Get paid to lose weight

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Employers are offering cash, gift cards, even cruises to employees who take steps to get in shape (and cut their health-care costs by millions). In an attempt to hold down spiraling health-care costs, many companies are paying employees to lose weight or get in better shape. Employers are doling out bonuses, insurance discounts, vacation days and even gift cards. Highmark, a Pennsylvania Blue Cross/Blue Shield licensee, offers a health and fitness program called Lifestyle Returns that pays $225 each year to employees agreeing to medical assessments and free health and nutrition coaching. The program is open to all employees, whether they are fit or fat. Because, as Highmark Vice President Anna Silberman puts it, not only do they want to move people from high to low risk, they also want to "keep low-risk people at low risk." "We know that 70% of chronic conditions are preventable," Silberman says. "If we can prevent adverse health effects, this is a win for the insurance company and a win for the employee." Freedom One Financial Group, a Michigan provider of 401(k) plans, jump-started its fitness program in 2005 by offering a free four-day cruise to Jamaica for employees who met certain weight loss or body fat reduction goals. At the end of the three-month challenge, 36 of its 70 employees had together lost 310 pounds, and 21 employees were given the free cruise. Now that so many of its employees are participating in its wellness challenges, it has begun offering trips, gift certificates and other prizes to the winners of certain in-house fitness contests. "The employees are really keen to stay on the program and stay focused," says John Young, Freedom One executive vice president of marketing, who helped launch the program and lost 64 pounds in the process. Rest of the article: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourHealth/GetPaidToLoseWeight.aspx I would LOVE to be paid to loose weight, but I don't think that would happen for me