MyFitnessPal Blog

I'm pleased to announce that I launched two new features to the site last night: weight loss tickers and forum signatures.  Here's the lowdown:

WEIGHT LOSS TICKERS

Weight loss tickers are a fun and easy way to show off your weight loss progress to the world.   If you've visited other diet websites or forums, you've probably seen some around: a little graphic that shows you how much weight someone has lost, and how far they have to go to reach their goal.  There are a lot of other websites that will let you create a ticker for free.

So why are MyFitnessPal's tickers different?  Frankly, I've always thought that the tickers other sites let you make are - how should I put this - butt ugly.  So when designing our tickers, I asked a friend of mine who's a fantastic designer to help out, and I think she's done a fantastic job.  The MyFitnessPal tickers, in my humble opinion, are gorgeous!  Here's are some examples:

PERSONALIZE YOUR TICKER

Even cooler, with MyFitnessPal, you can actually create a personalized ticker with your own photo on it.  So you can create a completely unique ticker that is all your own.  Add a photo of your family, your wedding, a paintiing you've done - the sky is the limit.  And when you're done, it might look something like this:

How cool is that?

To create a ticker, just go to http://www.myfitnesspal.com/weight-loss-ticker 

FORUM SIGNATURES

I've also added the ability for MyFitnessPal members to create a forum signature.  Your forum signature will get added to the bottom of every post you make on the site.  You can put things in your signature like you're favorite quotes or motivational sayings, a poem, or of course, a weight loss ticker.

To create your signature, go to "My Home", then click on "Settings", then "Forum Signature"

If you have any questions about these new features, just leave me a message here or on the forums and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Hope you are all enjoying the site!

As many of you know, currently when you choose to share a new food with other MyFitnessPal members, there can be extremely long delays before that food is available for use by other members.  Each day I'd receive hundreds of submissions to the database, and because I was manually checking each food that was submitted, it would be weeks, if not months, before I'd get a chance to review a food.  There just wasn't any way I could keep up with the massive volume of submissions.

So today, I made some changes to the way foods are shared and updated. Here's how the new system works:

1. Submitting a food is now composed of two steps.  First, you tell us the brand name and description of the food you want to submit.  As you are entering the brand name, we'll suggest spellings to you from the brands we already have in our database.  If you see your brand there, make sure to choose it so that your brand name is consistent with the existing foods. 
2. After entering the brand and description, a quick check will be performed to see if that food already exists in the database.  The goal is to reduce duplicate submissions so that we don't clutter the database with multiple copies of the same food.
3. If your food is not already in the database, you'll see the same old screen you are used to seeing to enter the nutritional information for that item.  Now, however, if you elect to share your food with other MyFitnessPal members, it is immediately enteredd into the public database and available for all to use.
4. Public foods used to not be editable - that is no longer the case.  You can now edit any brand-name food that is in the database.  So if you see a food that has incorrect information because it's outdated, a member made a typo or data entry error, etc., you can correct the error yourself.  If you edit a food, you won't affect anyone's old diary entries.  The changes will only take affect on entries made after your changes.
5. The "confirmation" system remains in place.  You can still check the nutritional information of any food in our database and confirm it if you know it's accurate.  The confirmation system is a great way for you to get a sense of how accurate the information is - if it hasn't been confirmed by another member, you may want to check it yourself.  Then, of course, confirm it so that other members can benefit from your accuracy check.

Overall, the food database has become a lot more wiki-like.  It's easy to make new entries to the database so that everyone can benefit.  The danger, as with any wiki, is that the entries can be inaccurate.  But because editing foods is also easy, and because the confirmation system helps you easily see if a food needs to be checked, as a community we should be able to catch any errors quickly and correct them.

I'm sure the system will need some tweaks as we go along, so please try to be patient if it's not performing perfectly right away.  But in the long run, I'm optimistic that it will help us grow quickly the food database while still maintaining a reasonable level of accuracy.

If you have comments or questions, let me know!  Hope you are enjoying the site! 

A number of people have asked whether they could change their username without losing all of the diary entries they've created.  Well, now you can!

I added the ability today to change your username ONE TIME ONLY.  I limited it to only one change per account because I didn't want people to be constantly changing their username and confusing other members of the community.  But you can change it once, so make sure to choose wisely when you pick your new name - you won't be able to change it again.

 To change your username, go to "My Home", then click "Settings", then "Change Username".

A lot of folks have also wished they could change their starting weight or other old measurement entries so that their weight loss badges are more accurate.  So today, I added an area where you can edit your old measurement entries as well as your starting weight. 

Just go to "My Home", then "Check-in", then click on the "Edit Previous Entries" button.  You'll be taken to a page where you can see all of your past entries and delete them or add new ones as you'd like.

Finally, I modified the way we were calculating your weight loss on your weight loss badges.  Previously, the way I had been determining how much weight you had loss was to calculate the difference between the very first weight entry you had entered on the site and your current weight. The problem with this method is that if you ever gained weight and exceeded that initial starting weight, you wouldn't get credit for losing it back. 

