Dieting for Dollars

AMERICANS HAVE been gambling ever since we made a bet on independence and sailed away from Mother England.

Since then, we've made wagering a mega-industry. Casino slots, horse racing, state lotteries, March Madness pools. Name a scheme, we'll slap money on it.

So it was only a matter of time before we'd place bets on our own behavior. Such as whether we'd stick to a diet.

Enter HealthyWage, which designs and organizes weight-loss challenges in which you can win money for dropping pounds.

Since the company's birth in 2009, more than 100,000 participants have won almost $2 million for losing about 1 million pounds, using different incentive plans.

The "10% Challenge," as breathlessly described on the HealthyWage website, "allows you to put some pressure on yourself and double-down on your weight loss! You pay a $150 fee to participate. If you lose 10 percent of your body weight over six months, you win $300. Ready to put your money where your mouth was?"

For those who want to lower their body mass index from obese to normal levels, the incentive is $1,000.

And teams of five who enter group weight-loss challenges can split jackpots up to 10 grand.

I asked HealthyWage co-founder David Roddenberry to put me in touch with one of his Philly diet bettors, but no locals were willing to be interviewed.

I guess what happens on HealthyWage stays on HealthyWage.

Roddenberry says only about one-third of participants win their bets. So, like any smart betting operation, his operation pulls in more than it pays out.

Still, the remaining two-thirds of contestants tend to lose weight even if they don't hit their goals. So it's no wonder HealthyWage has taken off like a jackrabbit.

"Business is really good. We've grown by 300 to 400 percent every year," says Roddenberry (and if that name sounds familiar, yes, he's a distant relative of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry). "It's exciting."

HealthyWage and other companies offering dieting-for-dollars contests (more pop up all the time) are capitalizing on new research showing that, under the right conditions, willpower can apparently be bought.

New studies from the Mayo Clinic and Penn's Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics show that cash incentives can motivate weight loss (more for group dieters than lone ones). Whether the pounds stay lost, however, remains to be seen.

But that hasn't stopped outfits like Zales, 7-Eleven, Office Depot and 500 other businesses from adapting HealthyWage programs to help their employees de-pork.

Says Roddenberry, "Companies can either spend money on our program or on medical costs" associated with obesity-related maladies. "If they can find a way to change employee behavior in a way that helps reduce overall health-care costs, they're all about it."

More employers are using financial-reward programs in general to encourage workers to lose weight, quit smoking or start exercising. A 2012 survey by consultancy Towers Watson found that 68 percent of employers offered cash, premium credits and account contributions to coax employee participation in healthy lifestyle activities - up from 58 percent in 2011.

That number is expected to grow, since the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act lets employers use a bigger chunk of insurance premiums for disease prevention.

Potential health benefits of this brand of betting aside, I can't help wondering whether businesses like HealthyWage are really just highfalutin online gambling operations in disguise.

And most online gambling is illegal.

"You can go to Vegas. You can go to Atlantic City. You can go to a race track. You can go to those places and gamble legally. But don't do it online," warns the FBI's Leslie Bryant, head of the Cyber Crime Fraud unit at FBI headquarters, in a statement on the agency's website. "It's against the law."

It's also illegal, the agency stresses, for businesses to run gambling websites and to solicit online bets. Even companies handling transactions for cyberspace bettors may face federal charges.

So I ask Roddenberry: Is HealthyWage, which uses all sorts of gambling terminology on its website, really kind of an online waging operation?

Not really, he says, because contestants are in control of the outcome. What HealthyWage does is enter into an agreement with them in which "they have the opportunity to get their money back."

I doubt we'll ever see that slogan on a casino billboard.

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

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