Christmas is often a time of gluttony for many. From a traditional roast through to too much alcohol, many will be suffering long Christmas hangovers, particularly those not fortunate enough to live in a country with a gazetted post Christmas recovery public holiday (Boxing Day on Wikipedia here). Even if you do have December 26 off, with January 1 around the corner it’s time for resolutions about getting fit and healthy. Here’s a few sites we’ve reviewed that will help you along the way. Fat Secret (review: April 2007) Fat Secret is designed to help overweight people leverage a network of friends and online resources to lose weight by building a support network around you to monitor your progress. Users first state their current and goal weights, and are urged to report in daily with their updated weight. This data builds a graph that is included on their profile page showing progress over time. Each user is also provided with a blog/journal and can add other Fatsecret users as friends. DietTV (previously Diet Television: review November 2006) The site is a directory of diet plans that combines user ratings and professional nutritionist analysis of various factors like ease of implementation, speed of weight loss and allowable alcohol consumption. The company says it is based on two ideas: that dieting is hard and that community is one of the biggest factors in successful weight loss. There was information available on 47 different diets when we first reviewed the site. To search for a diet, users move 12 sliders to indicate which diet and food factors are most important to them. The site recommends which ones could best fit their needs. Users can also contribute off-site links related to any diet. Traineo (review December 2006) Traineo is a health and fitness support site where users report their weight, diet, and exercise daily to a group of friends who help monitor and support one another….Instead of inputting how many ounces of cheese you ate in your burrito, and how much cream you put in your coffee, Traineo allows you to just give an estimation of how you think you ate each day. Based on your age, weight, and goal, it tells you how many calories you should aim for and, at the end of the day, you tell the program if you ate poor, average, fair, or great. If you’ve spent Christmas alone, → Read More
There’s a new Australia-based social network called FatSecret – it’s designed to help overweight people leverage a network of friends and online resources to lose weight. Like Traineo, which we wrote about last year, Fatsecret focuses on building a support network around you to monitor your progress. Users first state their current and goal weights, and are urged to report in daily with their updated weight. This data builds a graph that is included on their profile page showing progress over time. Each user is also provided with a blog/journal and can add other Fatsecret users as friends. Users are given information on various diets (Atkins, South Beach, etc.). Diets are commented and ranked by other users, creating a top list. There is also a recipe area with a detailed breakdown of the nutritional value of the recipe, along with user ratings and compliance with various diets. Users can upload their own recipes in a very structured way, and Fatsecret will calculate the nutritional value by analyzing the amount and types of ingredients. Fatsecret doesn’t currently have any way to encourage or track exercise, and this is a natural place for expansion. Overall the service is a great resource for people trying to lose weight. I believe Traineo’s method of getting four friends involved who will monitor your progress via email is a a really good idea. With Fatsecret, unless you make friends on the site or get your existing friends to also join and become members, it could quickly become a very lonely place. I would also like to see Fatsecret provide the weight graph as a widget, so users can add it to their website (see Skinnyr). CenterNetworks has a good overview of some of the other new weight loss focused websites. → Read More
