When Roni No
one set out to lose 70 pounds, she decided to blog about the experience. Her
first posts were little more than the electronic equivalent of a note tacked to
the refrigerator: They charted her weigh-ins and a few simple thoughts.
Now, five
years later, she's dropped all the weight and her daily web journal, Just Roni,
has blossomed into an active community of over 200,000 followers. For the past
three years she's hosted the annual Fit blog in conference in her hometown of
Baltimore.
No one said
her blog has played a huge part in her successful weight loss. "That
simple commitment of How to
lose weight made a world of difference. Something happened. Something
clicked," she said. "The goal of blogging weekly was something
completely in my control. It was a conscious decision I made and I only had
myself to blame if I didn't keep up with it."
Obviously,No
one isn't the only weight loss blogger out there. As the nation has grown
fatter, so has the number of people who blog about being fat. Though no group
appears to be keeping tabs on the weight loss blogosphere, the website
fitnessblogs.org lists nearly 500 diet and weight loss related web logs, the
formal term for blogs.
Most weight
loss blogs consist of daily musings, concerning everything from the struggle to
shed the pounds, to the frustration of hitting a plateau, to the celebration of
success. Some offer recipes, surveys and links to calorie-counting sites and
support groups.
The reasons
people -- mostly women it seems -- begin sharing their innermost thoughts about
their outermost traits are varied. Alyssa Curran started The Double Chin Diary
about a year and a half ago to give herself some accountability.
"I want
to share what I'm doing with my audience, no matter how big or small, and I
don't want to disappoint them," she said.
Fifty-year-old
Gail Gedan Spencer focuses her blog, Shrinking Sisters, on working through some
of the stickier situations that arise from trying to lose fifty pounds. For
instance, if she feels an evening binge coming on, she tries to reach for the
keyboard instead of a snack.
"I've
shifted my blog writing time to 9:00 p.m. as a way to keep my hands and brain
busy during the danger zone. When I do that I'm less likely to wonder what's
going on in the kitchen," she said.
Gary Foster,
a psychologist who is the director of the Center for Obesity research and Education
at Temple University, said he suspected a lot of people blog about their weight
loss to build a sense of community and find encouragement.
"Losing
weight is really tough, so the more support someone can get the better,"
he said. "If blogging gives you a feeling of not doing it solo, it could
be really helpful."
Spencer
agreed. She said when she first started blogging she knew there had to be
others just like her she could inspire -- and be inspired by.
"I am
50 with 50 pounds to lose. I realized I can't be the only one out there in that
situation."
Spencer now
has over 250 dedicated followers. She also said many of the best diet tips
she's gotten have come from other bloggers.
But Foster
warned that taking advice from blogger sites has a potential downside.
"What's an expert opinion or not? You may read someone else's blog and
take it as a fact. At minimum it may not be helpful; at worst may be
harmful."
Foster does
see a definite potential upside to blogging about weight loss, though. He said
writing or reading a blog could be especially helpful for anyone who has been
stigmatized because of their weight.
No one knows
this better than Kenlie Tiggeman, the 32-year-old political strategist who
fired up the blogosphere last year after she blogged about her experience
getting kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight for being "too fat too
fly" -- twice. By the morning after she posted her thoughts about the
first incident, twitter had exploded with angry words for Southwest and her
website Alltheweigh.com was flooded with messages of support. Within hours she
got a call from Southwest headquarters, offering apologies and vouchers for
free flights.
{Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blogging-write-weight-loss-overweight-dieters/story?id=17341974}
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