Now You Can Earn More Points and Trophies on SparkPeople!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Sometimes, even if the scale isn't moving, it can still be motivating to earn SparkPoints and reach new levels of rewarding yourself. That's why we are delighted to announce some new features related to SparkPoints and SparkTrophies that just launched today!

A Chance to Spin the SparkPoints Wheel TWICE—Every Single Day!
Need more reason to perform all those healthful SparkPoints tasks? Starting today, when you accumulate 25 SparkPoints in a single day, you will earn a bonus spin on the SparkPoints wheel! When you reach 25 Points, an alert (more on that below) will pop up prompting you to make a bonus spin! In case you miss that alert, you can also find a link to your bonus spin on your Start page (directly above the SparkPoints wheel) and at the top of your SparkPoints page. Now you have even more incentive to earn points by tracking your food, commenting on member blogs, reading articles, and more!

New Trophies
Because every milestone is worth celebrating, we've added more new SparkTrophies to reward you for your efforts. You can now earn a trophy for:

• Firsts: Tracking your first food and exercise; writing your first blog post; making your first message board post; making your first SparkRecipe. (If you've already done these things, then you now have a trophy for it!)
  
• Every 250 and 500 fitness minutes you track within a month. And you'll earn these trophies at the moment you reach these milestones, rather than at the end of each month.
  
• Completing each stage of the SparkDiet. Remember that four-step plan? This is a great way to encourage you to really work toward those goals and action steps. You'll earn your Trophy when you change stages on the site.
  
• Your 7-, 14-, and 21-day SparkVersaries. This is a self-reported trophy that you can find on your Trophy management page (To get there, go to your SparkPage. Click the awards tab. Scroll down and click the "View All Trophies" link at the bottom. Here you'll see all Trophies you've earned, plus a link to "Manage your Trophies.")

You'll also see a newly redesigned Trophy page located on your SparkPage where all of your Trophies are displayed. In addition, the moment you earn a trophy, you'll see a one-time pop-up that tells you about your award.

Bonus Spin and Trophy Popups
If you earn a bonus spin or a Trophy, you'll get a one-time pop-up telling you so. You can click the link that says "never show this popup again" if you prefer to turn them off forever, or edit your popup preferences anytime here.

We hope you enjoy these new virtual rewards as you work toward reaching your healthy goals with SparkPeople!

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More Ways to Save, Share and "Like" Things on SparkPeople

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

This morning we added some new options to “Like” and “Tweet” many of the articles and other resources on SparkPeople.com. You'll see these buttons on more pages across our website, which will make it , even easier to Spread the Spark.

In addition, we've also added more “Save” buttons to these various features and pages as well so that you can add them to your SparkFavorites, making it easy to quickly find them again!

We hope that you'll notice and use these easy buttons to save, share and "like" all of our favorite SparkPeople features and content.

As always, thanks so much for all you do to Spread the Spark!

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'Perfect Produce' App Content Now Available Free on SparkPeople.com

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

No Smart Phone? No problem!

Back in March we released our first premium app for the iPhone: Perfect Produce.

We think this content is so useful, that we wanted to make it available to more people. So yesterday, we added Perfect Produce to the SparkPeople.com website. Now you can access all of this produce picking and prepping content when you're online! Just like the app, our online Perfect Produce feature includes:

• Tips to select, store, and prepare more than 100 different fruits and vegetables found in most supermarkets
  
• Thousands of healthy recipes featuring the fruits and vegetables as a main ingredient.

To access that feature in the future, just to the Nutrition section under the "Healthy Lifestyle" tab at the top of the site. Scroll down and find it in the center column, labeled "Fruit and Veggie Guide."

For those interested, our premium Perfect Produce app is still available for $1.99 from the iTunes app store. Not only does it allow you to take these important stats with you while you shop, but the app also includes a few other key features:

• Calorie and nutritional information for each fruit or vegetable
  
• The ability to search for foods that are high in fiber, calcium, vitamin C, and other nutrients

We hope you enjoy using Perfect Produce, whether you refer to them online or from your iPhone!

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Introducing new Spark*D program for people with diabetes

Monday, May 23, 2011

Today we are very pleased to announce the official launch of a complete diabetes-management program from SparkPeople called Spark*D.



Free for all SparkPeople members, Spark*D offers:

• Personalized meal plans for type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes
  
• Easy-to-use trackers for food, calories and carbs
  
• A blood glucose tracker with printable reports that you can share with your doctor and/or diabetes educator
  
• A weekly diabetes-management newsletter plus more diabetes-specific tips and articles
  
• Community support from people like you

If you flagged "diabetes" during the setup of your account, you may already be in this program, but you can edit or check your settings on this page.

There, you'll also see that we've added a special program and weekly newsletter for heart health, too, which would be useful for anyone with risk factors for heart disease, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Be sure to check out all of our new heart health resources in the brand new Healthy Heart Condition Center, too!

We hope that you'll find these new programs and newsletters useful. If you know someone else who isn't already a SparkPeople member who could benefit from these free resources, please pass this information along. Thanks!

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Nutrition Tracker enhancements launched today

Monday, May 16, 2011

Hi everyone

If you've visited our My Nutrition page today you likely noticed some enhancements we made to our food tracker. We made some changes that will make the tracker easier for both new and experienced members, and also adding some new tools such as the ability to search your favorites.

You can click here to read our full announcement and explanation of the changes

If you have any comments or questions please leave a comment here, thanks!


Dave H.
SparkPeople.com

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