Memorial Day is fast approaching, and we're all thinking about our plans for the summer. For those of us planning beach trips, it's time for the body to come out of winter hibernation.
Earlier this year, we looked at services that give you exercising tips. But good exercise, as experts say, isn't everything behind a great beach bod. Eating well is another major component.
Below is a roundup of tools that help you track your calorie intake and exercise routines, as well as help you find support from others who are working toward the same goal.
Beach bod tools
A Calorie Counter gives you nutrition facts.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)A Calorie Counter Tracking your calorie intake is important. That's why A Calorie Counter is a useful tool. It enables you to search the USDA Food Nutrition database for anything you've eaten throughout the day. Once you find what you're looking for in the results, it reveals nutritional facts and a box that lets you change your serving size. When you update your serving size, the nutritional fact image changes to show you exactly how many calories you consumed. I was happy with the size of the database, and changing your serving size takes seconds.
BuddySlim.com BuddySlim operates on the belief that trying to lose weight alone is too difficult. Because of that, it enables folks who are trying to lose weight to form communities around their common goals and inspire each other to keep exercising. The site lets you search for others by diet, exercise, goals, location, or gender. Once you find a "buddy," you can keep in touch through a free e-mail account the site provides, as well as blogs and forums. The tool itself features a weight tracker so you (and others) can monitor your progress. But the real value of BuddySlim is its active, engaging community.
The Daily Plate The Daily Plate is primarily a calorie counter. But it does quite a bit more. The site lets you track how many calories you've burned by exercising throughout the day. You can set up weight goals and track your progress toward them with charts and graphs. Although I was happy with The Daily Plate, I wasn't overly pleased with its calorie tracking. It's not nearly as useful as A Calorie Counter.
DietTV.com This site provides an end-to-end healthy lifestyle service with calorie tracking. But one of its best features is the option to create a workout regimen. It asks you for your current weight, finds out what your ideal weight would be, determines what kind of exercises you'd like to do, and creates a full-body workout.
I was able to create a regimen that included 60 minutes of exercise, four days a week, on an elliptical machine, supplemented by weight exercises to build muscle mass. It was a fantastic tool. I also liked that DietTV lets you join a support group. Since forcing yourself to work out can be difficult at times, joining the various support groups on DietTV could help you stay motivated. Each group lets you upload your weight, include photos of your progress, and communicate with others. It's a great system that more of these tools should have.
... Read moreSpring is almost here, and soon we'll be showing the world much more than just our heads and hands. That means it's time to get up off the couch and start doing whatever we can to get our bods ready for summer. Need advice on that? These sites can help.
Gyminee
If you're looking for a way to track your workouts and get some dietary advice, Gyminee is a great place to start.
In a matter of seconds, you'll be able to join Gyminee and start creating a workout regimen that will help you lose weight, tone your muscles, or gain strength. And you won't need to do it alone. With the help of Gyminee, you can find exercises and create a regimen from pre-configured workout routines based on your goals. Gyminee does a fine job of helping you do whatever you want.
Creating a custom workout in Gyminee is simple.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)Gyminee's tracking tools are very good. Once you sign up, you can put your weight, resting heart rate, and measurements into the system to see where you stand today. As long as you keep inputting that information on a regular basis, it will show you a detailed graph providing your progress over the term of your workout. That's easily my favorite feature because it's a great motivation tool that helps me see just how far I've come since I started exercising.
While Gyminee does a fine job with workouts and tracking, I was disappointed with its dietary advice. It does provide a detailed analysis of required calorie, fat, and protein intake to get you to your goal weight, but it doesn't do much more. It doesn't tell you what to eat and how to do it. It doesn't tell you when you should be eating. It basically tells you that you need to have a certain number of calories every day and leaves it at that. For a full-featured health improvement site, that's weak.
Gyminee boasts extra features like a forum so you can discuss health considerations, and you can make friends with others and track their progress. If you want, you can also set challenges and see how close you are to achieving those goals. Gyminee offers good features and it's worth using even though it doesn't have enough dietary information.
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Stickam, a company that allows users to stream their lives online, announced Monday that it has launched an application programming interface that will let users incorporate the company's service into any Web site or app. According to the company, users can use its video-streaming function on their sites without worry of bandwidth, server infrastructure, or Flash development, since it will all be hosted through Stickam. The API is available now as a public beta for the first 100 registered developers at no cost. Once the beta period ends, Stickam will charge developers an undisclosed fee based on a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
Human-powered search engine Mahalo announced on Monday the launch of Mahalo Answers, which allows users to submit questions to the community, which will then be answered by other Mahalo users. Mahalo Answers is quite similar to Yahoo Answers, but it does feature one twist: users can offer "tips" (in Mahalo dollars) to those who post the best answers. For its part, Mahalo will take 25 percent of the cash exchanged between users.
Hot or Not is an extremely popular site that allows users to rate a person's appearance based on a posted picture. Responding to its popularity, a new site called Twit or Fit has launched, which will provide Twitter profile pictures that will be graded based on the person's physical appearance. Visitors can decide to look at only men or women or view the top 10 highest-rated people. Twit or Fit also provides the option of announcing grades through the user's Twitter profile.
On Monday, Intel announced the results of its Internet study, which found that most U.S. adults would rather have Internet access than watch TV or engage in sexual activity. About 65 percent of respondents said they cannot live without Internet access, and 71 percent claim it is important or very important to have Internet-enabled devices. The vast majority of the respondents believe the Web has become an integral component in the U.S. economy and a central part of their lives.
If you're too cheap to pay for a personal trainer after dropping two or three hundred bucks on a new iPhone or iPod Touch, Fitsync might be just what you're looking for. This Web application will track and organize exercises, help you put together a solid workout, and log results with a tap or two.
Included are a slew of exercises you can browse through and stack together. There are also recommended workouts you can borrow from others. The application makes use of the iPhone's video-playing capabilities to provide demos of each exercise so you'll know what to do. Most of these are only a few seconds, so they'll load pretty fast, even on first-generation iPhones on a weak signal (which can be typical in most concrete-laden gyms).
As the name would suggest, Fitsync's iPhone app will sync up workout data from your phone to your Fitsync.com account. You can the see how far you're progressing with each muscle group or particular exercise, and even get recommendations for other exercises based on what you've done in the past.
Fitsync is free to try out for 15 days. After that, you've got to upgrade to the $4.95 monthly plan to retain access to the mobile version, though you'll still be able to enter your workout data through the less iPhone-friendly desktop iteration.
Fitsync lets you organize a workout, track it while you're excerising, and even check out demos of excerises--all in one place.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Exercise enthusiasts will love Run Keeper, an upcoming fitness tracker for the iPhone. It centers on a really simple tracker that follows your location as you run via GPS, then puts that information into a personal database.
Every time you complete a run you can see how far you went (to the best of the phone's tracking capabilities), along with the time spent and how it compares with previous runs, all on a Google Map.
Developer Jason Jacobs of FitnessKeeper tells us it's just the tip of the iceberg for planned development and that much bigger things are on the way. For people too cheap to shell out for Nike's iPod nano-centric run tracker this makes a viable alternative albeit with less integration with iTunes. Nice, however, is the option to check out your data from any computer since the maps and runs are stored in the cloud.
While Jacobs has designed the application for tracking runs, another viable use for this is tracking trips in vehicles. Businesses looking to keep an eye on their employees' short-haul trips could use such a system to make sure they're going where they said they did.
A video of the application in action is embedded after the break. No word on when this should be available in the app store.
Track runs, or other trackable adventures with Run Keeper, an upcoming application for the iPhone.
(Credit: CNET Networks/FitnessKeeper)... Read more
Correction: This post initially misstated the type of cancer Lance Armstrong survived. It was testicular.
Lance Armstrong, the champion cyclist who was everybody's hero until he dated Mary-Kate Olsen, is taking his LiveStrong brand to the Web much in the way that MC Hammer did with DanceJam.
Armstrong has formally partnered with Demand Media to launch LiveStrong.com, which debuted in full on Tuesday. It's a site for keeping tabs on fitness, wellness, and weight-loss goals, along with discussion forums, editorial content, and videos--other sites in this space are Wellsphere and SparkPeople.
It's a for-profit spinoff of Armstrong's non-profit Lance Armstrong Foundation, or LiveStrong.org, the cancer awareness foundation best-known for those bright yellow bracelets that were ubiquitous in the summer of 2004. Armstrong himself survived prostate cancer before going on to win seven Tour de France titles.
LiveStrong.com is operated by Demand Media, modeled off The Daily Plate, a site the company already runs; Armstrong and his charity have stakes of undetermined amount in the new site.
The Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media also owns several domain naming services, a handful of knowledge sites like Answerbag.com and eHow, as well as health and fitness sites like Trails.com, Run The Planet, and entertainment sites like Cracked and a number of online gaming titles.
My New Year's resolutions for 2007 were largely a flop, although I did frame and hang some vintage 1930s cruise ship menus as promised.
Joe's Goals' simple setup can manage a massive matrix of resolutions.
But if you're dead set on changing your life in 2008, many Web sites can assist with tallying and tracking resolutions. Some will continue to ping you with reminders, or even enlist other folks to pester you over the next 12 months. Facebook users can pick from various third-party widgets for setting and sharing goals, but other sites offer more customization.
Sweet and simple, Joe's Goals help you log progress on to-do items within a simple calendar. Just add a check mark to stuff that's done. You can show off your score card to others with badges for MySpace or your blog.
LifeTango's brainstorm wizard steps you through the goal-setting process, nicely leaving each item private by default. You can also send items on your list to friends, family, or the general public. The site functions well, but its orange and blue tones could use a makeover, and there's not much to do off the site.
43Things makes it quick to get started by typing in a goal and seeing, for instance, that 3,885 other people have pledged to "exercise more." You can post 43Things items to or from a blog. The site has removed its groups, which had become a target for spammers. But users can cheer each other, or pay $1 for a SuperCheer.
To pass the buck and the blame, 43Things' Should Do This tool lets you make suggestions about what the rest of the world, anyone or anything from Al Gore to poor people to Fox News, should do.
Remember the Milk beta makes your to-do items and reminders available in Gmail, via SMS, the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, Skype, and popular IM clients. Integration with Google Calendar and contacts would let you connect to, say, a co-worker for an instant chat at an appointed time. Remember the Milk also can pinpoint tasks on a map and export your lists as Atom and iCal-ready feeds.
I find that Remember the Milk is the most portable goal-setting service of the bunch; you can take it with you instead of repeatedly returning to its Web site. Still, it would be nice to see such services import to-do items from software such as Microsoft Outlook.
For even less complication, Hassle Me simply sends you a nagging e-mail or IM nudge for any goal and time interval you pick.
Work that body
In poll after poll, Americans name eating less and exercising more as top goals for the new year. But who wants to count calories? Just tell Fit Day
or The Daily Plate what you're eating, and they'll do the work, drawing charts of the nutrition you're getting or should be.
DietTelevision beta (more here) does the same, adding motivational videos alongside personal recipes suggestions with shopping lists. You can track food and water intake by texting the site from a mobile phone.
Um, drink too much? FitDay's pie charts can show so in a snap.
Traineo also helps you track a diet and workout plan, joining groups or calling upon four personal "motivators" to keep you on track. I like that you can rate your daily diet from poor to great if you're in a hurry and don't want to log every bite. However, some groups seem to be sponsored by diet products.
The Revolution Health portal (more here) launched Resolution 2.0, a tool for setting goals with a group that include working out more, being a better parent, and complaining less. Professionals, including personal trainers and doctors, lead the groups.
Like the general goal-making services, these fitness sites offer plenty of tools, but I'd like them to do a better job taking you off of their pages by integrating with more third-party calendars, e-mail services, and mobile devices.
Overall, I prefer FitDay's tight interface and quick setup. Daily Plate made me first skip an offer for a paid subscription, and then sent my password in a clear text e-mail. I just wish that FitDay listed more common consumables, like pad thai, so I don't have to look up peanuts and noodles separately. Daily Plate lists pad thai and other takeout staples of my diet.
If you need extra help with becoming well, more than 500 online support groups at DailyStrength aim to tackle tough problems such as substance abuse and disease.
