I’d like to introduce you to a totally rad website called SparkPeople.com. I learned about it from my sister Suzanne awhile back.
SparkPeople helps you live a healthy lifestyle, even if your goal isn’t necessarily to lose weight. You can:
- Set health-related goals and track your progress.
- Use an instant search to get nutrition statistics about thousands of different foods, including fast food.
- Explore tips about nutrition and physical activity.
- Find, contribute, and rate food recipes.
You already know my beliefs about the rebound weight re-gain when you reduce food intake to lose weight. So I really like SparkPeople because the emphasis is placed on healthy living. You don’t need to focus on weight if you don’t want to.
Say for example, you just want to concentrate on your sodium consumption, or fiber, or you want to drink 8 glasses of water per day. Perhaps you want to reduce (or eliminate) alcohol or caffeine. Reduce your triglycerides. Eliminate high-fructose corn syrup. Maybe you want a way to track how much physical activity you’re getting every week. Whatever your goal, SparkPeople will help you track it. Here are some of my goals, for example:
(NOTE: The items listed above are based-on my doctor’s recommendation for lap-band patients. Your actual goals and numbers may be much different.)
What else do I like about SparkPeople?
- It’s totally and completely free.
- No junk mail, no obligations, and NO CATCH. Unsubscribe at any time.
- Well-designed, easy to navigate, useful.
I like receiving the “SparkPeople Food Showdown” e-mail newsletter. Every day they pit two foods against each other, then tell you which one is better for you. What’s great is that they pick foods that you’d probably actually eat… the Whopper vs. Big Mac, for example. Sometimes the results are obvious, and sometimes they’re surprising. And often they’ll throw in useful tidbits… like “hold the mayo and save another 120 calories.”
There are a number of other features, some of which are useful, others not. You might find the community features helpful, and you might even create your own SparkPage or gather friends into a SparkTeam. Or you may just want to join to get the e-mail newsletters and do nothing else. You can pretty much decide what level you want to participate at, then go with it.
No matter how big or small you are. No matter if you’ve had weight surgery or not. SparkPeople has something for everyone, and I highly recommend it.
