Every Lose It or Lose It user gets a daily reminder: “STEP AWAY FROM THE CHEESEBURGER!” we exhort our users. “DON’T CONCENTRATE ON THAT TWENTY POUNDS, just concentrate on the two pounds you need to lose for your next weigh-in!”

Users can get their reminders either through email or SMS. At least, they could until we discovered that Clickatell, had been accepting our SMS messages for delivery BUT NOT SENDING THEM since February 25th!

Without the SMS reminders, our users were in imminent danger of re-lard-i-fication! What might they do if we are not constantly nagging them to make good choices?

Randy heard about Twilio, a cloud-telephony service that lets your website actually call your users on the telephone and play MP3 files to them (that’s to start with; there’s a whole bunch of XML stuff you can do, too.)  What we needed was an option to replace SMS — and fast!

So during lunch we ran around the corner to the local AM radio station (WCHE 1520 in West Chester, PA), and asked them to let us record some voice reminders to send as outbound telephone calls through Twilio.  John (on the left) and Randy (on the right) are recording one of the message that YOU will hear on your phone when you sign up for a 10-, 20-, or 30-pound Lose It or Lose It plan!

Here’s the message we were recording in the picture above.

MAN, did we have a good time doing this. Especially with JT, the morning-host DJ and studio technician, to clean up our goofy recording and make us sound like we actually know what we are doing. Thanks, JT! We’ll be back to record more reminders! And thanks, Twilio, for making it so easy to solve our SMS emergency!

Voice reminders should appear as an option in your preferences starting this weekend — as soon as Randy stops raging long enough to be able to see his monitor again!

UPDATE: I got my voice message delivered tonight, and I wasn’t fast enough on the draw, so my phone sent it to Google Voice. Here’s the transcript that GV emailed me a minute later. My favorite bit: “now that you’re ON THE ZAR”!

Have problems sticking to a weight-loss plan? It could be because you keep procrastinating! The Economist has some info on why this may be happening. Use Lose It or Lose It to force you to not procrastinate for the next 10 weeks and lose 10-30 lb!

The site Beautiful People just kicked out 5000 members for gaining weight over the holidays (Mashable and Techcrunch). If you are no longer considered beautiful, don’t worry, we’ll still love you and welcome you with open arms! If you use our Lose It or Lose It to lose some weight, they may just take you back. That is, if you want to go back :).

We just pushed an update that allows users to see other user’s weigh-ins. Just click on the “Community” tab at the top of your profile to see how other people are doing. This is currently only visible to Lose It or Lose It users.

If you don’t have an account yet, check out the landing page where we show four random profiles on each page load:

Thank you and we hope this update enhances your Lose It or Lose It experience!

Derek talks about how stating your plans makes you less likely to accomplish them because in your own mind, that is the same thing as actually doing it. Makes sense… however, I think you should announce your plans to lose weight then use Lose It or Lose It to stick to it!

I can’t believe I found this! I was struggling recently with peeling hard-boiled eggs and thought there had to be a better way, and there is! You can also use old(er) eggs but that is a pain to keep track of.

Previously it was a little bit difficult to see who was using Lose It or Lose It. We will be adding some features that make it easier to find other users, starting with some profiles on the landing page!

I wanted to take this time to thank the handful of beta users that helped iron out some of the rough edges of Lose It or Lose It before it was released to the public. They had to deal with all sorts of weird things like

1. Having to enter multiple usernames/passwords just to use the site
2. Limiting their accountability friends to those of us already using the site
3. Being the first ones to say what their weight was publicly
4. Browser bugs (yuck!)

Thank you AWESOME BETA USERS! Here they are in the order in which they signed up and a little bit of info about them:

1. John Young - John is the owner of TIkaro Interactive, Founder of Guerilla Drive-In, Cofounder of Nerd Merit Badges (with me!) and an all-around creative-smart-friendly guy. You can find him on Twitter as @tikaro and on Lose It or Lose It as tikaro (he’s the high-roller at $1500!).
2. Brian Orme - Brian is a huggably nice guy who has helped make Lose It or Lose It better by submitting a lot of feedback. You can find him on Lose It or Lose It as FlabMaster (he is currently losing the most weight!)
3. Jim Haigney - Jim is a beetamer extraordinaire (he tames bees and convinces them to give up their honey… it’s delicious!). You can find him on Twitter as @westchesterdead and on Lose It or Lose It as westchesterdead (He is also our #2 invester! Thanks!).
4. Ellen Peters - Ellen is an opera singer, how cool is that?! We just saw her and the Philadelphia Singers perform “Christmas on Logan Square” and it was FANtastic! You can also hear her singing with Opera Company of Philadelphia or helping people set up vacations at Untours! You can find her on Twitter as @ApatheticAlto and on Lose It or Lose It as ApatheticAlto.
5. Rebecca Schmidt - Besides being a magnificent Support Counselor at Lakeside Education Network, she is also my lovely wife! You can find her on Twitter as @bexs and on Lose It or Lose It as bexs (she is the only one without an avatar :).
6. Mike Mangino - Mike is the owner of Elevated Code and a marathoner (that means he can run further than I typically like to drive)! You can find him on Twitter as @mikemangino and on Lose It or Lose It as mmangino.

Thanks again you guys for being so awesome and helping make Lose It or Lose It better!

Post-Thanksgiving Reality Check Promotion!!

Since we really really want to help you lose weight, but we also love chocolate (!), be one of the first 100 people to sign up at Lose It or Lose It by 11:55 PM EDT on Friday, November 27th, 2009 (the day after Thanksgiving) with $250 or more on the line and we will send you a box of 4 chocolates similar to above from Éclat Chocolate! Signing up and starting your plan ~nowish means you ALREADY lost 5, 10, or 15 pounds by New Years!

To qualify, you must be 1 of the first 100 people to do both of the following steps:

1. Sign up at Lose It or Lose It (There is a $50 cancellation fee so don’t sign up with the idea to immediately cancel your account! We love you too much to let you do that!) You can sign up whenever you want and weigh in for the first time after Thanksgiving!
2. Fill out the form over here to get your chocolates!

Thank you and we CAN’T WAIT to have you lovely people as our users :)