How to use twitter for fitness

Not only does Twitter help you communicate with others with similar goals, it also lets you interact with your favourite health brands, health websites, and health professionals like trainers and nutritionists. Add to that the immediacy of responses and conversations. Tweet about your 'fresh cup of coffee,' and something like a CuppaHealth will start following you in a nanosecond. Within minutes you would be aware of how one cup of freshly brewed coffee a day can decrease liver damage. Unsolicited advice aside, if you use twitter wisely, it could be your fitness friend that helps you stay the course. Here's how you can use Twitter to your greatest health benefit...

Follow inspirational people, even brands: The more you follow people who're already doing what you want to do, the more you'll be motivated and inspired to make those healthy changes in your own lifestyle. And we're not talking about the quote tweeting, gospel spouting, holier than thou people. We're talking about the real boys and girls tweeting about their lives, experiences, etc. Someone who tweets: "Great feature in the Science Times of today's @nytimes on cancer survivors and their stories" (@lancearmstrong). And not: "This is my day. Today I will seize it by the..." you get the picture.

Create Twitter lists: When Twitter first introduced lists, a lot of people called them pointless, and some even called these lists popularity contests. But suddenly we see relevant twitter lists that are helpful, that cut the clutter, that you can follow on your timeline based on how you're feeling, what you're doing, what you want to know more of at any given point in time. Using Twitter lists for fitness is a sure shot way of staying motivated and in the health and fitness loop. So go ahead and make lists for healthy cooking, fitness trainers, motivators, peers trying to get healthy, weight loss, etc.

Tweet about your diet and fitness workout: Twitter is a place where most people are eager to help one another. If you tweet asking for a tried and tested home remedy for a cold, you'll be flooded with responses in seconds. Use this not-so-common helpful streak in people and tweet about what you're eating, and when you're exercising. As this becomes a regular habit you'll find it starts motivating you to eat better and exercise more. You might even get scold tweets from peers when you say that you've missed a workout and it'll help you stay focused on your fitness targets.

Use a fitness hashtag within a peer group of motivators: Despite wanting to interact with everyone on Twitter, we usually end up interacting a lot with one or two groups of like-minded people. Use this to your advantage by letting them in on your fitness goals. Chances are they'll want to join the journey. So add a hashtag like #NewBody or #SexySoon and see how quickly you create this high performance group that helps you stay in the game of using Twitter for fitness.

You use Twitter to stay in the tech loop, the entrepreneur loop, the breaking news loop...go one further and use it to stay in the fitness loop. After all, when was the last time you had a conscience that stayed switched on for more than an hour?