Fat people should be penalized, experts say. According to health experts, this is an effective way to tackling obesity.
To reverse the trend of high obesity levels, which is already reaching epidemic proportions, people should be encouraged to exercise more. Just talking about the benefits of exercise is not cutting it anymore. Majority of people know that exercising is the key to losing weight but not everyone will make exercise a regular activity in their lives.
Experts said that sometimes, tangible incentives are not even enough anymore to push people to exercise. People are either too busy making income or too lazy to feel motivated with the thought of getting all sweaty and tired from running and jumping around. The Guardian even earlier reported that obese people really view distances differently from normal-weight people.
Experts therefore, think that one innovative way to help overweight and obese people exercise is to do the opposite. Instead of rewards for regular exercise, there should penalties for refusing not to hit the gym. While this seems like commonsense, scientists now found that there is scientific evidence showing that people are more likely to get active if they stand to lose something important: money.
Even if it is quite crude to say, most people value their hard-earned money. The risk of losing it will compel them to do just anything, including going to the gym regularly. Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that losing money associated with skipping a workout serves as a strong motivator, Mail Online UK reports. "Our findings demonstrate that the potential of losing a reward is a more powerful motivator," the lead researcher Dr. Kevin Volpp said,
The study revealed that that half of the US adult population do not want to exercise, making this a problem that should be resolved as soon as possible. The findings specifically showed that the fear of getting fined improves the motivation level of people to exercise by 50%.