7 comments

• 

  Shawn

  1 year ago

  This is a bandaid solution to a bigger problem imo. If I lived in Australia, I'd be one of those folks offered that 170 dollars. Knowing now through reading, researching and talking with people, that 170 dollars is best spent in an education enviroment accessible to everyone just not a specific targeted slice of society. This would both prevent and help lower obesity.
  
  There would be more then one person with a beer gut that would abuse the system, simply take the 170 and run or nod off in the required seminars and be done with it.
  
  The money would be better spent opening, for lack of a better description, a government funded fitness program where people could not only use facilities but get counselling with an educated staff. People that genuinely wanted to become fit could seek out the program and gain it's benefits. The old saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" applies here.
  
  I realize that overweight folks are sometimes a tax on the healthcare system, but imo it's coming to to a point where personal accounability has coming into the picture. People genuinely have to want to change and better themselves. That has to come within an person and cannot be dictated by anyone including the government.
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  Viki

  1 year ago

  Ok, I know a lot of people think this a dumb idea, but step back and look at the big picture. Obsity is more common among people of lower income more often those of middle or upper incomes. To me this incentive sounds like a way to help those who couldn't afford to get help losing weight.
  
  Also the quotes says "A doctors group has proposed that overweight people be given a $170 subsidy to attend an accredited weight-loss program."
  
  The defination of a subsidy is, "Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest."
  
  This money is either designed to help pay for the weight loss program or the cost associated with it. For example, trying out healthy new foods, a good pair of shoes for excercising, or equipment like a bike, rebounder or excercise video that makes workout more fun.
  
  Sure if they give the money directly to the individual some people will missuse it, but governments always put rules and regulation on programs like this to reduce the amount of abuse.
  
  In addition to that, if these people that go to through the weight loss programs and get the $170 incentive actually do lose weight, even just 20lbs they will save the health care system tons of money in the long run.
  
  To give you an example I'll use myself. I'm type 2 diabetic and I have to spend over $200 in supplies and medication each month, and that's buying them at Walmart, if I had to get them at Walgreen or some where else, I'd spend twice that, if not more.
  
  If I don't take care of myself someday I will get so sick that I won't be able to work, and the government will have to take care of me. Even if the cost of my supplies and medications didn't increase that's $200 a month, plus doctors visits, plus disablity payments, etc, etc, etc...
  
  A one time investment of $170 from the government when I was in my early 20 to help me lose weight and teach me how to keep it off and led a healthy lifesytle would have been money well spent.
  
  When I was 20 I thought the only problem with being overweight was that I wasn't the American image of beauty. Well I didn't want to be beautiful. I wants to be liked for who I was, not what I looked like. I was hiding years of abuse and neglect under the weight. Food was my only comfort when I was hurting because the people I grew up with where evil.
  
  No one wants to be overweight, not really. Most people who are seriously overweight, have bad habits and can't change them without some support. Others, especially women are hiding under their weight. Many overweight people feel trapped inside their body, a prisoner to cravings they don't understand and can't resist.
  
  Sure will power works for awhile, but when stress builds up and our will power fails and we fall back on the habits that helped us cope in the past, unless we have the support and knowledge to try new things.
  
  This $170 subsidy is a small price to pay when compared to the long term cost of obesity.
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• 

  Sarah, CPT

  1 year ago

  Crazy! Possibly even worse than the biggest loser!
  
  Guess what I just heard from a client in Norway this morning ... there is
  talk (serously) of banning :
  - flat screen TVs
  - cell phones
  - PC screens
  A total of 18 technical products. Reason given: environmental poising.
  
  Yet they have NO PLANS of banning trans fats, artificial coloring,
  artificial sweeteners, "light" products, fattening and debilitating "foods".
  Make sense to you? Not to me, and not to my client either. The trouble with
  Norway, is that if the government says "this is how it's going to be" people
  will grumble in their himes, but publicly just shrug and say "well, that's
  the way it is". A flock of sheep.
  
  Just goes to show though, governments are crazy!
  
  Sarah, CPT
  www.trainwithsarah.com
  www.healthylivesforyou.com
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• 

  Marc David

  1 year ago

  Again, thanks to Bloglines.com I found a U.S. study that showed the following:
  
  Financial incentives can encourage weight loss, research finds
  
  Finkelstein and researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill studied more than 200 overweight or obese employees in North Carolina.
  
  A third of the participants received no financial reward for their weight loss after three months; another third were given $7 for every 1 percent drop in their body weight; the final third were given $14 for every 1 percent decrease. The participants did not follow a specific diet and fitness program.
  
  Participants in the $14 group were than five times more likely to lose 5 percent of their body weight, according to the findings, printed in September's Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
  
  Here's the full USA Today article:
  http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-09-10-...
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• 

  Making the Best Celebrity Fitn

  1 year ago

  Losing weight is not as hard as many make it out to be. I have a few moves that you do daily that for some reason cause the fat to fall off...I also have one way to change what you do everytime you sit down to eat which WILL make you lose weight. Check out my blog...all the proof is there under the action photos!
  
  Work Hard,
  Ahmad Baari, C.P.T.
  reply
• 

  Diem

  1 year ago

  I have no opinion on whether this will make a difference in Australia or not, but it is worth putting this in context: Australia has socialised healthcare that is paid for by a proportion of everyone's taxes, and there IS similar help available for smokers, drinkers etc. here. If this helps even a small number of people lose their excess fat, that money will be saved downstream by not having to pay for treatment of obesity related illness out of the same socilaised healthcare funds that the $170 will come from. The only thing I think is a bit weird about it is that it sounds as though the cash will be handed over rather than doctor and paitent together selecting an appropriate accessible fat loss program.
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  John

  7 months ago

  Okay I understand where your coming from. But, have you watched the tv show "the biggest loser"? Have you seen how some of those people wanted to lose weight and couldn't have if they didn't have that program to change their lives? I have you seen the ones that changed into productive members of society? There are lots of people out there just like that , that want to be a part of the world. They don't have the money to do it on their own. Don't you see how this could help?
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