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What is Tweetwhatyoueat?

Tweetwhatyoueat (TWYE for short) is a Twitter-based food diary. Use Twitter to track what you eat by ‘tweeting’ food items to your personal food diary on Tweetwhatyoueat.com from your mobile phone, Twitter client or directly from Tweetwhatyoueat.

How do I setup a food diary?

Setting up a free Tweetwhatyoueat food diary is simple.

  1. Register a free Tweetwhatyoueat account
  2. Link your Twitter account to your Tweetwhatyoueat account. You'll be guided through this step post-registration
  3. Add your first diary entry on Tweetwhatyoueat.com or through Twitter. A complete syntax guide for posting from Twitter can be found below.

What is "Sign in with Twitter?" Why do I need to authorize my account?

Click the "Sign in with Twitter" button presented post-registration to authorize Tweetwhatyoueat to connect with your Twitter account. This will allow you to post entries through Twitter to your Tweetwhatyoueat Food diary. The "Sign in with Twitter" button will hand you off to a Twitter page where you will login with your Twitter account. This one-time authorization is a secure way of connecting your Twitter account with Tweetwhatyoueat's Twitter account, TWYE. Authorizing your Twitter account will allow you to:

  1. Post diary entries through Twitter
  2. Find Twitter friends that are using TWYE or invite your Twitter friends to join
  3. Share your forum entries with the Twitter community for a larger support pool

How do I post through Twitter?

Once you register and link you Twitter account to Tweetwhatyoueat in the registration process, 'friendship' will be established between you and 'TWYE' on Twitter allowing you to post direct messages to your food diary. Tweetwhatyoueat is a Twitter user just like you! On Twitter, the web app Tweetwhatyoueat.com is the user 'TWYE.' The magic behind this site works the following way:

  • You make friends with 'TWYE' on Twitter. This happens automatically in the Tweetwhatyoueat registration process
  • 'TWYE' makes friends with you back - also happens automatically in the background during registration.
  • This two way connection is called a 'friendship' on Twitter and allows you to send direct messages from your Twitter account to 'twye.'
  • You send direct messages to TWYE with the foods you’ve eaten like this, 'd twye yogurt cup.'
  • Tweetwhatyoueat.com regularly checks the direct messages sent to TWYE, parses them, and adds them to your diary.

Will all my Twitter friends see my diary posts?

No. When you post to Tweetwhatyoueat through Twitter, you’re sending entries as direct messages to ‘TWYE.’ It’s a completely private message that will only be read by the app for the purpose of parsing. Your Tweetwhatyoueat food diary is however publicly accessible through Tweetwhatyoueat.com.

Why use Twitter?

Twitter is the perfect platform for a food diary application. You can send Twitter messages from a phone via SMS, your favorite mobile or desktop Twitter client and even the web! That makes it very versatile for our on-the-go lifestyles. Using Twitter also allows you to contextualize your entries by showing you your Tweets in-line with your eats, a benefit only the Twitter platform can provide.

Adding new entries

Adding new entries to your food diary is easy! You can add diary entries through the following means:

  • Twitter – send a direct message through Twitter.com or any Twitter client to the user 'TWYE' like so - "d twye fruit rollup." See syntax table below for reference.
  • Tweetwhatyoueat.com – login to Tweetwhatyoueat, click My Diary and use the convenient input at the top of your diary to quickly add an entry.

Editing your diary

You can edit and delete food diary entries in My Diary. Here are the steps:

  • Login to Tweetwhatyoueat and go to 'My Diary'
  • Mouse-over the entry you want to edit or delete
  • You will see three controls appear in the right-hand side of the entry row:
    • Click "edit" to edit the entry.
    • Click the trashcan icon to delete the entry
    • The 3rd icon you'll see (red circle with the line through it) is to add the entry to your Do Not Eat list which you can learn about here.

Setting a reminder

Having trouble remembering to update your food diary? Tweetwhatyoueat can help by sending you a reminder message through Twitter at a selected time interval. To setup a reminder, got My Diary > Edit Settings and choose if you want to receive a daily, weekly or monthly reminders. You can even set the time you’d like to receive the reminder! If you don’t update your TWYE food diary within that specified period, we'll send you a reminder message.

