Cash Rewards Help Dieters

Finally, science has something you can give people that really does help them lose weight: money. Rewarding dieters with a few hundred dollars is effective for promoting at least short-term weight loss. That's according to a study in the December 10th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers tried two approaches. In one, study subjects got paid if they lost 16 pounds in 16 weeks. In the other, participants invested their own money, which they lost if they didn't make that same goal. A control group just tried to lose weight without any economic incentive. And the losers are:

Dieters who got paid for losing-53 percent of them met the target. Followed by those who risked their own money-47 percent of them lost the 16 pounds. And the regular old dieters, for whom losing weight was its own reward？Only 10.5 percent of them got to their goal. And that group averaged just a four-pound loss, compared with 14 pounds for the paid dieters.

So, what do you do with the money you win by losing weight? That's easy: pizza!

现金奖励有助于减肥

现在科学终于找到了有助于减肥的方法：钱。根据发表在12月10日《美国医学会杂志》（Journal of the American Medical Association ）上的一项研究结果，给节食者几百块钱奖励至少对于短期减肥来说是有积极效果的。

研究者们采取了两种方法。方法一：如果参加实验的节食者在16周内减掉16磅的话，他们会得到报酬。方法二：节食者自己投钱，如果他们不能达到上述同样的目标，那么他们输掉自己的钱。对于控制组来说，他们只是在没有任何经济激励下试图减肥。让我们看看谁输谁赢：

对于因减肥获得报酬的人来说--他们之中53% 的人达到预期目标。接着是那些自己投了钱的人--他们有47%的人成功减掉16磅。对于普通的节食者，他们的奖励就是体重减轻本身？只有10.5%的人达到目标，而且这一组平均只减掉4磅，而对于因减肥获得报酬的那一组，他们平均减掉14磅。

那么你怎样使用因减肥得到的奖金呢？简单的很：吃比萨饼！

Vocabulary:

Dieter: 节食者

Promote: 促进

Incentive：激励；刺激
关键字:市民英语
生词表: