Will You Lose Weight If You Get Paid To Do That?

Came across this interesting news. The mayor of an Italian town is paying his residents to lose weight. Man will get 50 euros for losing 9 pounds (4 kg) in a month and woman will be paid the same amount for losing 7 pounds (3 kg). If the weight does not increase for 5 months, each will get another 200 euros. Mayor Gianluca Buonanno is taking his initiative to encourage the residents to take care of their health after the recent survey shows that 35 percent of Italians are overweight or obese.

So, do you want your mayor to do the same too? Before that, let’s look at this news from different perspectives:

• Some may argue that using money as motivation may not make sense because the city or the country does not owe obese people anything to lose weight. The motivation to lose weight should come from their own.
• How about those who are already fit, shouldn’t they be rewarded too?
• The duration of 5 months actually is long enough for one to build the habit in maintaining healthy lifestyle with diet control and exercise plan. Many may have started it because of money. However, I believe that some will eventually reap the benefits of losing weight – strong, fit, better self esteem and more energized.
• Instead of giving hard cash, government may think out of the box to give tax rebates for purchase of fitness equipments, including gym membership. Malaysian Government has just introduced similar policy in the year 2008 Budget announcement.

Many have probably get immune to the community advertisement that talks about lowering cholesterol levels, exercising more or eating less sugar. Now, with the financial rewards, it instantly get people notice and participate in the program, but the initiatives should always come from the people themselves. Otherwise, the smokers may demand for “pay me to quit smoking” request too. No matter what, this creative program has created the buzz and it has achieved one of its objectives in creating the awareness of the risks of obesity. Paying people to lose weight is much better than what Mississippi planned to do once – stop restaurants from serving food to obese people. How sad.