Simpleweight

Nutritional Menu Good news, but still more work to go.

I received an email today from Panera.

Panera Bread has announced that it will post calorie information on all Company-owned Panera Bread and Saint Louis Bread Co.® bakery-cafe menu boards by April 2010. The bakery-cafe concept expects franchise-operated locations to follow suit and have calories posted on menu panels by the end of 2010. This would make Panera Bread the first national concept to voluntarily post calorie information on menu boards across the country.

This is good news. You know I am a big fan of menu labeling.

Panera says they’ve noticed their customers have changed their purchase patterns as a result of their new informative menus.

“As we’ve been introducing our new menu boards across the country, customers have responded very favorably,” Scott Davis, Panera’s Chief Concept Officer said. “We’ve seen them gravitating towards options that allow them to customize their meals such as our You Pick Two® where they can pair smaller portions of our soups, salads or sandwiches to create a meal with fewer calories.”

“This whole initiative prompted us to take an even closer look at our menu offerings,” Davis said. “The result was we improved the nutritional content and ingredients in several of our menu items. We view it as a ‘win-win’ for both our customers and Panera.”

I think this type of responsibility and activity is only going to increase. If I were a restaurant, I’d be working on labeling my menu right now to stay ahead of the nutritional curve.

What can we do today?

Ask your favorite restaurant to add calorie information to their menus!

If you are a small to medium sized restaurant owner who’s determining ways to implement nutritional information for their constantly changing menus, contact us for some possible solutions.

System Maintenance.

Hi Everyone.  If you reach Simpleweight Now.  We’re going down for some simple maintenance.  All steps on our path to a simpler weight management tool.

A Weight Management Journey

Well, hello everyone.  It’s good to get simpleweight back up and running.

First off, why the simpleweight hiatus?

Well, this project has been a labor of love for my brother and I.  We had an idea, we ran with it.  When we came up with simpleweight, at the time, there was not many web ways to manage your lifetime fitness goals.  There were quite a few Diets, but nothing that was diet agnostic.  Also, at the time, all the weight loss websites were a pain in the neck to use.  They just weren’t that simple.

Since the time we hatched the simpleweight idea, we have seen numerous new web tools, competitors if you want to call them, and other ways to maintain and track your fitness goals.  We have always had a decent amount of users, nothing that would put us in the A-list of websites, but enough to say we were attaining some of our goals.

Yet, we stumbled and lost focus.  Simpleweight started to see competitors, and we started adding features because we felt like we had to rather than because we should. We were not getting real as 37signals would say.

One of our original goals was to make this weight website so easy that you’ll actually use it.  Well, I used it, and used it, and used it.  Yet, at some point (August 17, 2008), I stopped.  In fact, I fell off the weight management wagon.  I not only stopped using simpleweight, I stopped recording any data.  Yeah, I weighed myself everyday, and still do.  I would weigh my food still, and track my exercise on my various fitness related gadgets, iphone apps, or my pedometer.  I just never recorded the data I kept.

Tracking data and not recording data doesn’t make the data very valuable.  In fact, it is almost worthless.

A Return to Roots

Why Simpleweight and what can we choose to do?  Because it is all a choice.

I have a couple of options with simpleweight:

1. Keep it as is. This is not an option in my book.  The experience I can see from my usage and the aggregate patterns I can identify from users, that simpleweight needs to be easier and more useful.  During my hiatus, I tried competitors products, and I was just as dismayed at the lack of usefulness.  If I had found a sound competitor I could recommend, I think we’d close up shop, but I couldn’t find anything phone based, web based, or desktop based that was easy to use that provided the right amount of data to help with weight loss and weight management.
2. Tweak it. We could do this, but I think there is just too much baggage.  Sometimes, we need a clean slate.
3. Throw it out and Start over. This I think might simpleweight’s best path.  To Get Real about what exactly is the absolute necessity required in managing ones fitness and add to it the pin-point focus that’s necessary.  There is a big challenge here.  More to come on that.
4. Just Throw it out and give up. I’m not ready for that.  I still think there is a value to tracking ones fitness, and I think we can do it in good fashion.

So, What’s our Challenge?

The big challenge is there are many parts to weight management and fitness.  There is food out (exercise), food in (eating), the physical factor (actually going throw the physical motions), the mental factor (behavioral psychology behind eating and motivation for fitness), and finally the out of our control genetic factor.

The question for Simpleweight is:  How can we best help you, our user, with your weight management?  What can we do to help?  What data can we help you collect?  How can we present that data to help you mange your fitness?

For example, there are social networks all over the place that will help you stay motivated.  Do we need to include that in our implementation since the psychology of eating is such a strong factor?

Other questions we ask, Who can we help?  How can we help?  Then finally, Is it possible for us to make a living helping you all or should we just chalk it up as giving back to the community?

How can we make a weight management website so simple you will actually use it?

These are decisions we are going to make over the next few weeks, months, days, however long it takes.

System Maintenance.

We’re doing some system maintenance on Simpleweight.  Please patient as we get the system back up and running.  It may take a bit of time.  Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.  I’ll post again when its back to normal.  Thank you.

If your First Plan Fails, Try Another! Religious Sacrifice.

If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan; if this new plan fails to work, replace it in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those whose fail. … No man is ever whipped, until he quits — in his own mind.
Napoleon Hill. Think and Grow Rich

I have had a recent set-back in my Groundhog Resolution plans. There is a reason I am not a garage door repairman. I hurt my finger pretty good while repairing the garage door opener motor. My painful experience put a big cut in my Pick and commit a time to exercise 10 minutes a day plan.  Don’t worry though, The doctor says I’ll be okay and everything will return to normal with time.

In my persistence for fitness, I am required to find a plan that works for me and you for that matter. We must keep trying and trying until we hit the mix of exercise and healthy eating that’s proper for our individual bodies.

So, a new plan?

Sacrifice: an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy as defined by Apple Computer Leopard’s Dictionary.

Sacrifice

I’ve talked a bit about different motivations for fitness. We all are unique, and consequently we have to find what will motivate ourselves. Weight Loss and Fitness is as much as a physical battle as it is a mental battle. Re-thinking old habits and building new healthy habits takes time, persistence, and motivation. Sometimes, we need a little extra help with motivation and our sacrifice to fitness.

• By giving up eating too many calories, we can achieve a healthier body.
• By giving up sleeping an extra 30 minutes in the morning, we can exercise and achieve a physical fit body.
• By giving up unhealthy habits, we can create healthy habits.

We must give up and sacrifice in order to create new.

Now when I hear sacrifice, I usually think Religion.

Most religions require some sacrifice during your religious calendar. Jews have Yom Kippur, Muslims have Ramadan, and Christians have Lent. Each is a time to fast and atone for sins and a way to teach patience, sacrifice and humility. These Religious periods offer a perfect time for those motivated by God to offer up healthful-based sacrifices.

If you have Faith, make a promise to God to abstain from sugary sweets, chocolate, alcohol, French Fries, Coca Cola, or other unhealthy habits. I think that would be one promise you’d want to keep. No on wants to make God unhappy with broken promises.

If you don’t have Faith, then make a promise to your most motivating best friend to abstain from some unhealthy habit.

Back Story

Lenten Sacrifice is exactly how I gave up drinking Coca Cola. I used to drink almost a two liter of Pop (Coke, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, etc…) a day. I decided during lent of 2001, that I would give up Pop as a sacrifice to God. After 40 days abstaining from Coke, I decided to see how long I could go. It is now 2009, and I have about two cans of pop (usually Sprite or 7-up) a year and no Coca Cola.

So, I suggest you and I use the next 40 days to focus on eating habits.

What can you sacrifice that is valued in your diet that may be unhealthy?  Is it Starbucks Coffees?  is it French Fries?  Is it Candy?  Is it Alcohol? Make a promise to the most important person in your life, possibly God for some of you readers, that you will abstain from that unhealthy eating vice.

Let’s Review:

1. Who’s the most important person/entity in your life now?
   • God, Spouse, Best Friend
2. What are the unhealthy items in your life/diet?
3. Make a promise to sacrifice your unhealthy vice for the next 40 days to your most important person.

Hmm, let me think, What are the some things I commonly over-indulge in lately?

• Peanut M&M’s
• French Fries
• Ice Cream
• Brownies, Cakes, Cookies
• Starbucks Hot Chocolates
• Fast Food

I guess there is no rule that says, I can’t cut them all out.

So, a new plan.  What’s your Sacrifice for Fitness?

Simpleweight Health-Club Has Started.

How did you spend your Friday evening?

Well, my brother and I had a fun evening deploying simpleweight health-club edition.

It’s late, and I’m tired.  So, I’ll save a full report over the next few days.  Here’s the abridged update:

All Customers have a new simple weight home page which we call the simple weight health club.  You can now easily share your Simpleweight information with Friends and Family.

By the request of some of our users, we’ve made a couple of new reports.

Also, if you hadn’t noticed, we’ve integrated a new wordpress theme into simpleweight.

More Details to come.

What’s the one thing that if we added to simpleweight will help you become more fit and healthy?

Interactive Health Look of My Body

You didn’t expect to see “my” body did you?  I’m not ready for that.

I saw this cool, interactive, guided health tour of the body at NY Times.

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Other Simpleweight News:  We’re putting the final touches on our next Simpleweight upgrade.  What can you expect?

• Expect a new design.
• Expect a couple of new nutritional reports.
• Expect the ability to create your own public page.
• Expect a little bit of downtime of the blog.  I’ll post some timeframes when you will see a hic-up.
• Additionally, expect a price increase to $29/year.  We feel we’ve added value and simpleweight is worth more.  We’re still going to have a free account, but we’ll also have an advertising-free full account.

