Social Workout

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My Favorite Sites (Other Than Social Workout!) For Internet Sweat

Keys (via lizzardo)

Feel like obsessing about your fitness, weight, lack of direction in life while you should be doing something productive for society and/or your boss? Have I got some sites for you. The interwebs is a magical place full of little nuggets of self-improvement obsession and time wasting.  From ExerciseFriends (like internet dating, but more immediately sweaty) to Dailyplate (where you can stalk your meals and the meals of your friends), all of the below are gratis, because the internet is best when it's free (I'm still mourning the early days of Napster).

• Coaching Sanctuary: I’ve always wanted a life coach, but the idea of paying someone to tell me what to do seems a little wasteful — after all, I do have a mother. The answer to my frugal directionless prayers is Coaching Sanctuary and its free life coaching. Well, free for now. This site is still in its beta format, and to get started they’re offering free coaching to any and all.
• Nike+: Wanna obsess about your mileage, this is the place to go. I use the site concurrently with my Nike + iPod thingamabob, which actually loads my data directly to the site, but you can track your course and enter your mileage manually. The site will offer you coaching suggestions for increasing spead, mileage or prepping for specific races. There are also message boards so you can obsess with other like minded folk.
• Sparkpeople: I’m late to the SparkPeople show. This is a one-stop trackers delight. You can set goals, track fitness, calories, water, and milestones. If you’re without a clue as to what to do, they will suggest a diet for you based on your likes and dislikes. Fitness videos are streaming straight from the site, and you even rack up points for “trophies.” Who doesn’t like trophies, even if they are only in gif format.
• Dailyplate: This is my go to site for the logging of daily calories eaten and calories burned. The site has recently been revamped and is way easier to use now. The best part is that you can export your data into excel and chart your progress. You can see your daily breakdown of carbs/fat/protein in pie chart format, and I’m a big fan of pie. You can also track the daily intake of friends which is like stalking, but healthy-ish.
• ExerciseFriends: It’s like internet dating with less banal chatter, more hamstring stretching. Plug in your fitness routine and find people to sweat with. I’ve actually met up with people from this site for some less-than-impromptu runs and they were both not-crazy, and super motivating. Plus, when conversation lulls, you can just run faster.

Alrighty then, I'm off to go tell my life coach about my exercise friend, then log everything I've ever eaten or thought about eating in an offer of tribute to the internet gods.