Blogger Amy Oztan decided it was time to kick her diet into higher gear. She turned to dietbet.com, a new website that lets you wager on future weight loss. Although she'd previously managed to shed 18 lbs. on her own, Oztan figured that she'd be spurred on by the combined threat of online humiliation if she failed, plus the thrill of prize money if she succeeded. Read the full article.

You might want to lose weight, but the noticeable benefits seem so far off in the future that you continually procrastinate. You need a reason to get more fit right now - how about money? A new study in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine reinforces this idea that if money were on the line, you might start on a healthier path. In fact, there's other evidence to suggest that money does matter. A 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that financial incentives did get people to lose weight. You can find websites that offer rewards for healthy behaviors. Others offer you the opportunity to punish yourself financially if you don't meet your goals (that may sound harsh, but it's a motivator): DietBet.com: This website lets you join with other people in betting on weight loss. You sign up with at least one other person and get 28 days to lose weight. If there's only one winner, he or she wins the entire prize pot. Multiple winners get equal shares of the pot. Read the full article.

Testing the outer limits of your willpower is DietBet, a website that combines healthy old-fashioned weight loss with a healthy old-fashioned gambling competition… the Kentucky Derby of dieting. Read the full article.

"This website gives people accountability", Glassman says. "It gives them support and also there's the real hard-core goal of it all, the competition aspect. And the goal is actually pretty reasonable." In all, the pro-eaters competing on dietbet.com lost 79 pounds and walked away with about $200 in winnings each. They plan to keep the challenge going by upping the ante instead of their waistlines. Read the full article.

We know from watching The Biggest Loser that winning $250,000 can be a huge motivator. But can the fear of losing money have the same effect? New sites like DietBet.com... are, well, betting on it. Though the rules vary by site, the basic idea is the same: You wager money – say; $50 or $100 – that you'll reach your goal weight. If you do, you get back your dollars and potentially win more money. If you don't, you kiss your bucks good-bye. Experts say the premise has merit: In a recent study, people with a financial incentive to slim down lost about seven times more weight than those who had no money on the line. And if a diet betting site "motivates you to make healthy eating changes you can maintain after the competitions ends, even better," says Elisa Zied, R.D., author of Nutrition at Your Fingertips.

OUR RULING: Play your cards right and this gamble can pay off !