A small fraction of the extant studies have assessed maintenance, and those that have typically reported very limited success [14–20]. In the Volpp et al. study [18] at the end of the 16-week incentivized phase, both financial incentive groups lost significantly more weight than did the
control group; however, 12 weeks into a maintenance phase the incentive groups had regained much of the weight they had initially lost, and the differences between conditions were no longer significant