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Did you make a New Year's resolution to lose weight, exercise more and finally become fit? If so, you can find great sites on the Web to help you set goals, devise a plan to meet those goals and track your progress towards your goals.
Fitocracy is so new it's still in testing, but you can enter your email address and request an invitation to join this site, which turns "exercise into a game…where you can earn points for your workouts, unlock achievements and tackle special challenges to push yourself forward." Basically, you will track your workouts on a Workout Log. You'll receive points for every exercise you enter into your log; earn enough points and you move up a level. You can add Achievement points and Quest points as you improve your fitness. A Leaderboard displays the top players in the "game." Go to the site, get an invite and explore Getting Started and FAQ for more specifics.
You will find "nutrition, health and fitness tools, support and resources that are 100% free" at SparkPeople. Their site is not only for people interested in weight loss, it aims to help people live a healthier life through nutrition and regular exercise. They offer articles and interactive tools (calorie counter & meal plans, fitness programs, motivation system and feedback reports) to help you meet your goals, as well as a community of people with interests similar to your own. After you choose your goal (weight loss or healthy lifestyle), you are invited to join a Spark Team, which is a group of members with similar interests and goals. You can create a SparkPage personal homepage or continue to your Start page, where you'll find nutrition, fitness and weight trackers and where you'll design personalized programs, interact with a team, etc. Take some time to explore SparkPeople's recipe site, motivational site and much more. You can also download an app to your iPhone, Android or Blackberry!
MyFitnessPal is a free "diet and fitness community...providing you with the tools and support you need to achieve your weight loss goals." They boast a food database of over 1,380,000 items; you can also create your own food database with your personal choices and recipes. Click on any food item entered on the database and you'll see all the nutritional information for that food. Similarly, you can search their exercise database for exercises and calculate your calories burned. Other tools include a Recipe nutrition facts calculator, Body mass index (BMI) calculator, Heart calculator, and of course mobile phone apps.
If you do most of your exercise or running out-of-doors, you'll like RunKeeper. It can "help you monitor your run while you're out, review your speed and distance progress over time and help you tailor your workouts for the most impact over time." You can share your workouts with your friends on Twitter and Facebook. Check out the site for other great features.
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Daily Burn has a webapp and an iPhone app so you can track your nutrition and exercise at home, or on the go. The MealSnap app allows you to take a picture of any food and they "magically count the calories." Scan a food's barcode into the FoodScanner app to keep track of your daily meals. You can also find a personalized training plan for your workouts and join a community of over one million fellow enthusiasts.
Have You Seen These Sites?
Swap.com is the "biggest community of swappers in the world, helping people turn what they have into what they want." After you create a free account, make a list of things you don't want, post them to the site and then browse the site to find an item you're interested in and make an offer. You negotiate directly with another member and work out the details with them. Just remember to mark an offer as accepted or rejected. Browse by category: baby & kids, books, collectibles, computers & electronics, gift cards, handmade, home & garden, movies, music, toys, women's fashion and much more. Swap.com works on the honor system, but you can read ratings of fellow swappers. The site warns that eBay and Craigslist fans might not like Swap.com; although some members may sell from the site, most are swappers.
Find a doctor or dentist and book an appointment online at ZocDoc. Search by specialty from primary care to dermatology, orthopedist, allergist, etc., and location, which includes most major cities. You can include your medical insurance plan in your search or add it later. You can also refine your search by gender or language. A list of doctors who accept your insurance and a choice of appointment times will display. Hover over a doctor's name to get more information, including patient's ratings and comments, education, hospital affiliation, and board certifications. Similar sites include RateMDs.com and HealthGrades. You can search for doctors or dentists on both sites.
DrugCite.com "represents a portal" into the information currently being reported to the Food and Drug Administration on adverse reactions or side effects of specific drugs or medications. Enter the name of a drug and a page is displayed with "adverse events and side effects reported to the FDA" for that particular drug. Information is displayed in easy-to-read graphs, with numbers and percentages of events. Click on the Learn More tab to find a list of the most recent events reported to the FDA, including date of report, gender, age, event and outcome.
Open Library is an "open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published." Their goal is to "provide a page on the web for every book ever published." It operates much like Wikipedia; you can contribute information or make corrections to existing entries. There are also over one million eBook titles available to read online at no cost.
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