Is that the stakes weren't high enough, or is the whole idea flawed?:
If obese individuals have time-inconsistent preferences then commitment mechanisms, such as personal gambles, should help them restrain their short-term impulses and lose weight. Correspondence with the bettors confirms that this is their primary motivation. However, it appears that the bettors in our sample are not particularly skilled at choosing effective commitment mechanisms. Despite payoffs of as high as $7350, approximately 80% of people who spend money to bet on their own behaviour end up losing their bets.
That's from Nicholas Burger and John Lynham. Here is further information, from Economics Letters. A gated copy is here. A related paper, with similar results, is here. The wise Alex, on same topic, is here.
I could bet on my recieving a nobel prize, but I highly doubt I’d win it even with the extra incentives. Weight loss only works for some people, not all. It is almost never effective after five years even when it happens, even when people stick to their diets. Given the current state of knowledge, it makes far more sense to impove treatment of diabeties and cancer directly, rather than trying to coerce people into loosing weight.
As someone who has lost a significant amount of weight after trying and failing a dozen times, and done crazy amounts of research on this topic, I can tell you a couple things about this:
1. Most diets on the market (low-carb, low-fat, whatever) are crap, and make you fatter in the long run. I only know one that works for general obesity, assuming there’s nothing wrong with your insulin or leptin sensitivities, thyroid, T4->T3 conversion, serotonin production, etc. etc.
2. Relatedly, different people gain weight for different reasons. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. I know one guy who finally lost 300 lbs. using fish oil and meditation. Another lady used kombucha, a sort of fermented tea, to flush her system of heavy metals – and bye-bye body fat. What percentage of people who took this bet were using the method that would solve their actual problem?
3. Certain kinds of food are highly addictive. Would you be surprised if 80% of heroin addicts lost a bet on quitting? What percentage of smokers do you think would win? The addiction must be cured long before you can even THINK about losing your first pound.
4. Certain kinds of exercise make you fatter, or at least make it next to impossible to lose weight. Jogging, for one. It pushes up cortisol through the roof and crushes your glycogen cycle. But most people think that any sort of exercise is better than no exercise when trying to lose weight. WRONG. How many people who took this bet also took up exercise but picked the wrong sort for weight loss?
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In response to Meg, Type 2 diabetes can be cured in three weeks. I’ve seen it done many times. There’s no reason to improve treatments. The problem today is that the medical community tries to “manage” diabetes when the cure has been known for over a century – change what you eat. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
As someone who has finally managed to lose alot of weight (30kg) after trying for years, I think it takes a different sort of motivation than some reward. Weight loss isn’t some task that is completed, it’s a change to your lifestyle. At least that’s how it was for me
Cliff,
Stop being ignorant. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I don’t need to make excuses. I lost the weight. I’ve been successful and I’ve helped other people be succesful too. (Not even professionally, but just as a friend and counselor. I’m an attorney by trade) Can you say the same?
Short answer: Simply yelling “Put the burger down, fatty!” doesn’t work. If it was that easy we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic on our hands. Do you honestly think fat people like being fat? They hate it. Some of they are honestly, clinically depressed about it. Unless they’re delusional they know they’re unhealthy and unattractive (but I repeat myself). That’s why diet books and home gym gimmicks move millions of units a year.
But none of it works because it’s not that easy. These aren’t excuses. They are facts. When you’ve gained and lost 100 kg get back to me from the perspective of someone who has actually walked this road.
Brock,
Stop being ignorant, YOU don’t know what you are talking about. You obviously do need to make excuses because of your 20 years of failure, which you blame on everyone but yourself.
I never said anything about yelling at people or diet books or home gym gimmicks.
It’s hardly necessary to gain and lose 100kg. It is trivial for me to gain or lose weight indefinitely (within reasonable bounds) at the rate of 10 lbs/month. I have gained (deliberately) as much as 60 lbs and lost 30+. It is very very simple. Not to say easy, but simple, and totally 180 degrees different from the way you make it sound.
Brock, all the cortisol and addiction explanations in the world can’t contradict the 1st law of thermodynamics. It’s pretty straight forward, burn more calories than you eat and you will lose weight. period. Seriously, period.
