SparkPeople was founded by Chris “Sparky” Downie, one of the architects of Up4Sale.com, and Ebay’s first acquisition right before it went public. Presumably this left Chris pretty comfortable financially, and he was able to start development of SparkPeople.com, his long-time passion, when he left Ebay three years later.

SparkPeople boasts a clean, if somewhat dated, design and an intuitive interface, but the sheer amount of information may overwhelm some people. Even though SP advocates taking your time and getting to know the site, it took me over a month to work up the desire to wade through all the information.

A wizard makes the initial set up quite easy, and once your current weight, target weight, fitness level, and nutritional preferences are entered, a meal plan and nutrition and fitness targets are generated. (A note on the nutritional preferences: While I found the options to be quite flexible, i.e. vegetarian, low-cholesterol, etc., I was disappointed that low-sugar/diabetic choice wasn’t offered.)

SparkPeople is so feature-and-content rich that it would be impossible to accurately review it in anything less than a volume the size of War and Peace, so this examination will focus on just the highlights.

Nutrition
In addition to a comprehensive food database that contains over 10,000 entries, including fast-food and name brands, SP includes a food journal to track your daily food intake. From this input, SP will calculate your total calories, fat, carbohydrates, and any other nutrient you’d like to track. If you’re not near a computer at mealtime (who is?) and you own a camera phone (who doesn’t?), you can email a photo of your meal to your account so you can enter an accurate accounting later. Both the food journal and meal planner are flexible and allow you to add your own foods and meals. In addition, a bank of healthy recipes is included and can be added individually to your meal plan.

Motivation & Goal Setting
Goal setting and staying motivated are an integral component to the SparkPeople concept. As mentioned in a SparkPeople article, most diets just tell you what to eat and don’t even address the #1 roadblock to weight loss – lack of motivation. SparkPeople.com counters this obstacle by teaching users to start small and develop effective diet strategies. A thriving user community provides support and encouragement along the way.

The points system provides additional motivation, and of course, the comprehensive progress reports offer great feedback.

Exercise
SparkPeople boasts an impressive library of fitness articles. In addition, there are illustrations and videos that demonstrate the proper technique. Exercises are categorized as beginner or advanced and require little, if any, equipment. (Medicine balls, Swiss balls, and a towel are the three props utilized.) Exercises can be tracked in the fitness log, and like the food log, users can use the prepackaged exercises, or add their own. Reports can be generated from the log results.

Community
This is where SparkPeople really excels. Personalized pages, a la MySpace, allow users to chronicle their weight loss, post photos, and blog. Lively message boards provide a positive place for users to offer encouragement and tips to each other, while the journal feature sets aside some virtual quiet time for reflection. There’s also a Diet Buddy forum where users can partner with another user with similar goals.

Tracking/Reporting
Track nutrition, fitness, and weight goals using SparkPeople’s extensive collection of printable reports, including weight, measurements, water intake, exercise frequency, and goal setting.

All in all, this is by far the most useful fitness site on the web. If you’re looking to lose weight, you can’t go wrong here.

Note: If you do decide to join, consider listing me as your referrer. Even though there’s no reward as such, I really am coveting that next level’s icon (think of it as profile bling) and SparkPeople awards 10 points for each member referred. While you’re at it, add me (daniesq) as a friend. No points are offered for adding friends, I believe, but I’d welcome your company!

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One of the hardest things for me to do while dieting – aside from getting on the treadmill – is drinking enough water. Even though we have no fewer than six gallons of Ozarka in our kitchen, I still seem to forget to drink water – or anything else. So you can imagine my interest when I read about a new, “interactive”, water bottle. Billed as the “water bottle that nags you”, HydroCoach calculates the amount of water you need,  the amount of water you consume, the time it takes for you to drink your water (so you can pace yourself), and your average water consumption. Although it isn’t as quite interactive as the Shockulate Vault that delivers a mild electric shock to would-be diet cheaters (or my personal favorite, the device that delivers a similar shock to snoring spouses), it does seem like a neat idea. Not neat enough for me to part with $30, the suggested retail price, but still – neat.

Now if they would come up with one that would nag my kids to clean their rooms, they’d have my money in a heartbeat.

Technorati Tags: HydroCoach, water bottle, diet, hydration

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Bad manners seems to be making a comeback on the ‘net. Consider this screen capture from Skinnyr, a site that lets you “track your weight with a graph thingy!” You’d think that with such limited functionality, they’d be a little nicer to their users. I might add that part of the signup process is giving them your weight and height. If you’re any kind of overweight, seeing your disproportional weight and height reflected back at you from your screen is disheartening enough without being insulted by the site you wanted to join to help you in your weight loss efforts.

In other news, there’s a new crop of MySpace competitors/clones that have been launched since my last post on said sites. One of the new clones that I’m really liking the idea of is BakeSpace.com. It’s a MySpace for cooks. How cool is that? It’s a pretty site (they get points for that from me) and there are some neat features like being able to forward recipes, but filling out your profile will take about the same amount of time that writing the sequel to War and Peace would. Pack a lunch. In addition, they’re hampered by a small user base – and as a result – a very limited recipe offering. If they can increase membership, I think this has the potential to be a great site. Still, they have their work cut out for them with “competitors” such as AllRecipes.com and Meals.com.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, BakeSpace, cooking, manners, etiquette, recipes

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I met a dear, dear friend of mine for coffee today. We hadn’t seen each other in months and as we hugged I gushed about the weight she’d lost, followed up by a breezy comment about how much I had gained. She grimaced, nodding her head emphatically in agreement. Although that’s not exactly the response I was looking for (I was actually looking for something along the lines of “it’s not that much” or “you carry it well.”) I certainly couldn’t be angry with her. It’s the truth! So I resolved then and there to forego the grande vanilla latte no foam, get my butt on the treadmill, and start dieting. Of course, I can’t do this in a low-tech way – it’s against my religion. So today I’ve provided a roundup of the best diet and exercise sites that I’ve managed to find.

• PeerTrainer: I really like the social aspects of this site. Users join groups that are limited to a maximum of four people to promote personal accountability. There is also a log to record meals, workouts, and notes, but these are just text fields so there’s no food-item lookup like more robust sites. I think this would be a good site to join in addition to a tracking site.
• The Daily Plate: Right now, this is the clear winner in this category. It features a food database with over 100,000 items, including restaurant offerings. Food items can be joined together to create meals, as well. There are tools to track food and water consumption, calculate daily calorie goals, log daily exercise activities, and even a journaling option. You can also upload up to 10 photos to create a visual record of your progress. The social aspect is covered, albeit weakly, with message boards. If The Daily Plate could kick up the socializing, this would be darn near perfect.
• Fit Day: Finally, there’s Fit Day. I noticed quite a lot of users on del.icio.us with this site bookmarked, so I decided to check it out. The site boasts impressive functionality, with a food database, meal tracking, exercise logs, a calendar, goals monitoring, journaling, and at least seven different reports. There is no interaction with other users as far as I can tell. One thing I do find annoying about the site is that even though it’s free, the ads for their companion software are intrusive and persistent.

I was disappointed with the slim pickings in this category. There are a number of sites in closed betas, though, so hopefully we’ll have some more choices soon.

I’ve joined PeerTrainer and The Daily Plate, and I think I’ll be working these sites. My goal for this week is to get all the tools and plans in order so that I can start this officially on Monday. In the meantime, I’ll be working up to at least 8 glasses a day of water. I figure I ought to meet my exercise requirement running back and forth to the restroom.

Tags: weight loss, Peer Trainer, The Daily Plate, Fit Day

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