New Scale Blabs About Your Flab on Twitter
Buck Wolfe of Sphere wrote about the scale showing your weight on Twitter. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always maintained that my patients/clients weight and weight history was very personal. It took a long time for people to trust us, as Dietitians’, c’mon tweeting your weight on Twitter? Is this going just a little too far?
-- How's this for motivation: A new bathroom scale will tweet your body weight, letting Twitter users know just how fat you've gotten.
Withings
As we all get ready to kick off that increased caloric season,known as the holiday season, the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale is now there to track our daily binges and let everyone know.
The $159 scale hit the market a few months ago with the breakthrough ability to beam your weight, body mass and percentage of body fat to your computer. This allows you to track the ballooning of your buttocks graphically -- and that might be easier for some people than, say, looking into the mirror and screaming.
A free iPhone app lets you view all the info on the go, at restaurants, bars and wherever you might indulge.
"Letting our users upload their info on Twitter was a natural extension," says company spokeswoman Jessica Darrican. "For the right person, it just makes all that information all the more real."
Of course, it's completely optional to auto-Tweet every time you step on the scale. The new feature -- introduced last week -- comes at no additional cost. But it's clearly one of those things that some people will love -- and others will find completely revolting. "You can't ignore the social aspect of dieting, and that's why I think a lot of people will use this and benefit from it," says personal trainer Nicole Glor, who stars in her own line of exercise DVDs.
"I'm in my ninth month of pregnancy, and I find that I turn to my Face book updates for inspiration to stay in shape. I like to know that people around me are pulling for me."
Others feel that you have to look within yourself for real change -- and you won't find that self-reflection on any social media site.
"You can broadcast what your scale is telling you all over the world, but it is not going to get into the root causes of why you overeat," says Debbie Mandel, author of "Addicted to Stress."
"All it might do is create even more anxiety, and anxiety is a leading cause of weight gain."
Weight-tweeting scales might now be a reality. Our only comfort, at least for now, is that we won't wake up the morning after Thanksgiving to find our dangerously overstretched jeans complaining on Face book.
How do you feel about this new kind of scale and a weight-tweeting scale at that?
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I'm confused!! Who the heck thought of this? So, the scale will record your weight and then send it to Twitter? WHAT?! That's ridiculous. Is this basically to keep people motivated to lose? I mean, I guess for some people it might help. They may feel more motivated to workout and eat healthy if their weight is displayed for all to see. Such a strange concept, but maybe for some people it would be a great idea! haha, I just went from hating it to thinking it may be ok :)
ReplyDeleteWeight is such a sensitive issue, but perhaps for some this concept is okay, yet, I have to believe that for most people, they would take issue with having their weight sent to Twitter. This seems very atypical to me.
ReplyDeleteWeight is a sensitive issue and in order to take the emphasis OFF weight and onto health, I don't think Twittering weight is a good idea at all! And I agree with you, Anthony, HIPPA and patient confidentiality always come first. There's so much I'd love to share with people and readers...for the good, the bad, and the ugly...but I don't.
ReplyDeleteI guess for some people it might help. They may feel more motivated to workout and eat healthy if their weight is displayed for all to see.
ReplyDeleteWork From Home India