I’ve never weighed over 155 on a 5’6 frame, and I’m firmly in the camp of the established medical community. Respectfully, Cliff, you and many very intelligent people are offbase on this issue. What’s increasingly clear to me on issues like chronic pain, mood disorders, and weight is that we don’t have all the answers for our patients. It’s frustrating for providers and it’s even more frustrating for patients. Many providers respond to this challenge by blaming patients (insisting we see the whole picture but that they’re simply noncompliant or lacking willpower) and many patients respond by rejecting what science can say on the matter and resorting to alternative treatments. Both of these responses are wrongheaded but it’s hard for the medical community to admit that there’s not always an easy or complete answers and it’s hard for patients to accept this.
I went from 350 lbs to 205 over the course of several years (And kept almost all of it off for four years now). While I can’t say I agree with the tone of some of the commenters, I have to agree that weight loss, although extremely difficult, really is quite simple. Eat way less, and exercise a lot.
I truly don’t understand the hostility of some people to running. Running does not make you gain weight, and saying otherwise is patently ridiculous. Certainly running and then overcompensating by eating too much can make you gain weight, but then isn’t it obvious what you need to do?
And to answer Tyler’s original question, no, apparently you should bet on other people’s ability to lose weight…
Both views in the comment here attempt to paint the entire population with a broad brush, and they’re both wrong as any such generalization is likely to be.
Obviously, there is a significant, but minor, portion of the population that suffers from medical conditions that cause them to have a higher-than-desirable weight gain. Dieting and exercise is unlikely to help them; they often need treatment of a specific underlying condition (be it hormonal, psychological, etc.) before they can successfully control their weight.
Just as obviously, there is a large portion of folks who are fat because they eat too much and eat too little. If that wasn’t true, you wouldn’t see such a rapid rise in obesity and obesity-related diseases in countries where per-cap GDP is rising, such as China and India. Clearly, having more food available allows a significant portion of the population to consume more than the healthy amount (and often, the wrong kinds of foods, since rising wealth increases meat consumption, etc.) It also often means they are working in lower-activity jobs, so exercise declines. These are both not medical conditions, they are issues of cultural and personal habits and norms, and they are definitely within the control of the individual.
While I don’t think large, single-result bets are a good approach to weight-loss, smaller, frequent incentives can really help people in making the gradual but persistent lifestyle changes necessary to control their weight reasonably. Look at sites like streak.ly that help people make and keep commitments like (“I will exercise three days a week.”) Those are better approaches than “I will lose 60 lbs in six months” because they provide immediate, achievable goals and near-term positive feedback, plus if you fall behind in one week, that doesn’t mean you give up because the next period is hopeless.
I’m writing this as someone who once gained 50 lbs in three years due to bad habits, then lost 35 lbs in six months by changing my eating habits and exercise habits, and have successfully kept that weight off for 15 years. (And the kind of exercise, I’ve found, really doesn’t matter – running, lifting, spinning, etc.) At times, I’ve been able to deliberately gain and lose 20 lbs of muscle over the course of 16 weeks or so, via exercise and diet changes.
The real danger of claiming that people can’t take control over their own weight is that it gives too many people an excuse to not try. Yes, there is some portion of the population that can’t help their weight. But for each of those, I’d guess there are 3-4 people that could easily moderate their weight if they simply were properly motivated and had the right knowledge available to them.
People are hijacking the thread arguing over whether obesity is a medical condition or a moral failing. Hey, maybe it can be both simultaneously… sort of like wave-particle duality in physics.
@JJ
You forgot to provide the punchline: the guy in the poker-players bet did successfully lose the weight.
calories in – calories out = what you see in the mirror.
that being said… being fat is a lifestyle choice, like smoking, drinking, whoring, gambling… eating pot brownies whatever… and we should repeat that over and over while we dismantle Obamacare.
what pisses me off is fat people VOTING FOR OBAMA… that just seems deeply wrong on so many levels.
“calories in – calories out = what you see in the mirror”
Again, that is not entirely true. See http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bbb/73/8/1837/_pdf for example. It is a clinical study where they found that vinegar consumption can activate fat burning hormones and cause fat loss even where caloric intake and energy expenditure remains the same. People really do have different resting metabolic rates, and their bodies have different preferences for burning fat, protein, or carbs. These factors can cause a huge difference in what you see in the mirror even holding “calories in” and “calories out” constant.
The problem with these bets is that the payoff isn’t until AFTER months of hard work, and procrastinating your diet/exercise for a single day doesn’t significantly influence one’s chance of success. Sure the stakes are higher, but the effort/payoff works the same way as a normal diet. When looking at a single day, the cons of exercise outweigh the pros.
Has anyone tried splitting the bets into smaller time/weight increments?
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