If going green is on your wish list, Make Me Sustainable (more here), and Yahoo Green (more here) help to set goals, such as swapping out old light bulbs and toting reusable bags to the grocery store. Carbon Rally (more here) adds peer pressure to the mix by encouraging teams of users to compete.
Plenty of people have been saying that while MySpace might be on top right now, the future of the social networking sector is in niche-oriented sites. We've looked at a few of these here on Webware--like BakeSpace, which is for cooking enthusiasts. Here's another one that just launched: Wellsphere, which is for people who want to live a healthier lifestyle.
There are a lot of health-and-fitness sites out there, and I thought that Wellsphere was a nice blend of being very goal-oriented (the personal goal is an integral part of the user profile) without looking too much like a weight-loss site--a very easy trap for a fitness site to fall into. But what I liked most about Wellsphere is that it's very information-rich, making it more than just a social network for amassinga friends list of fellow Pilates enthusiasts. There is a nice focus on user-generated resources, as members are encouraged to write up their own "wellspheres," which are short articles containing tips, tutorials, advice, and other health- and fitness-related information. And there are also searchable directories of both local resources (gyms, yoga studios, nutritionists) and fellow Wellsphere members who are looking for workout buddies in their areas.
The site design and navigability, however, could use some work. But Wellsphere is still in an alpha-test phase, so that's something that could easily change.
I went to the gym yesterday and was initially surprised to see how packed it was. At first I attributed it to the fact that there are probably plenty of people who are still taking a day or two off from work after the holidays. Then I remembered, of course, it's the beginning of January, and people are still idealistic about keeping their New Year's resolutions. Even the ones who swear they're too good for resolutions are probably trying to do something about that holiday-party pudge.
(Credit:
PumpOne)
Consequently, many a company is currently trying to capitalize on this brief spike in health and fitness mania. One of them is PumpOne, which specializes in visual workout tutorials that you can download to your iPod, iPod Nano, or Palm Treo. And now, just in time for 2007, PumpOne's workouts are available for regular cell phones, too, as part of the new PumpOne Mobile service. By accessing the company's mobile Web site, you can choose from a variety of workouts--PumpOne stresses that these are full workouts, not individual exercises--and purchase one that suits your specific fitness goals.
Some of PumpOne Mobile's options are a little bit on the pricey side. A single workout, available on your cell phone for 24 hours, will cost you $2.99. Consequently, if you want to repeat the workout, you'll either have to remember the whole thing or fork over another $2.99 to re-purchase it. Alternately, for $4.99 you could have access to the entire repertoire of PumpOne workouts for a week, or $14.99 for 30 days. Keep in mind you'll also need a data plan on your cell phone.
I'm not so sure I'd want to succumb to the level of carrying a cell phone around at the gym to follow workouts, but hey, it might appeal to some of you who are determined to actually keep your New Year's resolutions this year.
Gimme20 is a new site that pulls fitness routines and tips together with social networking features. Profiles combined with geolocations help you find and connect with people to work out with. Ideally, these features could help you share tips on the best spots to run, hike, or find an open treadmill on a Monday night. Gimme20's usefulness is only limited by its currently small user community.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Like other social networking sites, the bread and butter of Gimme20 is to make interactions with other people as easy as possible. When a member posts a workout, others can comment on how to improve it or what worked the best for them. You can also recommend a workout by giving it a vote up; the most popular routines hit the front page, similar to news stories on Digg.com. The truly hardcore can access a mobile version of the site on their cell phones to submit workout results or create blog posts while still at the gym. Gimme20 also has a feature that lets you keep track of your weight, your waistline measurement, or how many bags of Skittles you've had on a daily basis.
One of the cooler features on the site is the ability to build your own custom workouts from suggested routines. To test this feature, we checked out a few of the top routines and "borrowed" the parts we wanted. It's got an add-to-a-workout button similar to an online shopping cart. You can then repost your new creation for others to see or print it to take to the gym. The printouts have pictures of each exercise, along with short, how-to descriptions in case you're trying out something new. We like the fact that even unregistered users can access all workouts and print them.
Gimme20 is a full-featured site, but limited by its small community of about 1,000 users. The statistical tracking and the workout building are easier to use than an Excel spreadsheet, and they can still be useful within the currently small number of active users.
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