You have only days until you start your New Year's resolutions, and we're going to bet a lot of you have resolved to slim down in 2012 ... A new kid on the block is DietBet, which offers to host your challenges ... Read the full article.

Want to shed excess pounds? Put your money where your mouth is. Research shows that financial incentives boost weight loss. Money may not be able to buy you love, but it turns out it can help with weight loss. Research has shown that, when it comes to dropping excess pounds, there's nothing like cold, hard cash to keep you motivated. In fact, dieters who have a financial incentive to lose weight are nearly five times more likely to make it happen than those with no incentive. Inspired by the statistics, there have been a new wave of websites that offer monetary rewards for weight loss. The latest to jump on the lose-to-win bandwagon is DietBet—the online social dieting game, which launches mid-December, that lets players win money through weight-loss competitions. People place wagers on reaching a healthy goal weight and everyone who achieves the goal wins a share of the pot. It's like fantasy football for dieters. Founder Jamie Rosen came up with the concept after witnessing the painstaking process friends went through to plan their own diet bets and deciding to streamline the process with an online source. "We wanted to make that all a million times easier for the game's organizer and also more fun," says Rosen. Dietbet also offers innovative features, such as the Daily Carrot—a motivational and amusing daily tip written by comedy writers from Harvard Lampoon—and a message board, where users can trash talk, share photos and keep up with each other's scores. "The reason we started DietBet was the observation that nobody in the world likes to lose weight but everyone loves playing games," explains Rosen. "So we put a lot of attention to making it a fun, social game experience." Read the full article.

(in-flight magazine of American Airlines): Want to lose weight in 2010? Put your money where your mouth is. The financial incentive is one thing, of course, but what seems to supercharge the effectiveness of the method is an element of public competition -- the bigger, the better -- between friends or between foes, with the latter scenario perhaps being the more motivating one. "When you go public and make a big to-do about something you are planning to do, like lose weight, a lot of people know about it, and the stakes get raised," says Jamie Rosen, a founder of MakeMoneyLosingWeight.com. "In addition to there being money involved, just the fact that there is humiliation at risk is also compelling." The desire to win -- or at least not lose -- any amount of cash, combined with the dread of losing face, can lead to some stiff competition and mind games. Rosen says he's heard about offices where workers competing for a cash prize for the person who loses the most weight will do push-ups in front of one another's desks and surreptitiously leave chocolates around, hoping to break their adversaries. Read the full article.

A growing number of websites and NHS schemes offer cash incentives to get you healthy - or penalties should you fail makemoneylosingweight.com [is] designed for communities of dieters who want to challenge one another. A group of friends or colleagues sign up, everyone puts a set amount into a pot and makes a commitment to lose a certain amount of weight. After a pre-arranged period of time, whoever is closest to his or her target weight takes the pot. The websites provide a forum for publicly tracking weight. Read the full article.

A recent study by the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia confirmed "cha-ching, " with an element of risk, can be a strong motivator for losing weight. Read the full article.