<$Friday, April 13, 2007$>
Free Stuff: SparklePeople.com
| Yesterday in my journal I asked my readers to help me decide whether to keep my Weight Watchers subscription and shell out the membership fee. I was considering doing so, because after 4 days into my free week-long trial membership, I was impressed with their Points Tracker and how well it was keeping me motivated and on-track. A friend commented to point me to SparkPeople.com, and after signing up, looking around the site and trying out their Nutrition Tracker and Fitness Tracker tools, I immediately cancelled my Weight Watchers membership, because, you guys, this is almost EXACTLY THE SAME THING, and it's 100% FREE. Note that I said ALMOST exactly. SP doesn't use points like WW, I suspect because the Points program is proprietary and probably has all kinds of copyrights and trademarks and patents and what-not associated with it. Instead, SP's Nutrition Tracker tracks the actual nutritional value of your meals, including calories, protein, fat and carbs. Instead of a daily points value you get a daily caloric range to shoot for. Lest this sound daunting, I've been tracking my meals and snacks all day and I have yet to have to go look up a nutrition label or do any math. They have a pretty extensive search database wherein all you need to do is look up what you're eating, enter your serving size, and it calculates all of the values for you. SparklePeople also gathers health information beyond just your weight and daily activity level to tailor a diet and fitness plan to your specific needs. The web site also has a HUGE community, complete with a message forum, and teams that you can join for added motivation. They also offer a points incentive in which you can rack up points and earn "trophies" simply by sticking to your plan and accomplishing your goals. This mainly amounts to a gold star system, but, well, I'm enough of a nerd that I'll work pretty hard to get a gold star. So color me impressed. SparklePeople gives me everything I was hoping to get out of Weight Watchers, and then some. And did I mention the part where it's FREE? Labels: freebies, healthy living |
