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Losing weight the Web 2.0 way – Fat-Off challenge
So now that the tryptophan has settled, and the holiday eating season is upon us, I want to give you some suggestions on sites that can help you battle the bulge. I call it the Web Apps Fat-Off. These are apps that really hit upon many of the new Web 2.0 ideas and really are some great ways to help you lose the weight. Everyone I talk to asks me to pick my favorite.
If I was to pick just one, which is very hard since they are all a bit different, I would pick traineo. It really is very robust and the programming behind it is also very strong. But that aside, give them all a try and make up your own mind! Let’s hit those treadmills, pump some iron and really do the Fat-Off proud! I know that I need to lose weight and will be using these apps to help me get there.
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RunFatBoy |
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RunFatBoy is a tool created by Jim Jones to help newbies lose weight. RunFatBoy provides customized workouts based on your weight and then you can customize the workouts from there.
Pros
- $5 per month
- Very customizable to create the workout that will work for you
- Lots of Web 2.0 goodness
- Offers both Metric and Standard
- Easy to use, functionality works well
Areas for improvement
- Ability to go back in history – appears you can only look at the current week
- Algorithm for initial workout – not sure where the weights come from but they seem heavy for an obese man (I would assume just as bad for a woman)
- Some information on where the pre-defined workout comes from – this is an issue I have with every tool I have looked at.
- Needs graphs of workouts and weights
General thoughts:
I think RunFatBoy is for someone who wants a little bit more than Skinnyr, but less than Traineo. If you want a way to track your workouts in an easy to use manner with a diary, then RunFatBoy is for you. If you are the type that needs a community for motivation, then look elsewhere. For me, the suggestions above would need to be implemented for it to be worth the $5/month charge.
Screenshots – click to enlarge
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iTrainHarder |
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iTrainHarder is a pretty robust site in the areas of nutrition/fitness tracking and planning. The site iTrainHarder defines themselves as:
iTrainHarder is an online nutrition and fitness tracking and planning system that allows you to see your results as well as plan for new ones. Our software will allow you to track your progress using the most advanced web tools available for personal fitness.
Pros
- Very well built application, smooth and robust technology
- Site has 5 major components: nutrition, training, measurements, blog and trainer.
- No matter what food I tried, I could not find one that is not in their database
- Each feature has a tutorial video
- Usability is high
Areas for Improvement
- Design is very geeky, not easy enough on the eyes
- Appears to be set for men, not women in its appearance
- No community – could be a positive or a negative
- Explain the pricing – “as low as” – what does the pricing look like?
- Make the design more relaxed with colors that make people feel more relaxed
- Add some line height to the text – there is tons of (good) text on the site but it is a little hard to read with the lines being so tight
Final thoughts:
I think iTrainHarder really is an excellent comprehensive tool. I think it is worth the $3.75/month. Especially if you have a fitness trainer because it really rounds out what they do with you. If they could work on some of my suggestions above, then I think they could have a very powerful market leader with iTrainHarder. As with most of the other sites, having some backing from a doctor, nutritionist and fitness trainer will help add credibility and “certification” to iTrainHarder. iTrainHarder offers a free week trial. I suggest you give it a try when you are ready to manage your weight and fitness routine.
Screenshots – click to enlarge
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Skinnyr |
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Skinnyr is the most basic of the tools tested (it is still very useful!). The idea with Skinnyr is that you can create a graph with your current weight. You can put the graph on any site you are associated with like MySpace or your blog. Here is a test graph I just made to demonstrate:
Here’s another site in the same category — weightcircles.com.
Hi! You forgot our site :-)
MyFitTribe has a great supportive community, coupled with the best fitness gurus, certified trainers, nutritionists and doctors around! They help all our individual members for free! Not to mention the huge selection of free videos, workout circuit videos for ipod as well as a great article database! Please, check us out at http://www.myfittribe.com and let us know what you think, we’re striving to be the best out there and love to hear feedback! THANK YOU!
Best regards,
Jamo
Hi! You forgot our site :-)
MyFitTribe has a great supportive community, coupled with the best fitness gurus, certified trainers, nutritionists and doctors around! They help all our individual members for free! Not to mention the huge selection of free videos, workout circuit videos for ipod as well as a great article database! Please, check us out at http://www.myfittribe.com and let us know what you think, we’re striving to be the best out there and love to hear feedback! THANK YOU!
Best regards,
Jamo
I just came across another one. Can someone review this one :
http://www.nutrlog.com
Thankx
Since others are posting about their site, I thought I would let you know about Gyminee.com. Gyminee has a social aspect like many other fitness sites, but it also has a very good interface for tracking workout progress (something I think other sites lack). It is useful for people who are new to working out or who have been working out for a long time.
Be sure to check it out and let us know what you think. We are continuing to make improvements to the site everyday.
We’ve set up a community based site for runners which is rapidly growing, and might come in handy for people looking for similar sites. With map runner you can save, find and share your running routes and meet other runners like you in your area.
We’ve only recently launched so check it out and let us know what you think!
