New Method Supporting Diet: Play Twitter!

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It turned out to lose weight is not only about the methods and the commitment of people who want to do so. It also requires the full support of the environment, including from colleagues in the virtual world. A new study finds that active on social networking sites such as Twitter can help a person lose weight, especially provide social support for the dieter. This conclusion was obtained after investigators observed 96 participants were overweight and obese over the past six months. Overall participants reported using mobile communication devices that is connected with the internet and divided into two groups.

Each gained two siniar (podcast) for 15 minutes per week in the period of three months and two mini siniar for five minutes per week in the same period. Siniar contains information about nutrition, physical exercise and weight targets participants.

However, participants on one of group is asked to follow a Twitter account to each other in order to provide mutual social support when making a diet program. From it, noted there 2630 tweets posted to by the participants during the study underway. 75 percent among contain information, for example: about the participants who reported details the achievement of his diet program, the rest is a tweet that contains emotional support to fellow dieters.

"The results showed that those who regularly use Twitter as part of a more proven diet program lose weight," said research team leader Brie Turner-McGrievy of departmental behavior, education and health promotion, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina as quoted by MSN, Wednesday (01/16/2013

"The traditional methods of diet, social support also may be obtained although only through weekly group meetings. Though we know this is effective, but eating a lot of cost and can create a big load for participants. For that provide support through social networking online can be cheap and at once able to reach out to supporters in large numbers, especially those equally have a commitment to achieving a healthy weight, "he continued.

At the end of the study in overall two groups of participants, reported the average has experienced weight loss as much as 2.7 percent in the period of six months. But proved Twitter users more successful lose weight, even the researchers concluded out of every 10 tweets that expressed by the participants cause weight loss much as 0.5 percent.

Source:  MSN