For example, if the first weight you entered on the site was 200 lbs., but you stopped using the site, got into some bad habits, and peaked at 220 lbs, then got back on track and now weight 180lbs, your weight loss would only be displayed as having lost 20 lbs (200lbs - 180lbs).   

I've now changed the badges to show the difference between your highest weight and your current weight.  So in the example above, your weight loss would be shown as 40 lbs (220lbs - 180lbs) which is more motivating and more accurate.

If you have any problems or questions about using these new features, just let me know. Thanks! 

Hi folks,

Hope everyone is having a nice holiday season!  I know I haven't posted for a while, but it's because I've been spending all my free time working on a major update of the site which I just released today.  Here's a quick rundown of the new features:

MEMBER PROFILES

You now can create your own profile page on MyFitnessPal.  Use it to share a little bit more about yourself with the rest of the community, including why you want to get in shape, what/who your fitness inspirations are, and any other information about yourself you'd like to offer.

To see your profile page, click on the "My Home" tab, then click on "Profile".  You can also go directly to any user's profile by visiting:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/[USERNAME]

...but replace [USERNAME] with the username of the person whose profile you'd like to see. 

MAIL SYSTEM

I've added a messaging system to MyFitnessPal so that you can send each other private messages.  You can send encouragement or motivational messages, tips, and more.  To send a user mail, just go to their profile and click on "Send Message".  To view your own mail, go to "My Home", then click on "Mail".

When you receive a new message, you'll be notified by email that a new message has arrived.  If you want to turn off these notifications, just go to "My Home" > "Settings" > "Change Email Preferences". 

FRIENDS

As part of your profile, you can add other MyFitnessPal users as friends.  Once you've established a friendship, you can leave comments on their profile.  In the future, friends will also be able to do things like view each other's diaries, and more.

MORE ON THE WAY

All of these features are hopefully just the beginning of a much better way for our community to help each other.  I'd like to add things like dieting groups where members can create their own interest-oriented groups like "Getting married", "Over 50", or "South Beach Diet Addicts".  I'm also planning on adding progress pictures as part of your profile so you can take pictures of yourself over time and see the weight coming off.  And I've got a whole bunch of other iimprovements planned, many of the ideas for which came from your suggestions.

So stay tuned!  More is definitely on the way!

In the meantime, if you have any questions about any of the new features, just let me know here or in the help forums.  Hope you are all enjoying the site! 

I've gotten a lot of requests for a way to see more of the nutrients that we track in your food diary, as well as an easier way to print your diary so it can be shared with a nutritionist or doctor.

Well, at long last, you can now do both!

Tonight, I added a new "View Full Report (Printable)" button at the bottom of both the Food and Exercise diaries.  Click on it, and you'll see a view of your Food Diary which contains almost all of the nutrients we track on one page.  And best of all, it's all displayed in a nice printable view that you can easily print out and show to whomever you'd like.

You can also change the date range you are viewing so that you can, for example, see a week's worth of diaries at once and print them all easily.  You can even customize your view to not show your Food Notes or Exercise Diary if you prefer.

Hopefully this will make it much easier to see a more complete view of your nutritional intake and exercise history and share it with whomever you like.

If you experience any problems with the new report, just let me know.

Hope you're all enjoying the site! 

Do you have a blog or website? Want to show your visitors a glimpse into your progress on MyFitnessPal? Add one of our new weight loss badges to your site!

It's simple to do - just copy and paste the code we provide you into your blog, MySpace page, or website, and we'll automatically update it for you everytime you check in your weight.  

We'll be adding more designs and sizes shortly.  Let me know how you like them!

Get your own personalized weight loss badge now

Just added a few new brands to the food database tonight:

• Kashi
• Healthy Choice
• Hershey's
• Starkist

Enjoy!

Currently, I'm working on adding nutriional information for many more brands and restaurants including:

• Healthy Choice
• Subway
• Kashi
• Starkist
• Uncle Ben's
• Newman's Own
• M&M's
• Land O' Lakes
• Powerbar
• JIF
• 8th continent
• Hunt's
• Boston Market
• Klondike
• Breyers
• Wendy's
• Life Cereal
• Quaker Oatmeal

If you have any requests for specific brand names or restaurants, just let me know in the comments below.

Enjoy! 

Some of you may have noticed the new "Tools" tab on MyFitnessPal.  The tools section will eventually contain a variety of utilities designed to help you in your weight loss goals. For starters, I've added a BMI calculator which can help you determine your body mass index and consequently, a target healthy weight range to shoot for.  I've also created a BMR calculator so you can see just how many calories your body burns just to stay alive.

If you have any feedback on the current tools, or any other tool requests or ideas, be sure to leave them in the comments below.

Thanks, and hope you're enjoying the site!