The Twitter Diet
Posted May 18th, 2008 by Howard TaylerTwitter forces you to say whatever you plan to say in 140 characters or less. That’s not much room. It’s like a diet for verbose writers.
(The above paragraph can be twitted with just 3 characters to spare.)
That got me to thinking about diets in general, and how I have a hard time keeping track of what it is I actually eat and when. So… Twitter to the rescue. Starting Monday I’ll be twitting (or is it “tweeting?”) my meals, my gym trips, and my daily weight and body fat (as measured by the scale in my bathroom.) I’m going to try it for at least a week, and we’ll see how it goes.
If you’re following my tweets (www.twitter.com/howardtayler) then I expect this will get quite boring for you. It’ll probably be boring for me, too. This is an experiment, and experiments often are.
In the past I’ve found that the most effective diets for me are those which cut simple carbs to below 30g per day. I’ll be trying to eat the same way this time. From a scientific method perspective, since I lack a true control group, the easiest way to test something’s effectiveness is to only change one variable at a time. The variable here is “reporting.” I’m testing Twitter, not low-carbing. I already know low-carbing works.
For the record, this is not an invitation for any of you to start offering me diet advice. If even one reader out of a thousand decides to email me with suggestions, I’ll be buried in unsolicited advice on weight loss (read: SPAM.) If you’re an MD, a PA, or an RN, I ESPECIALLY encourage you to not send me advice. If I want it, I’ll pay you for it.
Okay, let the tweeting begin (in about 15 hours.)
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May 18th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
FWIW, I’ve been doing the same thing for several weeks now. (Okay, weight and meals. Not so much the gym trips.)
It works reasonably well, as long as you have people watching it to yell at you if you stop. (The problem I’ve always had with diet logs is “Oh, I don’t want to write that down…” and suddenly the logging stops.)
May 18th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
No diet advice here but what, beyond cutting the simple carbs down to less than a soda a day are you going to do?
Not that the last year’s worth of nursing and nutrition classes have given me any biases or baggage. . . But. . . if you’re doing what I think, just make sure you drink water like a fish.
Bon chance!
D.
May 18th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Hey, Howard! Convince Schlock to start using Twitter next time you break the fourth wall. I have a feeling it would be rather amusing.
May 18th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
re: kyevan
Hey look… http://twitter.com/schlock
May 18th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Howard, whenever you say you are Twit, I think of this site… http://twit.tv/
I know, it is really confusing.
May 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Dev Dot Null… if you scroll way back into the archives you’ll find plenty of info about HT’s diet plans.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
In short…
1) Veggies are fine. The less-cooked, the better. Salads are good.
2) Once I’m losing weight, I’ll have some raw oatmeal each day. It’s a treat, and it’s high in fiber.
3) The bulk of my caloric intake will likely be fish, chicken, eggs, and cheese. I resort to wrapping burgers in low-carb tortillas when I’m on the road.
4) I’ll go through about two liters of water each day, above and beyond any diet soda I treat myself to.
5) Exercise three days per week for at least an hour.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I’m glad you’re including your body fat along with the weight. Weight by itself is such a gross measurement its a miracle we use it still.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Hey…does this mean the Chupaqueso blog gets new content again?
May 18th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Not going to give you advice, just going to pass on the information that pushed me off diet sodas. Apparently the artificial sweeteners in diet soda increase our appetite for other foods. If you’ve got willpower to resist the urge to extra eating diet sodas might be ok, but if you can’t the diet sodas are a bad idea.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Really? ‘Cos I heard the main health problem that sugar causes (in those who aren’t overweight or diabetic, and who brush their teeth regularly) is that it reduces the desire to eat fruit.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:45 am
How are you ascertaining percent bf.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
The scale I stand on does the electrical resistance thing. It may not be especially accurate, but it’s fairly consistent, and that’s good enough. I’ve found that if I use it immediately after showering and drying off (thus negating the variability of dry vs moist feet) it reads to within a percentage point or two of the previous day.
I’ve stood on it in very dry, bare feet before and had it read over 50%. Kind of disheartening, even though I know it’s a lie.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:25 am
Low-carbing gets great results, but I hated being on it because it posed so big problems when eating what my girlfriend prefers to cook, when going out, etc.
I don’t think it is a good idea to recommend just going on
May 21st, 2008 at 3:30 am
A less-than character apparantly ended my post.
I don’t think it is a good idea to recommend just going on less than 30g of carbs a day, too many people do just that and don’t balance it with increased fat intake and don’t carb load.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:54 am
You can type “<” as “<”. And to type “&”, type “&”.
“&amp;” looks weird, but what I typed to get that sorta dilutes it a bit.
Howard: Does your low-carb diet give you ketosis?