Did you catch the news on CBC? I just watched it. Apparently in Virginia a lovely Indian doctor is paying patients to LOSE WEIGHT. Yup, a buck a pound. (Somebody owes me $25 bucks, dammit!) Actually the idea behind it is (a) the area where this physician has his practice is extemely low income and extremely overweight. And (b) people are simply more inclined to lose weight if they have an incentive. See The Biggest Loser as an example of this, at a $250,000 reward for the most weight loss per season. The only downside to the Dollars For Pounds theory is, of course, will people CONTINUE to keep their weight off in the future when the incentive ends? Perhaps this is why X-Weighted and Last 10 pound Boot Camp or any of the Slice programs do not follow this line of thinking.
Course there have been WAY weirder fads and weight loss gimmicks out there besides paying people to lose weight. Remember Doctor Ho?! His muscle massage system promised to give you abs of steel with no work at all. Or how about the fat patch?!
Yup, WAY weirder things...