Once you’ve setup your first reminder, you can direct message TWYE to turn on/off reminders at any point. Here’s the syntax:

  • turn off reminders - 'd twye reminder off'
  • turn on reminder (must have previously setup a reminder time) - 'd twye reminder on'

Sticky Food Profiles

Each time you enter a unique food/calorie combo, you're creating a new food calorie profile. This profile is stored and used anytime you eat that same food and do not specify a calorie amount. If you eat a "Dannon Blueberry Yogurt" and specify 110 calories (based on the Nutritional Facts on the label), the next time you eat a "Dannon Blueberry Yogurt" you can leave the calories blank. TWYE will use the food profile you previously created to assign the calorie amount to the food (110). A few important things about Sticky Food Profiles:

  • Food calorie profiles are created when you enter calories with diary entries posted on Tweetwhatyoueat or through Twitter
  • You can always edit individual entries to override the food calorie profile that is being used
  • You can have more then one calorie profile for a food. The active profile used for uncaloried entries will be the last one you submitted.

Auto-calorie foods using CrowdCal

Tweetwhatyoueat has created the Internet's first crowd sourced calorie database of foods. Each time you enter calories for the foods you eat, you're helping other members of TWYE's growing community and contributing to the CrowdCal database of user contributed caloried foods. To take advantage of all the calorie entries from Tweetwhatyoueat's user population, activate the "Use CrowdCal profiles in my diary" setting. Here are the steps:

  1. Go to My Diary
  2. Click the 'settings' link in My Diary located in the top-right
  3. Check the "Use CrowdCal profiles in my diary" checkbox and the "Update" button
You will be directed back to your food diary where you'll see that calorie amounts in your diary are now linked. Clicking on a food's calories will show all the matching calorie profiles for the food, and the number of users using them. To learn more about Food Profiles and how the Matching Food Profile settings works, click here.

Tracking your weight with TWYE

Tweetwhatyoueat now supports weight tracking! Input weight entries the same way you add food entries - either through Twitter, or Tweetwhatyoueat. To add a weight entry through Twitter, use one of the following commands:

  • 'd twye #210' posts your weight with no comment
  • 'd twye #210 - been on the road all week' use a dash to add a comment to your entry
To add a weight entry through Tweetwhatyoueat, go to My Diary, and look for the 'Weight' tab. The Weight tab will list all your weight entries with the ability to graph them. Enter a weight entry in the form at the top of the page. Weight entries are private and protected and won't be seen by other TWYE members!

Adding foods to your 'Do Not Eat' list

You can manage a list of foods that you want to avoid by adding them to your Do Not Eat list. The Do Not Eat will keep track of the number of times you've eaten each food on the list as well. To add a food item to your Do Not Eat list:

  • Login to Tweetwhatyoueat and go to My Diary
  • Mouse-over the entry that you would like to add to the Do Not Eat list
  • You will see 3 controls appear in the right-hand side of the entry row
  • Click the icon with the red circle with a line through it. This is the Do Not Eat list icon
  • The food item will appear in your Do Not Eat list and you have the option of posting it to the forum with a message to find food alternatives.

Twitter syntax table

Twitter Diary Commands
Commands: Command Description:
'd twye' "d" instantiates a Twitter private message, “twye” is shorthand for the app.
'd twye Diet Coke:40' Colon associates calories to a food item
'd twye 2 beers, cheese burger, fries' Comma separates different food items
'd twye reminders off' If setup a timed daily or weekly reminder, you can toggle it 'on' or 'off' with this command.
'd twye #210 - too many donuts' # designates a weight entry, - allows you to enter a comment about your weigh-in

Adding photos to your entries through Twitter!

You can now add photos to your Tweet What You Eat entries that you post through Twitter. TWYE now supports parsing photos from Twitpic (preferred), Tweetphoto and Yfrog. If you want to add photos to your entries posted through Twitter, here's how to do it. We'll soon be adding the ability to upload photos of the foods you eat directly on Tweetwhatyoueat.com. To post a food entry with a picture from Twitter, or your favorite Twitter client like Tweetdeck, follow these steps. These instructions assume you are using Tweetdeck or a comparable Twitter client that can automatically generate a link for a photo you upload and include it as part of your Tweet:

  • Open up Tweetdeck, or your favorite Twitter mobile client
  • Prepare your diary entry, like this: "d twye eggs and bacon"
  • Click the photo icon to either take a picture, or choose a photo from your device libary. Note: photos taken in landscape mode will look better, i.e. your iPhone turned to the side
  • The photo link will be appended to the tweet you send. If you're using Twitter and using Twitpic to upload a photo, you'd want the entry to look like this: "d twye eggs and bacon http://twitpic.com/yr238"
  • Send the direct message to TWYE. TWYE will parse out the link to the photo, and you'll see a photo icon next to the entry in your diary.

Tweetwhatyoueat will be launching a simple iPhone application shortly that will make taking pictures of the foods you eat on the go and adding them to your food diary a snap! Until then, enjoy posting photos with your food!