SparkPeople.com is not all that it appears to be. Sure, it’s an easy-to-use, personal, helpful site with unique tools that build consistency and momentum for months and years to come. But lurking beneath the surface are plenty of "secret" techniques to get maximum performance out of the site.
With just a few little tweaks, you can make the SparkDiet experience even more useful and motivating. Here are some tricks and tips to help you along the way:
TIME SAVERS
After entering a food in the nutrition tracker, check the box that asks you to save that food with your Favorites. Next time you track, you can simply grab that food off of your own personal list.
Have a regular meal that you eat often? Click the Food Groupings tab inside the Add A Food page and you’ll only have to enter all the food items for that meal once.
If you search for a food and you don’t have time to enter the nutritional info yourself, there’s usually no need to find an exact match; the info is pretty consistent. Take the closest match you can find and run with it as a guideline.
When posting on the Message Boards, you can follow the conversations of all the threads you’re posting to just by clicking the Subscribe button on the posting page. Whenever someone posts to that thread, you’ll be alerted.
SMART USE OF INFO
The weight tracker tool is even more useful if you weigh yourself at least once a week, and at the same time of the day each time. Your body goes through changes during the course of the day that can skew results.
Having trouble figuring out what’s going wrong? Revisit your Reports and look for trouble spots. Can you see any patterns?
To see the relationship between your emotions and your eating, make a small comment in your SparkPage blog. You can choose to make these entries public or private, but they can help identify emotional eating patterns.
Check out all of the articles, tools and other features in the Resource Center. They are packed full of information to help you along the way.
BOOST OF POSITIVE FEELING
Post on the Message Boards as much as you can. They’re full of positive people and a positive attitude.
Join a SparkTeam to get support from others who share common goals and interests. There are lots to choose from, so use the search tool to find the ones that are the best fit for you.
GET QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Again, use the Message Boards and SparkTeams. There are a lot of people in our community with common experiences and possible first-hand knowledge of what you’re going through and potential solutions.
Use the Search feature on the Message Boards. Many times, your questions may have already been covered.
Many nutrition and fitness questions, and even site-related questions, are covered in the Help page or in the FAQ's at the top of those Message Board forums.
TAKE IT OFFLINE
Print up your daily meal plans, grocery lists and recipes a few days or a week ahead of time. Give yourself plenty of time to get to the store.
80% of SparkPeople members try to cook healthier versions of holiday favorites, according to a recent poll. Eat better this Turkey Day with these nine exclusive recipes that are BIG on taste and tradition but low in calories.
The whole wheat flour makes for a dense muffin, which I like. You only need to eat one! If you want a lighter muffin try using whole wheat pastry flour, which is more finely ground and available in the bulk bins at larger grocery stores.
SparkPeople's 500-Calorie Thanksgiving Feast
