$1,000 Bootcamp Prize Winner!

Monday, June 02, 2008

SparkPeople's Official Swimsuit Bootcamp Contest, which took place during the month of May, is over now. Participants logged over 5 million fitness minutes during the 4-week challenge! And along the way, we awarded 40 team members with SparkPeople prize packs and fitness DVD's, too.

I wanted to announce our grand prize winner, who will receive $1,000 towards her own Beach vacation: LANNIEX! Congratulations!

Overall, Bootcamp was a huge success, helping thousands of our members make daily fitness a habit, drop pounds, tone up and lose inches in time for summer. Even though the contest is over, the SparkTeam is still open and going strong. Interested in taking your own fitness program to the next level? Join the Swimsuit Bootcamp SparkTeam for daily workouts and challenges to keep you motivated!

Be on the lookout for future SparkPeople contests and giveaways! Who knows, you could be the next big winner!

Leave a comment below to congratulate LANNIEX on her win!

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Over 70 New Exercise Demos, including Gym Machines!

Friday, May 30, 2008

Hi everyone! In response to requests from our members, I'm happy to announce that we've added over 40 Gym Machine exercise demos to the site! Now you can add the strength training exercises that you do at the gym to your Fitness Tracker and get precise instructions on how to do these exercises correctly.

You can find all the new gym demos in the same places you find our other "at-home" ones (Fitness Resource Center, Strength Training Fitness Tracker, featured Exercise of the Day, etc). You can use the links below to see the new demos yourself!

Core Gym Exercises (5 new exercises)
Upper Body Gym Exercises (21 new exercises)
Lower Body Gym Exercises (16 new exercises)

And last but not least, we've added 32 new Stretching Demos, and a handful of new resistance band exercises, too.

We hope that you enjoy using these new demos to work out safely and effectively and track your progress!

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SparkStreaks and Good Morning America Comments

Friday, May 23, 2008

Hello Everyone - hope you are all doing well!

I'm writing to talk about how excited I am about the new SparkStreaks feature!

A streak is one of the reasons that I ended up starting SparkPeople. Many years ago, I started a streak of working out at least 10 minutes every day. I ended up doing this 700 days in a row and it changed my life (the local newspaper even did a small story on this at the time, that was fun). This was both because of the improved fitness AND the confidence I gained from this adventure.

Along the way, a co-worker started something similar. She lost 50 pounds and told me I changed her life. She then went on to start a walking group where people said, "if you can do it, we can do it!" That's when I realized that "Your daily actions and words impact more people than you'll ever realize!"

One of the most important parts about a streak is to only use it as a positive motivator. You aren't allowed to get too upset if you miss a day. That's why we built in the consistency percentage.

I want everyone on the site to know that I am right in here with you working hard to reach goals. So, I'm making a commitment to keep my SparkPoints login streak as close to 100% as I possibly can and making that public - and I'll have one for 10 minutes of fitness as well. Everyone can hold me publicly accountable for this. Maybe we'll have to come up with a fun contest :).

I'll write more about this in an upcoming State of the Spark. I wanted to make a post now because I'm so excited about this new feature.

Also - I wanted to do a quick update on Good Morning America. We talked to Nichole and she told us that they were supposed to ask her a first question that let her talk about SparkPeople, but they had to cut that out because of time concerns. She was bummed about this, but was able to mention SP on the Good Morning America radio program and on Extra. We've learned that you can never tell what will happen on these media appearances - that's show biz :).

But, I do want everyone to know that we're working very hard to get to the point that these types of major TV shows do big stories just on SparkPeople. We have some interesting things in the works just for this.

Our mission remains to SPARK millions of PEOPLE to reach their goals. Nothing will stop us from working hard to reach this goal. We're so thankful to Nichole and every other member working to reach their own goals and then spreading the spark both on the site and around the world.

The bottom line is that there will be frustrations like this along the way, but we're getting closer and closer to a major breakthrough if we all keep working at this.

Thanks again for your support!

SparkCheers!

Chris/SparkGuy

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Two Members in National Magazines on Newsstands Now

Friday, May 23, 2008

On newsstands this week, you'll find the success stories of SparkPeople members in both People and Good Housekeeping magazines!

After dropping ten sizes and 50 pounds, Diana Bales (DI136229), was selected by the editors of Good Housekeeping to represent SparkPeople in their annual "Walk Off Pounds!" cover story. Reflecting on her experience Diana said, "When I joined SparkPeople last year I just wanted to lose my Christmas weight. But I ended up reaching a goal weight I NEVER thought I could." She also completed her first 5K race and her first triathlon, but more importantly, she learned to never say, "I can't." See the newly transformed Diana in the current issue of Good Housekeeping, on newsstands now!

Nichole Jones (NICHJONES) was selected by the editors of People magazine for their cover feature "100 Pounds Lost, and Swimsuit Ready" that hit newsstands on May 23, 2008. As part of the photo shoot, Nichole was flown to Miami Beach and last Wednesday, to New York City to promote the magazine story on "Good Morning America," "Inside Edition" and "Extra!" Nichole, a SparkPeople member for over 2 years, lost 105 pounds and recently started participating in fitness and figure competitions. You can see her bikini-ready body in the current issue of People magazine, on newsstands this week!

These women aren't celebrities with personal chefs and trainers. They're regular people just like you who spent years working hard for what they wanted. Because of their determination, they were rewarded with an experience they'll never forget—an all expenses paid trip to Miami Beach, a glamorous photo shoot, and the opportunity to Spread the Spark to millions of people. It doesn't get much better than that. Like Diana and Nichols, you just might be the next SparkPeople Success Story!

Show your support by picking up copies of both People and Good Housekeeping soon, as they won't be on newsstands much longer!

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SparkPeople is Happy to Introduce SparkStreaks!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

We launched a new feature today called SparkStreaks, where you can challenge yourself to reach certain goals every day (or week or month if you'd like). We know that members track streaks on their own, so we wanted to create this feature to make it easier to track. Streaks are a great way to give you extra motivation to reach your goals.

You can view and manage your SparkStreaks by clicking on My Home/Start, then finding a link to SparkStreaks in the "myTools" section on the left of the page. When you click to your Streaks page, you'll see all the Streaks you are tracking. We made it so everyone has a Streak for logging in to the site and spinning the SparkPoints wheel and for drinking 8 cups of water a day. You can click the "Start/Manage Streaks" button to decide what goals you want to track a Streak, and to choose if you want to share your Streaks publicly. You can share Streaks on your SparkPage, and for SparkTeam goals you can share your Streak on your SparkTeam goal page. When you share on your SparkPage, your Streaks will appear on left side of your SparkPage under your main pictures.

To track your Streak you simply track your goals as your normally would. You can click the "See More SparkStreaks" link on your Start page to see details of your streaks, including:
- Your current streak length for the goal.
- The longest streak you ever had for the goal.
- A consistency percentage for the goal. Even if you drop off a streak, you can still see how often you did the goal. So, if you did the goal 9 of 10 days, you'd have a 90% consistency rate. If you want to re-start this counting to today, just click the "reset" link in the Consistency section.

We hope you like this feature and that it can help keep you motivated to reach some amazing goals. If you have any questions or comments, please click here to post in our Technical Support Message Boards.

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