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Social Networking Services: a Helpful Tool in Weight Loss
Accountability can be a powerful
motivation to stay on track with a
weight-loss
plan.
Recent small studies, have show that social networks like Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube and Instagram can help bolster
weight loss.
It's a place where anonymous people share their triumphs and struggles,
reassuring you that you're not alone, whatever you're going through, someone
else has too. Researchers in London recently analyzed 12 studies involving
nearly 1,900 people in the U.S., Europe, East Asia and Australia. They found
those who used social networking sites lost modest but significant amounts of
weight.
It has been uncovered that one spends about 3.6 hours online every day,
messaging, updating and tweeting. There are 50 million messages tweeted every
day. Twitter, an instant message-style website that allows you to notify your
"followers" of every thought or action in 25 words or less, can help you use
your network to support your
weight loss effort. A report in the Journal Of The American Medical
Association on the largest weight-loss maintenance study to date found a
combination of personal contact and web-based support, crucial for long-term
weight management.
In another instance, a BBC study found online networking can help people
lose weight in the long term. The study, published in the British Medical
Journal, found that people who followed an online
weight-loss
program lost more weight than those who didn't use the internet for their
support. And after six months, 45 per cent of those with online support had
maintained their weight loss, while the second group had gained weight.
Why a Successful Tool ?
-
 Twitter succeeds as a weight-loss tool because it's personal and
accessible.
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Keeping up to one's reputation. For e.g. If you tweet about your
diet and weight loss to your followers, then you have a responsibility to
maintain a level of integrity.
-
By Tweeting What You Eat, in a way you build a virtual food diary.
Keeping a
food diary helps you keep track of what you're eating and to realize
what foods you're missing out on. Keeping a daily log of what you eat, and
you'll lose twice as much weight, says a study from Kaiser Permanente Center
for Health Research. Take pictures of your daily meals and upload your photo
diary on social network. A study suggests that doing so might improve your
diet—knowing you have to take a picture serves as a speed bump in a sense;
it may help you be more conscious of and perhaps think twice about your food
choices before you eat.
-
Connecting with people who share the same goals is like having your
very own cheering section. There's always someone there to celebrate
when you drop those 10 pounds or help you get back on track if you re-gain
3lbs.
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Easy access to the online information and forums whenever you
desire, rather than being restricted to clinic appointment times.
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May help you stay more focused. The “friends” can be a powerful
motivating force, especially when everyone can see how much (or little)
you’ve done each week.
-
Workout Reminder tool: iPhone can serve you as a reminder, where
you can list your goals, and create an emergency letter-to-self to read
whenever you're on the brink of skipping your
workout.
Get ready to lose more weight and maintain it, compared with dieters who
don’t access the social media.
Ref:
Dated 07 September 2014
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