SparkPeople
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| SparkPeople, Inc. | |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Founded | Cincinnati,Ohio, U.S. (2000) |
| Headquarters | Cincinnati,Ohio, U.S. |
| Industry | Internet, Health, Weight loss |
| Website | www.SparkPeople.com |
SparkPeople is a company which develops and maintains several healthy living websites.
SparkPeople's goal is to show people that they can use health and fitness to improve other areas of their lives (personal and professional); and the company's name was chosen to illustrate this goal.
Contents |
[edit] Websites
[edit] SparkPeople.com
The primary site, www.SparkPeople.com offers a free four-stage SparkDiet program which uses tools, content, and support to help users make lifestyle changes. Users are prompted to enter height, weight, and amount they intend to exercise, as well as a target date and weight. The site then gives recommendations for calorie, fat, and carbohydrate intake based on calculated BMR, as well as a personalized fitness plan. Users can enter the foods they eat and exercises they complete and are given feedback via charts and prompts on their progress. The site also has numerous articles on nutrition, fitness, motivation, and general health. Support is provided through other users and SparkPeople experts on messageboards as well as from social networking features like member pages (SparkPages), teams (SparkTeams) of users with some common bond (like quilting or college students), and blogs.
SparkPeople.com was named the winner of BusinessWeek's Best of The Web : Health in 2006[1] and 2007[2]
In January 2007, SparkPeople.com was ranked by Hitwise as the 6th most visited site in the "Health and Medical - Wellbeing" category (and 3rd among diet sites).[3]
[edit] SparkDiet
The SparkDiet is a proprietary diet program developed by SparkPeople.
The four stages of the diet are:
- 'Fast Break' which gives users a simple goal to complete for several weeks in order to provide a springboard toward other goals.
- 'Healthy Diet Habits' which aims at various pillars of success in diet like portion control, exercising consistently, and drinking water.
- 'Lifestyle change' teaches consistency and constant motivation in health and diet goals.
- 'Spread the Spark' gives tips and goals to continue the user's goals and teach others.
[edit] Babyfit.com
SparkPeople also offers a modified version of its healthy living program to pregnant women through its site Babyfit.com. Babyfit uses similar tools and forums to the www.SparkPeople.com site to guide pregnant women through a healthy pregnancy and beyond. It also covers topics such as parenting and breastfeeding and offers some of the same social networking features as SparkPeople.
[edit] SparkRecipes.com
SparkRecipes.com offers users the ability to catalog, rate, and share recipes, especially healthy recipes, and gives users the nutritional information about their recipes. It also offers the ability to add these recipes to their daily food log on SparkPeople.
[edit] SparkTeens.com
In August 2007, SparkPeople launched SparkTeens.com which offers a modified version of the SparkDiet diet program specifically tailored to the needs of 13 - 17 year olds and aims to tackle the problems of childhood obesity. SparkTeens offers similar tools, content, and social networking features to the SparkPeople.com site modified the specific needs of teenagers.
[edit] References
- ^ Business Week Online: Best of the Web 2006. Retrieved on 2007-09-24.
- ^ Readers Make Their Votes Count - BusinessWeek. Retrieved on 2007-09-24.
- ^ Category Spotlight : Health and Medical - Wellbeing. Retrieved on 2007-09-24.
