Mega Holiday Perks!

Each month we work with generous sponsors to bring 3 lucky OH newsletter subscribers a perk giveaway.  A BIG thank you to all of our 2009 sponsors! Here is what was a part of our past perks:  Celebrate Vitamins, Bariatric Advantage Vitamins, Chef Dave’s Cookbook, achievONE®, CLICK Espresso Protein Drink, Dr. Garth Davis’ Book, Chike, and Just The Cheese.

But we’re not done yet…To finish the year out, OH went holiday shopping!

For December, we have a special MEGA holiday perk line-up for OH Newsletter subscribers. 

So far we have…

1 - Nintendo Wii Game Console + Wii Fit board & Game

3 - 10mp Kodak Easy Share Digital Cameras

2 - Apple iPod Nanos

2 - Tanita Scales PLUS Body Fat and Body Water Monitor

3 - MIO Heart Rate Monitor Watches

5 - Emsa Perfect Measuring Beakers

To be eligible for the holiday perks giveaway please make sure you are subscribed to the OH newsletter by December 9th. Winners will be selected at random from the OH newsletter subscribers list. Winners will be announced in the December issue.

Don’t forget to spread the holiday cheer and let others know!  
Happy Holidays

Today we released a couple of major updates to Health Tracker just in time for the holidays (as we continue on the path to Health Tracker world domination :). These updates include, 1) Profile display of Health Tracker - If you choose to, you are now able to display/share your Health Tracker within your personal profile. This can be kept completely private, it can be shared with only your friends or with the entire ObesityHelp community. 2) My Workouts - You are now able to build and store custom workouts that can be used over and over again. My Workouts will allow you to log multiple exercise/activity items at one time so you don't have to search for individual exercises each time you want to log your activity or exercise session.

Profile Display of Health Tracker .

The profile display of Health Tracker includes Body, Food Log, Exercise Log and the Macronutrient Report. As mentioned above, this can be kept entirely private or you can choose to share your Health Tracker information with friends, family, your bariatric surgeon or other clinicians.

In order to see the profile view of Health Tracker, when viewing your profile or another member's profile, look for the Health Tracker link to the right of the avatar. If there is no Health Tracker link, the profile view of Health Tracker has been set to private.

The privacy settings for Health Tracker can be found in the "Settings" section of My OH. To access your Health Tracker setting click My OH at the top of any page on ObesityHelp, select "Settings" on the left, click the Health Tracker tab and choose the "Sharing" option. Or, just click here to access your Health Tracker Sharing options :)

Workouts

My Workouts makes it quick and easy to log routine exercise and activity. For those who perform similar exercises on a regular basis, with My Workouts you can create a workout consisting of a series of exercises you often perform and instead logging each exercise indivivudally, My Workouts allows to log a single item (a workout) that contains all of the exericses you have performed. Build it once and log it any number of times.

Under My Workouts you will see a list of workouts that you have created and saved. You can log workouts directly from My Workouts by selecting "I did this", choose the day and click "Save"

You can also search for workouts you have created directly from your Exercise Log.

Create your first workout now!

One other addition

For your convenience, in this release we have also made some changes to the account deactivation process. In case you ever have the need to deactivate your ObesityHelp account, you can access this function by clicking My OH at the top of any page on ObesityHelp, select "Settings" on the left, and under the "General" tab select "Manage". Instructions for deactivating your account can be found there.

Have a great Thanksgiving and look for more updates soon!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this release, please post them in this thread on the Main Message Board.

Last week we released two major updates. First was the public release of OH Groups where any ObesityHelp member can now create their own Group. Second was the addition of Activity Tracking to Health Tracker, which provides a robust and easy to use tool to track and monitor your exercise and activity. Today we have added My Meals and an Activity vs. Weight Loss Report to Health Tracker. 

My Meals My Meals allows you to group and store multiple food and beverage items as a custom meal that can be used over and over again. If you have meals that you eat on a regular basis, you will no longer need to log each food item individually.

To access My Meals, go to your Health Tracker in My OH and click on the Nutrition tab. You will see My Meals listed under Nutrition.

Creating a new meal works similar to your Food Log. You can search for food items on the right and add the foods to the meal on the left. A Calorie Breakdown chart and Nutrient Summary Label are also available for each meal.

Once a meal is created you can add that meal to your Food Log from My Meals by clicking "i had this" or you can search for the meal from your Food Log.

When searching for a meal to add to your Food Log, all meals will be returned when "My Foods" is selected in search. So, to "drill down" on meals that you have created, select to only show "My Foods." When a new meal is created it may require up to 30 minutes for that meal to be indexed and become searchable.

Activity vs. Weight Loss Report Adding to the Macronutrient and Export Reports previously available, there is now an Activity vs. Weight Loss Report. This report will allow to compare Average Time in Activity vs Weight over time, providing you with further insight into what impact physical activity as on weight loss and weight loss maintenance. In Health Tracker, click Reports and then select Activity vs. Weight Loss.

We hope these additions to Health Track reduce the time required to log your daily food intake and makes it easier to view how physical activity impacts your weight.   Create your first meal now! If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this release, please post them on the Main Message Board.

The last several months have been fairly busy ones here at OH and we are really excited
about this upcoming release. First, long overdue is the public release of OH Groups. You
will now be able to start and  manage your own public groups. Second, is a major update
to Health Tracker....Activity! We are planning to release these new features on Wednesday evening, October 7, 2009.

OH Groups

Getting to OH Groups is easy. Just click on the Groups tab at the top of any page on ObesityHelp. OH Groups allows you to start and manage your own groups, you can find groups that suit your interests and find support groups in your area.

If you are looking for an OH Group that focuses on a specific topic, you can browse groups by category.

Activity

To get to your Activity Tracker, click “My OH" at the top of any page on ObesityHelp, select “Health Tracker" on the left and then click the “Activity" tab.

Understanding your total daily caloric expenditure requires more than just knowing how many calories you burned on the treadmill. In your Health Tracker settings area you are now able to estimate the caloric expenditure of your resting metabolic rate (RMR) and lifestyle. These estimates are integrated and displayed with the caloric expenditure of the activities you have logged.

Your exercise log allows you to search for and add strength training exercises, cardiovascular exercises and general activities to your daily log. Caloric expenditure is auto calculated for a number of activities already included in our database of exercises. Pie charts display details about caloric expenditure and time for each type of activity.

Sets can be added and subtracted from strength training exercises. Reps and weight used can be entered for each set.

A number of details can be tracked for cardiovascular exercises and general activities. Some of these variables include, time, distance, calories burned, average heart rate, average power, altitude gained and average grade.

If you can’t find the exercise or activity you have participated in, you can also add your own custom exercises.

Other updates include the ability to create list of your favorite exercises, reports have been updated to include a number of activity items, the nutrition search has been enhanced and we have managed to slip in a sweet macronutrient report under the “Reports" tab. If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the features in this release, please submit those here. If your are new to ObesityHelp or have not used ObesityHelp's Health Tracker before, you can learn about the first release here and the second release here. Need help using Health Tracker? Click here for help. Enjoy!