TextWeight Tracks Your Weight Loss Progress, Bugs You Through SMS

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/textweight/

by johns • 16 years ago

29 15 16 years ago

dmor• 16 years ago

This is the app that was launched on HN this morning after my husband stayed up all night coding, fastest turnaround to front page of TechCrunch I've ever seen. Nice job honey. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2057706

kevin_morrill5• 16 years ago

Thanks dear :)

tomjen3• 16 years ago

Aaaawww, true love.

PStamatiou• 16 years ago

I like it. Beats my iCal "diet" calendar. Brainstorming about how this can be used to track muscle gain for those with bioelectrical impedance scales. IE, you're gaining weight but body fat % stays the same, ∴ some amount of muscle gained.

Guy1111• 16 years ago

Sharing privately with a trainer or nutritionist can be supplemently awesome. As well as getting tip of the day texted back based on the results. Well done.

kevin_morrill5• 16 years ago

All good ideas. We work with partners in academia to study exactly those kinds of things. This service is just a very simple example. It's surprising how just one question and raising your awareness can make a huge difference. We've seen this in a number of published studies.

joshcrews• 16 years ago

Public graphs are movitational for me.

I made similar personal app at http://fatgrapher.com and one of the key features for me is the that my graph is public.

We used the principles: weigh/graph everyday, skip dinner whenever more than 1 pound behind the 'pace line'. The 'pace line' graphs ideal progress towards weight loss goal.

auxbuss• 16 years ago

Question: - US phone numbers only or other?

Ideas: - Provide an interface via twitter, either personal msg or DM. - You could also provide an optional weekly public tweet of weights reported.

Btw, I have twitter set to SMS me on receipt of a DM, which you could exploit to provide broader SMSs and save a few $s. Just sayin'.

I really like the simplicity of the app.

kevin_morrill5• 16 years ago

US phone only, for now.

Longer term, we're looking to understand better people's sensitivity around sharing weight. It's a tricky area. There are several studies in academia exploring this where we've partnered with investigators.

kevin_morrill5• 16 years ago

Sorry I misspoke. Canada works too.

msys• 16 years ago

Very nice. What service are you using to send the SMSs?

kevin_morrill5• 16 years ago

Twilio

ryane• 16 years ago

$.02 / sms. Have you hashed out any monetization plans?

sleight42• 16 years ago

While I applaud another honest attempt to help people lose weight, I am also skeptical that an app written in a single day managed to get TC'd the next. I feel doubly so when there are far more interesting apps in this space such as Lose It or Lose It (http://loseitorloseit.com).

FTR, I have no affiliation w/ LIOLI other than that I'm a user who finds it valuable and believe it more deserving of PR than this app.

TextWeight Tracks Your Weight Loss Progress, Bugs You Through SMS

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