The next part of your home page contains MyContent and MyCommunity. MyContent shows any news articles or information that fits your profile and may pertain to you. A lot of this information is sent out in daily emails as well (if you choose to receive the emails-which I did). MyCommunity shows any updates on your friends SparkPages and any activities in the groups and message boards that you subscribe to.

The far right column starts with your SparkPoints review and you’re SparkAmerica Fitness Points. You current number of SparkPoints is displayed, as well as the number of points till you reach a new trophy level, and your current trophy. The SparkAmerica Fitness Points is a promotion they have going on to promote people to be more physically active. The goal is to engage in physically fitness activity for 1800 minutes in a year (this is the default amount; I think you can change that number if you want to).

The social networking aspect of this site is like MySpace for people trying to lose weight. You have your profile you can customize, you have a blog you can write in, you can add friends, you can even reward your friends if they are doing a good job or being inspirational with SparkPoints. Now- what are these imaginary points? Just like any other imaginary points you win them for completing tasks. If you log in every day you can spin a wheel and earn extra points and sometimes even free items like t-shirts. Basically the SparkPoints are motivational tools. You get points for logging in everyday, drinking 8 glasses of water a day, logging your food intake, reading articles, reading email, interacting with others on their SparkPages or message boards. Basically every activity earns you points and new trophies. Just like playing a video game, you just earn points for completing tasks but here you get the added benefit of learning healthy lifestyle changes, tracking weight lose, and having support of other people trying to lose weight.

In support group for my weight loss surgery I have heard people say they don’t care for SparkPeople. I think it is an individual opinion and it works for some people and some people don’t like it. I personally like it so far. If you want to join me just tell them I referred you (INTUITIONJUICE – I get SparkPeople points for that!) and add me as a friend!

When you first log in this is your “Home Page”.  It has a little of everything on there and you can get anywhere from this page.  I’ll go from left to right and talk about the features briefly and split it up over a couple of days-I don’t want to end up writing a 10 page long blog about a website in one post!  But there are a lot of things this site can do.

MyTools

• Nutrition Tracker and Meal Plans- You can log in the food you eat and it will keep track of calories and other nutritional information and also give you a daily feedback analysis of what you ate.  Based on the information you entered when you registered (which can be changed at any time in your account settings) the site creates a meal plan just for you.  You can change the daily caloric intake or put in a special diet (diabetic or high protein for example).  You can change the meals with other ones if you don’t like the meal it selected for you.  You can also print off all the recipes, menus, and grocery lists with a click of a button!
• Fitness Tracker: You can create your workout routines using their Fitness Tracker and you can keep track of the calories you have burned and how much you need to burn to lose weight or to maintain weight.  This is great because I am not a math kind of person so the fact they automatically calculate these things for me is helpful.  As you can see on my fitness tracker I haven’t been keeping up with it.  Shame on me.
• Weight-ins & Other Measurements: I haven’t even attempted to use this tool-but I should.  Basically you weight in (the typical response from doctors and health care professionals has been to weight once a week on the same day at the same time) and it tracks your progress- or lack of progress in my case; which is exactly why I haven’t used it yet!  But this gives me motivation to actually use it now so I can post another blog and say “See I CAN do it!”
• QuickTrack: You can track your goals here without going to the “Goals” page.  The goals here are:  how many servings of fruits and vegetable you eat, how many cups of water you drink and how many minutes you exercise.  My day just started so I haven’t entered anything in yet.  One of the coolest things about this site is you get these imaginary points when you use the site (I will talk about the points in more detail in another post).  Who doesn’t like imaginary points?!

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW!