Participants bet on their weight loss using a prize calculator to find out what cash prizes will be paid based on how much the participant is willing to wager, how much weight they want to lose and how much time they need to reach that goal.
It sounds simple enough to win. Participants simply need to achieve their goal in the time frame. Bets start at $100 and if you meet you goal in the specified time, you win. One caveat though...participants can't cancel, so there are no refunds...none...period. Weight loss is verified by filming weigh-ins and sending them to a referee for confirmation.
They say you can win up to $10,000. You do that by recruiting friends, family, or Internet strangers to join you in an online group challenge. The catch there is that the $10,000 is split among the winners.
Although the money helps, for decades studies have proven that dieting alone doesn’t work and that diets have a failure rate of 95 percent or more. One study that followed the The Biggest Loser television contestants found that that almost every single participant regained their weight plus some.
That said, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people with a financial incentive to lose weight were almost three times more likely to reach their target than dieters with no money at stake. Even so, three times the typical success rate isn't much.
When you think about it, who pays the winners? The losers. But, even the few winners don't make a killing. If you win more than $600 it's taxable. In one example, a $100 bet winner made $136 in 12 weeks.
The short version is that just like in Las Vegas, the house always wins.
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