Atkins "Nightmare" Diet
When Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution was first published, the President of the American College of Nutrition said, "Of all the bizarre diets that have been proposed in the last 50 years, this is the most dangerous to the public if followed for any length of time."[1]
When the chief health officer for the State of Maryland,[2] was asked "What’s wrong with the Atkins Diet?" He replied "What’s wrong with… taking an overdose of sleeping pills? You are placing your body in jeopardy." He continued "Although you can lose weight on these nutritionally unsound diets, you do so at the risk of your health and even your life."[3]
The Chair of Harvard’s nutrition department went on record before a 1973 U.S. Senate Select Committee investigating fad diets: "The Atkins Diet is nonsense… Any book that recommends unlimited amounts of meat, butter, and eggs, as this one does, in my opinion is dangerous. The author who makes the suggestion is guilty of malpractice."[4]
As a beginner in weight training I’m have a hard time finding a really good user friendly web 2.0 website that can provide me with the basics I think most beginners need. WHAT TO DO? These sights are nice but other then runfatboy none of them give me me a nice simple method to create a custom workout for my goals and time (I have about 30-40mins for weights and 20-30 for aerobic 3 days a week). I would like to lose fat and gain muscle but I don’t need to be Arnold.
Most of these cool looking sites would do well to provide these types of tools for free, that way you get people to your website.
We’re also new and launching on Monday. Our program is a web 2.0 hybrid and uses a highly accurate USB pedometer that uploads all your stats to your online profile. We offer tracking of activity, nutrition and you body. As well as live coaching from certified personal trainers. The community has walking clubs, walking buddies, forums, blogs and more. We’ll be adding on new features every week with video and podcasts.
Here’s another site in the same category — weightcircles.com.
This site matches people to circles with similar interests and weight loss goals (mom’s circle, parent’s circle, vegetarian circle, challenge circle, etc). It’s an online support group focused on helping you stay motivated no matter what diet or exercise program you’re on.
We are also new and adding features regularly – check it out!
fitday is good as well with lots of great features and graphs to help track your diet they offer a free online version or you can buy the program for offline for 20 or so bucks, I’ve been using it a while and its great for tracking your diet. I noticed the other sites when talking about how many calories you burn each day, they don’t count your basal metabolic rate, and if you dont count that your missing about 1300 calories burned a day. If you think your only burning 238 (like traineo said) then oyu will eat way less than you should in oreder to stay healthy
Be careful with fitday, they seem to overestimate your calories burned by a lot. I don’t lead a sedentary lifestyle but I used that setting for fitday and it still has me burning over 2200 cal a day, before exercise! I’m female, 5’9″ and weigh about 155. Any time I calculate my daily burn using any of the other formulas or a calculators available, I would get a number closer to 1500-1900 cal before exercise. No wonder I wasn’t losing weight when I used that program, I thought I could eat so much more and still lose my 2 pounds a week because it said I had burned so much.
I created Bellygraph a year ago for helping me with weight loss goals. It’s a “public graphing” site, specifically focused on helping people meet their goals by creating “big visual charts” of their progress that they can display online.
It’s also free.
Props for doing this excellent summary of all the available services!
Jordan Willms
Gimme20.com Fitness Tracking
FYI: the thumbnails for itrainharder are the wrong thumbnails!
Cheers
J | Gimme20.com
Fixed – thanks J :)
This is great – thanks. Anyone on your list create a web app for logging your sleep? 1 extra hour a day is a great way to burn calories. Pretty painless too.
You can track your hours of sleep each night with gimme20.com. It will create a plot for you and plot how many hours +/- per night.
J
Thanks for the tip, Anon — I’m posting about gimme20.com tomorrow on my blog. I’m sure it’ll help a lot of people with their new year’s resolutions about weight loss and sleep.
We have not advertised much yet, but http://www.FitLink.com is a rapidly growing community that caters to a similar market.
Along with fairly standard social networking features like groups, forums, messaging, blogging, events, and photo sharing, we have fitness tools to track workouts, map running routes, calculate your BMI, and research exercises. You can even find a personal trainer who can assign you custom workouts online.
Cheers,
Jason
Since everyone else is commenting on their sites, I thought I might was welll mention that I’ve just posted a similar site that I originally created for my own personal use. It’s probably not as feature rich as some of these other sites, but it’s easy, and it does let you look up calories in foods, calories burned in exercises, calculates your basal burn rate, let’s you keep a diary, weigh-in, etc….
Also, it’s free, but it has Google Adsense ads on it.
I plan to add some community features soon. I think the first key one is the ability for members to add new foods to the database. Right now it only has the USDA (the same data that virtually all of these sites use). I think a tagging feature would be useful too, so you could tag foods with things like “trans fat”, etc…
Cheers, Rick
Hello Allen
Thanks for reviewing SparkPeople, we appreciate it!
You’re right, we do mention being free a lot – a big reason we do that it that it’s frustrating for us that so many people expect us to charge them since the site has so many features.
I welcome anyone to check out SparkPeople. After I sold my first company to eBay (eBay’s first acquisition just before their IPO), I started a new company as a way to SPARK millions of PEOPLE to reach their goals – just like I had overcome anxiety. Our passionate team loves helping people make a healthy lifestyle change! One of our goals is to have the most positive community for reaching goals on the net.
Good luck to all in reaching your goals, using whichever site is the best fit for you!
Chris/SparkGuy
I’ve been using fitsync.com for several years now. They have a big library of free workouts I can pick and download to my mobile. I log my workouts on my phone or pda right there and then. I get to view my progress and automatic analysis on my Web page. They’ve been around since 2000 so I’m surprised you didn’t include them. Guess they were Web 2.0 before anyone recognized it :)
Too be honest, when I saw traineo my heart sank. It really is a beautifull looking app. And I found it just as I’d finished http://www.youstats.com, which like all these applications is a weight, dimension and food tracker. It’s been going since mid November and is slowly growing.