a major role more so than the actual dieting.
This form of weight loss is gaining terrain amongst colleagues at work as well as amongst friends and relations; it is an effective way to help achieve the final goal, which is that of losing weight.
While most of the men involved admitted that, though at first they had started the game as a means to slim down, the betting for the money soon became a priority over the weight loss.
Another group of ten colleagues each betted $100, where the winner of the three-month weight losing contest would pocket the total sum.
One of the participants confessed that he had taken more pleasure in winning over his colleagues than the actual weight loss. He was delighted with his winning prize of $1000.
In a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, it was found that people were more likely to lose weight when given an economic motivation.
Two groups of people were studied and offered a sum of money to lose weight; this worked especially well when the reward came at the end of the weight loss programme.
A similar study was carried out on smokers; the results were then paired with the study on weight loss.
These studies resulted in a new approach to weight loss, the creation of web sites for challenging people to lose weight in exchange for money if they failed. These web sites are conceived to involve dieters to bet and challenge one another to lose weight.
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