NHS Pounds For Pounds Helps Obese People Lose 2 Stone

eligible for cash prizes of a maximum of £425

The power of cash seems to be working to help reduce the amount of obese individuals in the United Kingdom. The National Health Service said that the initiative to promise cash rewards for weight loss has resulted in over 100 obese individuals losing almost two stone in twelve months.

The initiative which is called Pounds For Pounds involved an initial group of 402 volunteers who signed up for the year-long program. Out of these 400 participants 100 completed the course and claimed an average weight loss of 25lb meaning that they were eligible for cash prizes of a maximum of £425. While the results were good for some of the participants unfortunately 2/3 of them failed to attain their weight loss targets.

What these results really show is that financial incentives may be a useful tool in the battle to lose weight, however it doesn’t mean that they will work for everybody. It should be noted that while £425 may be a lot of money for certain people, for others it may not be. Everybody has different attitudes to money and some people love the idea of winning a cash prize whereas for others it’s not a big deal.

Another thing which this project shows is that motivation is the key to weight loss. The fact that the money did not motivate certain individuals to lose weight does not mean that they cannot be motivated at all. Maybe the NHS should look into psychiatric treatment for those people who did not respond to the financial incentives and see what other things could motivate them to lose weight.

At Ukmedix News we have seen other research projects which have shown that financial incentives are also effective for quitting smoking and only recently the National Institute for Clinical Excellence held a conference to evaluate whether using cash incentives to encourage people to live healthily was a sensible use of taxpayers money.

Some people are furious that overweight and obese people are being given money to lose weight arguing that they have no right to make us pay to stop them overindulging in food. However on the other side of the argument the fact is that obesity is costing the state billions of pounds every year in increased obesity related health costs and that these cash incentives could save the taxpayer money in the long term.