When I originally started my life of dieting twenty or so years ago the tools I had to help me do so were pretty much limited to a paper journal and a scale.

My how things have changed.

The modern dieter has a plethora of toys, gadgets, and gizmos available to aid in the weight loss process.  There are paid sites like eDiets and Weight Watchers eTools, calorie counting applications you can download for your iPhone or Blackberry, pedometers and heart rate monitors, digital scales, electronic body fat measuring devices….The list goes on and on.

Developer Mark Rickert has decided to add one more tool to the arsenal by creating an application that utilizes everyone’s favorite new social networking service, Twitter, to track your weight online.

TweetWeight is a simple application that uses the Twitter API as an automated tracking system using the reply functionality of the service.   To begin tracking you simply send a reply to @TweetWeight with your goal weight using the following format:

@tweetweight goal your_goal_weight

Once you’ve done so you can update your weight at any time by sending another reply to the service with your current weight like so:

@tweetweight your_current_weight

TweetWeight will reply back to you with an update on how much weight you have lost (or gained) and how close you are to reaching your goal weight.  You can even set a date if you wish!

The biggest disadvantage of the service is that, at this point, anyone on your friends list who is also following TweetWeight will see your weight updates as you send them in.   The developer is working on an update that will allow updates to be made through Direct Message, but they are not available yet.

While you’re checking out TweetWeight, make sure you’re following us as well!