Help - Setup, Syntax and FAQs

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What is Tweetwhatyoueat?

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

How does it work?

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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' through Twitter. Simply tweet or twit 'follow twye.'
• 'TWYE' then makes friends with you. In order for that to happen, you must follow the setup steps.
• You then send direct messages to TWYE with the food items you’ve eaten like this, 'd twye yogurt cup.'
• Tweetwhatyoueat.com regularly checks for direct messages sent to TWYE, parses them, and stores them as part of your diary.

Will all my Twitter friends see my diary posts?

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No. When you use Tweetwhatyoueat, you’re sending food diary 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?

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Twitter is the perfect platform for a food diary application. You can send Twitter messages from a phone via SMS, your favorite IM client and even the web through Twitter.com! That makes it very versatile for our on-the-go lifestyles.

How to setup a diary

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Follow the setup process for step-by-step guided instructions. Here's an overview of the setup process:

1. Login to Twitter and enter the following update – 'follow twye.'
2. TWYE will then follow you. This process occurs automatically ever two minutes.
3. Send your first diary entry. Tweet 'd twye food item.'
4. You just sent a direct message to "TWYE," the tweetwhatyoueat.com application. It will get parsed and added to your food diary. This happens automatically every minute.
5. Your diary is now setup. Access it through www.tweetwhatyoueat.com/locator. You’ll be prompted to enter your Twitter name to locate your diary and to cookie you for subsequent visits.

Adding new entries

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

• Twitter – send a direct message to user ‘TWYE’ like so - “d twye fruit rollup.” See syntax table above for reference.
• My Diary – with Edit Mode “on,” you will see a link labeled “add new entry” at the top of your diary which allows you to add diary entries directly from inside My Diary. See Editing your diary below for more info on how to turn Edit Mode on from My Diary.

Editing your diary

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You can add, edit and delete your diary entries in My Diary once Edit Mode is turned “on.” Here are the steps:

• Go to My Diary
• Click Edit Mode “on” in the top-right column of the identity area near your Twitter picture.
• You will be prompted to enter you diary edit key which was sent to your Twitter account as a direct message when you first registered. Once you’ve located and successfully entered your edit key, you will be re-directed to My Diary and messaged that "edit mode" is on. You'll now see some additional controls.

At the top of your diary, you’ll see an “add new entry” link. Next to each diary entry you’ll see two controls – a garbage can icon which deletes the entry, and an edit link which you can use to edit the name, calorie amount and date the entry was posted.

Setting a reminder

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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 reminder. 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

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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 or when you enter calories for foods on the homepage
• 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-fill uncaloried foods in your diary

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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. Turn Edit Mode 'on' (you'll need to enter your edit key which was sent as a direct message to your Twitter account upon registration with TWYE)
3. Click the 'edit settings' link in My Diary
4. Check the "Use CrowdCal profiles in my diary" checkbox and the "Update" button

You will be directed back to your food diary (the setting may take up to two minutes to commit, please be patient) 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 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

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Tweetwhatyoueat now supports weight tracking! Input weight entries the same way you add food entries - either through Twitter, or the web. 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 the web, 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. Use the 'add weight entry' link to add new weight entries directly to your diary. Weight entries are protected!