Solo Technology

As I ramp up plans for my upcoming midlife crisis I’ve shifted focus back to diet & exercise. I’d been slacking lately… time to recover some recent gains and get back on track.

The only way I have ever lost weight has involved logging everything I eat. Paper or programs don’t matter much, but I have to log it. I’ve used tons of different methods in the past. Those that “stick” help me succeed. Those that are a pain or tedious get dropped by the wayside along with my goals.

Last time around I built a little web app with Zoho Creator that I used for about 6 months. It worked well, but over time it grew a bit cumbersome due, mostly, to my lack of truly thinking through the design. I’ve recently been sampling other online options but hadn’t really found anything that clicked until a couple of nights ago.

Wednesday night I had just read Rich’s mid life crisis post (lot of that going around!) and he mentioned a site I hadn’t heard of before: SparkPeople. I had a look and have decided to give it a shot for the long term.

At first glance, it’s a bit “busy” but once I had a chance to look things over and mentally filter out the clutter I like it quite a bit. Things work in a way that I expect them to and tracking foods and fitness are very easy to do.

Note on food tracking: It’ll offer to setup a diet plan based on your goals. The plan didn’t look too bad, but I opted to turn that off and just log my foods. Even going that route it still shows me how I’m doing each day against the plan for targeted calories, fats, carbs and protein. That method suits me just fine. (those targets being based on my goals of course).

Fitness is about the same. You can let it setup plans or you can setup your own and just tell it what you’ve done (which is what I’m doing). The calorie calculator has been very close to what my bike computer tells me which is welcome surprise.

Final bonus? There’s a mobile version that works great from my Windows Mobile phone. You can even use that to look up restaurant and other foods without having to log in. Or you can log in and log stuff.

Did I mention it’s all free?

6 Responses to “SparkPeople — Weird Name, Cool Site”

1. Doris Kub on June 27th, 2008 10:49 pm
   

   Not even in Stage 4 yet but already spreading the spark?
   I had similar experiences with SparkPeople - it took a couple of hours to get used to all the information jumping into your face on every page, and the meal plans didn’t stay activated for long, but it definitely triggered that “click”.

   And if even someone as bad with keeping up a daily routine as I can make it to the first anniversary (next week it’s 12 months of SP goodness for me ), it’s definitely something easy to stick with!

2. Luis on June 28th, 2008 6:31 am
   

   I just signed up, lets see how far I get before I get bored with it. Looks like an interesting site, thanks for the tip.

3. Chris on June 28th, 2008 4:40 pm
   

   @Doris - Yup, I’m still only Stage 1. Guess I’m an over-achiever

   Congratulations on 12 months!

   @Luis - best of luck with it.

4. Peter Motyka on June 28th, 2008 10:28 pm
   

   Neat site, I’m maxed on calories for the day, but plenty of water to drink still

5. Matt on June 30th, 2008 2:14 pm
   

   I screwed around with that site at one point. If I were looking to track my stuff again it would probably be my first stop (in fact I just got an email from them last week giving me tips on getting back on a program after a lapse).

   The only warning I’ll give is to be careful about existing products in the food db. Apparently some of those are entered by your fellow users and I came across a few typos. The first and most dramatic one I found nearly convinced me that I could squeeze in a small Sonic Reeces Blast for the day. The value in the db was something like 250 calories, looking it up outside of Spark it ended up being more like 600. Most of the other differences I spotted were stuff like people listing the per oz values but labeling it per serving.

   Once you get your stable of foods entered in for yourself though it’s a total breeze. Tracking is anyway, sticking to the plan is a whole other thing.

6. Chris on June 30th, 2008 8:00 pm
   

   I’m approaching a week of consistent use. 2 pounds dropped too

   Good points, Matt. When the SparkPeople db doesn’t have the food I’m after I search the manually entered item from other folks. I’ll often find many copies of the same item — usually not all with the same nutritional info! I just grab one that’s right or enter my own.

   CalorieKing.com is very helpful for researching foods too.

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