The Fear Of Going Broke Affects Weight Loss According To A New Study

A new study released on Feb.15 by Dr. Mitseh S. Patel proves that people who fear they would lose money are more likely to lose weight. Published on the medical journal of Annals of Internal Medicine, the research determined the link between having the fear to lose monetary assets and its effect on losing weight as something that is found true among the subjects.

According to its lead author, Dr. Patel of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, most people assume that people are rational, but we know that this is not true. People are irrational but in predictable ways.

In a report made by The Huffington Post, Patel and his research team asked 281 adult employees suffering from obesity to participate in their project. The whole research was conducted online where the participants gave their height and weight while they were asked to use an app that counts their step to trace their development and engagement to this project in a span of 13 weeks.

These individuals were asked to acquire a goal of 7,000 steps a day and for this research, they were grouped into four. One of the groups were given $1.40 each day if they would meet the asked goal; another group has no incentive; another was asked a total of $42 to be deducted from them on a monthly basis should they not meet the goal; and, the final group was asked to join a raffle draw in order to get $50 if they were able to meet the 7,000 steps the day before the draw.

The results came out after revealing that American adults take around 5,000 steps on a daily basis. So far, those who would lose money ended up meeting the step goal on almost half the percent of the days they were asked to participate. This just shows that people who don't want to lose money would make more effort in life, which could result to their drastic weight loss.