Swimsuit season is just around the corner which means for many it is an added pressure to lose those extra winter pounds. Dieting can be difficult and fees can add up fast with pricy trainers, dieticians, and health advisors which are needed to assist in a healthy weight lose plan. With the decrease in the economy and money being tight, many of you looking to lose extra inches from your waistline might deem it impossible to hire all of these necessary experts. Fortunately for those savvy internet users, all of these experts are bundled together conveniently at your fingertips on one website; best of all, the entire website is 100% free!
A friend of mine introduced me to the website that has all experts in health at one location a few months ago. The much needed website is Spark People; again, it is completely free to use online. All that is needed to join the many on Spark People is to setup a user account and have the want to change your lifestyle.
The first step is to setup a user account; privacy is the key and you can chose to put in or leave out as much information as you please. The only private information necessary is an e-mail address so that you can activate your account. Before doing this first step, I suggest finding out your personal weight goals – whether your goal is to gain or lose weight. Since this is also the beginning of your lifestyle change it is helpful to know your current weight (this can be entered later but is easier in this first step).
Once your account has been activated, a new inner menu page will appear. At first it can be overwhelming with all the available free information. My suggestion is to watch the introduction video to learn the website and all of its components available to each user. This free introduction video goes over the basics of the website and assists in setting up your exercise and nutrition goals.
Readers beware, Sparkpeople is not just another diet website out in cyberspace; it is a community of live support and professional guidance throughout your entire experience. Some of the features that are special are:
Counting calories has never been so easy and yes, fun. There are two options that a user can choose to input daily calories. The first is to have Sparkpeople layout all your menu plans (includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner) according to your dietary needs that you specify in the beginning. Secondly, if you feel you can make your own food choices within the daily calorie intake that the website suggests, you may do so yourself.
The nutrition tracker also monitors your fruits, vegetables, sodium, carbohydrates, sugars and et cetera daily to assure you are eating the proper types of food. This is especially helpful if you are watching your daily intake for medical reasons such as heart disease or diabetes. At the end of the day, you can print out a copy of your nutrition information for the day; this is helpful for those people keeping a food diary.
2. Fitness Tracker:
A diet would not be enough with just a restriction on food intake but also must include a routine/schedule of exercise. The fitness tracker keeps a schedule each day showing the amount of calories burnt off. There is not a strict regimen for what exercises should be done daily but rather the program helps with counting the calories. The user can chose among many already setup popular exercises such as running on the treadmill, walking outdoors, mowing the lawn, chopping wood, elliptical and so on. Just entire the amount of minutes that you did each exercise and the system will track how many calories you have just burnt off.
If you are new exercise and unsure what type of exercise to perform, I highly suggest the videos that are setup my fitness experts at Spark People. There are free videos ranging from how to do crunches to a full routine called Boot Camp. At the end of each video the system will allow you to click a simple button and the exercise will be tracked in your fitness tracker for the day. The site also has muscle toning exercises that can be setup three times a week.
Personally, I love the fitness tracker because I am usually unsure how many calories I burn each day. I tend to do indoor and outdoor exercises. When I first started exercising, I was unsure how many calories I was burning off by doing 30 Day Shred videos from Jillian Michael’s (TV’s Biggest Loser Trainer) and running outdoors. I was amazed to find out that I was not burning as many calories as I previously had intended on burning off each day. So, Spark People really assisted in helping me find out how many calories I was burning by the minutes and intensity I was performing each exercise.
3. Health Resources
Another benefit of using Spark People is the health expertise that is available for free on the site to registered users. These resources are usually written articles by dieticians or experts in the field of medicine. There are also more than a handful of online videos that have been recorded to assist users in understanding health conditions that many of us have current issues or may in the future.
4. Community Support:
If you tend to fall of the bandwagon when diet & exercising, I highly suggest the community support section of the Spark People website. There are support groups of many types, motivation chat boards, Spark People mail, friend feeds, and private blogs for each user and so on.
Personally I have found many groups in the community support section that are geared towards helping live a healthier lifestyle (which happens to be my 2009 New Years Resolution) such as Healthy Bento Support Group, Healthy Recipe Sharing, Boot Camp Users, Yoga Lovers and so many more. Each day these support groups come up with different and exciting conversational topics to join in on or allow the members to help each other with problems or questions. If you are not dieting/gaining weight with people around you, I highly suggest this amazing support system that is again 100% free!
There are millions of people using Spark People today and has been talked about by many top media outlets such as Today, People Magazine, USA Today, Ellen and so on. It was even announced as Business Week’s “Best Health Website” in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Hence, there are many different types of users that need specific information to help guide them throughout the entire lifestyle change. For this reason, there are associated resources connected to Spark People to further assist people more specifically towards their needs. For instance there is a separate resource site to assist those people looking to have babies in the future, dieting teens, challenges for entire families, and so on.
There is simply something for everyone at Spark People. I have found the daily Spark People reward point system to be one of my most driving forces in assisting my diet/exercise plan. In addition, there is so much to do on Spark People I find myself getting engrossed into the website for hours daily just reading, writing and finding out to better myself mentally and physically. I highly suggest this site for anyone trying to change their life through diet and exercise!
