Weight watching on the Web

Jennifer Emmert blogged away the pounds and is a fat girl no more. Christine Schwarz found a community on SparkPeople to keep her diet and exercise on track. Kaeti Hinck uses Twitter to talk training with fellow beginners and pros.

These women are among a growing number of Minnesotans using social media as part of their weight-loss and get-fit journeys.

"People just want to feel connected," said Emmert, Brooklyn Park author of PriorFatGirl.com. "I still struggle, and it's always going to be hard. But I can hate it, you can hate it, we can hate it together."

The value of sharing the pain actually is rooted in social science: People improve their chances of reaching health goals when they feel accountable and have support. Successful weight loss programs such as Weight Watchers know this. They focus not only on food, but also on people.

The principles are sound, despite a lack of research on social media and weight loss, said Beth Lewis, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Kinesiology.

Many online tools are conducive to recording what one eats, and the simple act of keeping track of food intake has been consistently shown to facilitate weight loss, Lewis said, because people become more aware of how much they're eating. Knowing people will see their decisions also affects behavior. "People can write it on the Internet and other people can see it," said Lewis. "The accountability is there."

Possibly most powerful is the social support aspect of these tools. Research shows that strong social networks greatly increase people's chances of losing weight, and Lewis said the support is as effective when given online, even anonymously, as it is in person.

Blogging the pounds away

In third grade, Emmert's teacher snapped at her students: Just because she weighed 98 pounds didn't mean she couldn't control a classroom. Emmert ignored the message. "I weigh more than my teacher," she thought. She spent her teen years dieting and her early 20s pretending to diet. Soon Emmert carried 245 pounds on a 5-foot-6-inch frame.

In 2007 she went to a weight-loss surgery seminar where other attendees were older. It was a slap in the face. "You are 25 years old and you're fat enough to have this surgery," she remembers thinking.

Emmert, now 27, left the seminar, joined a gym and began making changes. Eventually a friend suggested she start a blog so friends and relatives could monitor her progress. She did so, reluctantly, in July 2008. Word traveled, and soon people worldwide were reading about Emmert dragging herself to the gym, trying to avoid Girl Scout cookies and pondering the extra skin that remains when the fat is gone.

Her family, friends and boyfriend were supportive but couldn't relate in the same way her readers could. One day Emmert blogged about locking away her co-worker's chocolate stash and dumping water on Doritos to keep herself from overeating.

"My gosh, Jen," one commenter wrote, "there's nothing weird about doing things to be sure you're going to reach your goals unless it's the goals that are weird."

Another admitted, "I've dumped food and put used kitty litter on top of it many times!"

Emmert has lost 95 pounds and gained a world of support.

"Everybody is at a different place," she said. "You need to find a connection with people in the same place as you."

Logging food intake online

At first glance, Ready-to-win's page on SparkPeople.com looks like a MySpace profile. There's a photo of Schwarz with her family, her nickname, links to friends' pages.

But SparkPeople's free services helped Schwarz, 37, lose 77 pounds in just over a year.

"I was wearing clothes in size 2X or 3X, and I thought, 'This isn't good. This isn't where I want to be,'" said the Farmington woman, who developed hyperthyroidism after the birth of her daughter and gave in to exhaustion.

She began using SparkPeople extensively to track her eating habits and, later, physical activity.

Soon she signed up to lead the official Minneapolis-St. Paul SparkPeople team, which has more than 700 active members. Discussion topics on the team's Web page range from cheering people, on to sharing tips, to offering support to members with sick kids. And Schwarz organizes local events for members to meet in person.

The local team also competes with 200 cities through points accumulated for members' healthful actions. In February, Minneapolis-St. Paul beat out No. 2 Chicago and No. 3 Houston to end in first place.

"People are just so excited to find support from other people," said Schwarz. "They come here and say, 'Yes! I lost a pound! Because of you guys I've now reached my goal.'"

140 characters, 60 pounds

"Hope I retain these happy feelings as I head downstairs for 5 on the treadmill," typed Hinck, 23, a senior associate editor at Experience Life magazine who lives in St. Paul.

An hour later: "So 5 miles turned into 2 miles. I was all 'Uh huh!' and my right calf was all 'Nu uh.' Will ice and try again tonight."

Hinck uses the username RenovatingKaeti on the micro-blogging website Twitter, where posts are capped at 140 characters to encourage short, frequent messages.

Hinck, who also blogs for Experience Life, has lost 60 pounds in less than two years and is training for her first marathon and triathlon. She appreciates the detail her blog allows but can use Twitter more often and consistently -- to talk about her runs, spin class, fried food slip-ups.

"Twitter is great for accountability and community," said Hinck, "and it's ongoing, which is fantastic."

Within minutes of posting about her run cut short, she had a handful of responses:

"Be good to your body -- it'll thank you in the end. I swim more than run now because I wasn't kind to my body growing up."

"I hate days like today! Sometimes running helps, sometimes not, so we'll see how it goes down!"

Hinck said those words are invaluable for moving forward.

"It's so important to find a group of people who are in the same place as you or making the journey to get to that place," said Hinck. "And sometimes the easiest place to do that is in these online communities."

Kate Levinson is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment for the Star Tribune.