Now, if you sign up today, you will lock-in our current price of $18/year.

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What can we do to help you acheive your weight management goals?

Food back up!

Simpleweight Food is back up and running.  Thanks again for your patience.

We’re in the process of rolling out some new features of the next couple of weeks.  So, we’ll do our best to minimize any downtime.  I’ll write a post with some details coming soon.

Thanks.

Weight Loss updates completed.

Simple weight updates were completed March 21 evening. Ryan did a great job adding some new features for our free public users.

What’s New with Simple Weight Loss?

• Exercise Calorie Calculators
  The General public can now calculate their calorie burn using our nifty activity calorie calculators.
• New, improved, and quicker Charts and Reports
  We’ve replaced some of our flash charts with simple image charts. The site loads much faster.
• Charts and Reports have the beginnings of Social Features: One can now easily paste their favorite chart or report into their own blog, facebook page, myspace, etc… Here’s my weight loss for the year 2008:
  Of course, this chart demonstrates that one needs to focus on the trend and not the day to day fluctuations.
• Minor feature and bug fixes for various requests by users. For example, you can now save custom foods with your own serving size without having to click or save twice.

What’s Next?

Well, we’re working on a site design refresh to liven up the site and make it more attractive. We plan to re-organize the public pages to better explain our exceptional simpleweight offerings. We’ve been promising more social features.

Why do we add and make changes?

We’re always trying to make simpleweight easier to use, and we’re trying to make it easy to follow weight loss’s aggregate best practices:

• Weigh yourself on a regular schedule. (I suggest every day, or once a week.). Make sure you weigh yourself the same time with relatively the same clothes
• Track your energy expenditures and how much exercise you can do.
• Track how much you eat, when you eat, how you eat, and why you eat
• Make your weight loss social!

We’ve got tools simplifying the top three in that list above, and Social Features are coming. It will just make it easier if you just start using Simpleweight now.

What can we do to make Simpleweight so simple you will actually use it

StrongLifts 5×5 Fat Loss, Muscle Gain Free eBook Workout Review

I have been Robert Scoble like in my rabid reading of blogs. While doing so one day, I ran across stronglifts.com. I subscribed a while back, but I never really read much of the content. It was too body-builder-ish for me. But a recent post caught my attention: How Will Smith Became Successful and How You Could Too. Take a look. There is a great video where Will Smith says the two keys to life are Running & Reading.

Motivated and Inspired. I needed to do some reading. I thought to myself. What can I get my hands on to read? I have said in the past, “You are What You Eat, Read, and Do.” So, if you read junky, rumor-monger tabloids. then, you become a rumor-monger yourself. If you read economics books, you will become an economist.

I want to improve my physical fitness. So, I need to read Fitness books. Since, I subscribed to stronglifts.com rss feed, I noticed a link for a free StrongLifts 5×5 eBook, and I decided to check it out.

Wow, There are some gems in that book, and I can’t believe it’s free.

Bad workouts are better than no workouts. They train you mentally & reinforce the exercise habit. Don’t rationalize.

You are what you repeatedly do. Make a plan & stick to it. No matter what.

See, what I mean about gems.

I don’t agree with everything the eBook suggests, but I can not knock it because I have not tried the 5×5 program.

At a glance, The program suggests working out 3 times a week 30 minutes each time. During your workout you will perform:

• Squats
• Overhead Press
• Bench Press
• Deadlift
• Barbell Row
• Pull-ups & Chin-ups (optional)
• Dips (optional)

Here’s why I will not do it. The author strongly recommends squats. To do squats effectively one needs the appropriate gym equipment and fairly flexible hips and ankles. Guess what, that strikes me out on two accounts. I do not have the appropriate gym equipment and my hips and ankles are stiffer than a rusty break-dancing Wizard of Oz Tin Man trying to do a Mr. Robot move.

Of course, it does not help that StrongLifts does not mention Simpleweight as the service for tracking your eating, exercising, and biometrics. (strike 3 and your out) I’ll give him a pass since Simpleweight is still a rather new service.

The other thing I love about the ebook are the inspirational quotes from Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill is excellent. I love his books. So, Of course, I have to follow with the closing strong lifts Napoleon Hill quote.

“You can do it if you believe you can.”

If I believe I can follow the weight lifting program prescribed, then I can do it. There I go again: Thinking and Losing Weight.

So, Do I recommend the book?

Yes, I recommend the book. One can not beat the Price (free), and it’s a good quick read.

Do I recommend the workout?

I recommend the workout plan for those with the appropriate equipment and reasonable hip & ankle flexibility. The exercises are great and the program looks straight forward.

However for those without access to the appropriate equipment, I think the are other methods to achieve the same benefits using more of a dumb-bell workout. I’ll talk about those in the future.