Hello,
I read an article exploring ways to motivate people to lose weight that were tried using money! They found that small groups of people working together who got money when they lost weight were the best motivated. In the group that they described if someone didn't lose weight in a month the others got their share. The sums were modest enough, about $100 each per month.

Below is the link.

http://www.mnn.com/money/green-workplace/blogs/cash-incentives-boost-employee-weight-loss[/URL]

This is something that would be very easy to organize. It could even be done here.

Has anyone here tried an approach like this and how did it work for you?

I think that TOPS is kinda like that. My mom got money every week that she lost (She had to pay to attend weekly tho) Just saying

Some of you may be interested in this:

http://www.stickk.com/

Basically you put money up - and if you don't meet your goals, you set it up so that a friend, charity or anti-charity gets the money instead! (By anti-charity - the idea is that your money will go to an organization that you think is awful, thus adding motivation to meet your goals - for instance if you strongly support gay marriage you might set it up so that your money goes to an anti-gay marriage group - giving you further motivation to meet your goals).

My friends who do Applied Behavioral Analysis shared the site with me. There is definitely a lot of research suggesting that this kind of motivation can actually be quite useful in changing behavior.