Aside from the weight loss tips for obese kids I’ve mentioned few weeks ago, I’ve stumbled upon a new technology that your kids may agree more on doing for the sake of weight management – Exergaming.

XRkade, a high-tech gym in Arizona, is said to be one of the top health movements pushed nationwide to encourage physical fitness amongst teens and tweens.

It provides facilities for kids to have fun while doing some physical activities.

Zandarski says the 3-month-old center, sponsored by the West Valley service group the Golden WHEEL (Women Helping to Educate and Enrich Lives) Organization, targets inactivity and excess weight mainly through the very things blamed for contributing to them: video games.

At the XRKade, however, the adapted games require more than fast thumb work. Players must move their bodies – dance, swing a golf club, practice tae kwon do – to make the games work.

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One is a study on providing financial incentives for employees to lose weight:

“Lots of companies are experimenting with rewarding people for weight loss, and this study provides evidence that paying people to lose weight works,” says Eric Finkelstein, a health economist with RTI International, a non-profit research organization in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

He teamed with researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to recruit more than 200 overweight or obese employees in North Carolina. A third were given no financial reward for their weight loss after three months; a third were given $7 for every 1% drop in their body weight; a third were given $14 for every 1% decrease. The participants were not given a structured diet and fitness program.

After three months, those who received no money lost an average of 2 pounds. Those in the $7 group lost 3 pounds; those in the $14 group lost 5 pounds.

Participants in the $14 group were more than five times more likely to lose 5% of their weight, an amount shown to provide health benefits. The findings are reported in September’s Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.Source

Another is a proposal from Australian doctors to provide subsidy of $170 for obese people to commit to an accredited weight-loss program.

The network’s Dr Tony Hobbs says the proposal would help address Australia’s obesity problem by making it easier for people in lower-income brackets to get help.

“We believe that this will go a long way to helping people get access to accredited weight loss programs where the people will be supported,” he said.

“They’ll have goals set, they will be expected to come back at the end of the 12-week program and be measured to see whether or not they’ve been able to succeed with their weight loss program.” Source

I’m not sure about these efforts because if you are to really lose weight, getting paid to do it should not be your best motivation. But if it works, its sustainability doesn’t seem so sturdy.

What do you think?

Tags: weight loss program

The claims of this new diet tool include:

* Shorter and dulled teeth inhibiting user from grasping larger pieces of food at any one time
* Smaller triangular shaped surface area allowing dieter to hold less food than many other forks
* Uncomfortable grip compelling user to put fork down between bites, slowing the user’s eating speed

The features of this utensil sound ridiculous to me. I might as well use chopsticks, since I’m not so good at using them making me drop more food than eat enough. But like many “wonder” tools, I won’t wonder if there are going to be numerous weight-conscious folks who’d go gaga over it.

It’s available in a 10 pack for $8.95.

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