We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: social support is key to a successful diet. But can social media fill this need? For New York Times writer Brian Stelter, it has. “I thought it would make me more accountable, because I could record everything I ate instantly,” he writes. He began his Twitter diet at over 270 pounds, and now weighs less than 200. Stelter tweeted about what he ate, his calorie count, and how much he exercised. “By Sept. 3 I’ll have lost 75 pounds. I’m already thinking ahead to the fall, when I’ll have to learn how to maintain my new size.”
But like any weight loss endeavor, the journey has not been easy. At first, Stelter thought that he would encounter criticism for the seemingly self-absorbed approach to wight loss. Instead, he found that being honest about his eating habits was even harder. Heavy drinking and late-night fast food didn’t get tweeted. “Within days, I stopped posting the daily log of bites and sips. I disappeared from the account for almost a week at a time.”
But Stelter was beginning to gain a twitter fan club, or “cheering section” as he described it. Knowing that followers of account brianstelter25 were waiting to hear about his progress kept him from getting completely off track. In reality, no one starts a diet and then eats perfectly balanced meals until they reach they’re goal weight. What leads to real success is not giving up when we fall back into our unhealthy eating habits. Stelter is real inspiration.
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