The key to successful weight loss is support—including your social media network, according to research out of the University of South Carolina that found Twitter can improve your odds of shedding pounds.

All participants in the study received nutrition, exercise, and goal-setting advice via podcasts, but half of them also used Twitter as a weight-loss aid. They received daily tweets from a weight counselor and followed other study participants in an effort to provide a broad range of social support.

Both groups lost weight during the six-month study, with the active tweeters dropping the most pounds—every 10 posts to Twitter correlated with a 0.5 percent weight loss…

Read the whole blog post published on Shape.com here