SparkPeople: An Internet Tool to Drop the Pounds

Do you, like most Americans, need to lose a few pounds? Do you despise the gym? Are you confused about counting calories, carbs and fat? Do you know how many calories you need to burn to lose just one pound? Are you a dieter in need of motivation? Are you looking for support and advice on your weight loss quest? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then SparkPeople.com may be the perfect dieting tool for you.

SparkPeople is a website where everything related to weight loss and healthy living meets. It is completely free, but does require registration. With SparkPeople, users can input their dieting goals, discover whether those goals are attainable, and then track their goals, in pounds and inches. SparkPeople sponsors an interactive nutrition tracker, which based on your caloric needs, provides daily menus to ensure you stay within range on calories, carbs, fat and protein.

Users always have the option of changing menus or simply adding their own foods, and the nutrition tracker still will compute nutritional info to assist the user in creating a healthy menu. Their food database includes more than 10,000 food items, including items from your favorite restaurants, but should you come across an item not in the database, you can add it at any time. Simply plug in the nutritional information and save the food item, and then you and other users can access the new listing. If you are unsure of the caloric content of an item, say a casserole that you make yourself, you can use a site like Calorie-Count.com. Here, all you do is plug in the ingredients and the number of servings, then Calorie-Count analyzes the recipe and provides you with its nutritional information.

Another important interactive tool on SparkPeople is its fitness tracker. Based on your diet needs, SparkPeople tells you how many calories you need to burn per week, and then assists you in creating a workout routine. Since fitness includes both cardio and strength training, both of these aspects are tracked independently. Examples of strength training are listed along with a picture of the exercise and the recommended number of repetitions. Videos are also available on the site to give demonstrations of how to perform a particular exercise.

Cardio exercises are tracked by minutes performed and calories burned. SparkPeople hosts a database of a variety of cardio exercises and their respective caloric benefit, although these figures are based on an approximate 200 pound person. The important thing to keep in mind when tracking calories burned is that the burn factor is largely dependent upon your weight. Therefore, a 150 pound person burns fewer calories than does a 250 pound person for the same amount of effort. Therefore, to get a more accurate view of the calories you are burning, you may want to key in your cardio exercises yourself. There are many calorie burn charts available online, which list all sorts of sports and activities (even driving and vacuuming), along with how many calories are burned by performing these tasks.

The simplest way to figure calories burned yourself is to find a chart showing the calories burned per minute for your activity. Then take that figure, say .052 calories for riding a stationary bike at a moderate pace, and then multiple that figure by the number of minutes spent on the activity, multiplied by your weight in pounds. For example, if a 250 pound person rode a stationary bike for 30 minutes, he would have burned 390 calories. If you don't want to whip out a calculator every time you work out, you still can get a close idea of your calories burned by using the SparkPeople database. Just keep in mind that one pound is equal to 3500 calories, so to lose a pound, you must either cut those calories from your food or work them off through exercise.

Perhaps the most important part of SparkPeople is its motivational tools. All the exercise and diet information in the world won't help you on your weight loss quest if you can't stick with your routine. SparkPeople is chocked full of inspirational articles and support groups targeted at specific interests, goals, and needs. Each group has its own message boards, where members can leave notes, take part in contests, talk about their favorite hobbies, or share recipes. Similarly, each member can design a SparkPage, similar to MySpace or Facebook. On member pages, you can include photos, personal information, add friends, give and receive virtual rewards called "goodies" and post comments. Members can also send each other email through the site. Personal information is not shared, and users can choose whether or not to share personal email addresses, names, etc.

Not everything Spark is about losing weight. SparkPeople also includes resources for simple healthy living, and users can discover tips to go green, home beauty tips, and health articles relating to all sorts of illnesses, from acne to arthritis. SparkPeople has its own search engine to quickly find information on the topics that matter to you. If you should ever come across a topic that SparkPeople can't answer, simply drop an email to one of its owners, health professionals and personal trainers ready to offer tips and assistance.

Sitting in front of a computer all day won't help you lose weight, but using your computer to access tools like SparkPeople may be what keeps you motivated to get out there and get the body you want this summer.