Here I go again: The eating extravaganza that started with leftover Halloween candy has given way to another New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
You’ve undoubtedly guessed how this story usually ends. Aside from an isolated few years of extreme fitness, I’ve ranged from chubby to fat my entire adult life.
But this time might be different. I’ve enlisted behavioral economics, along with the disruptive powers of the Internet, in my annual quest for lasting willpower.
Economists have shown for decades that changing incentives can reshape an astonishing array of human behaviors from suicide to childbirth.
Lately medical researchers have been using the “prospect theory” of Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman to test whether financial incentives might improve health interventions such as weight loss and quitting smoking. The results are impressive.
A 2008 study by Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania found that dieters given carefully designed financial incentives were nearly five times more likely to hit a goal and lost three times as much weight as those with the same coaching but no money at stake. A similar experiment tripled the number who quit smoking.
And a Mayo Clinic study last year showed money could produce lasting weight loss.
More.. http://tinyurl.com/lkhawtj
No comments:
Post a Comment