Okay, let's all give a shout out to my mom aka Running Girl, who has offered to sponsor this poor student on her WW goals. Thanks mum, you're the best.
Now let's talk about sparkpeople - has anyone else gotten comments from sparkpeople when they've said something about them in their blog? Am I the only one this happens to? Because it happened once several months ago when I first discovered spark people, and it just happened again today. I feel a little bit like I'm being stalked and it's a little creepy.
Alright sparkpeople, if you do happen to come back here - here are my basic complaints about your site. I understand that it's free, but I've always been a big believer that unless something is useful, or benefits your life, then the fact that it's free is moot.
First the food lists are too hard to navigate. When I put in 'rye bread' I want to see 'rye bread' not a million convenience food items that have the word rye in them. I find it cumbersome and I don't like that you can't see what the assigned nutrition values are for a certain food until you've already entered them into the table. They should be visible on the 'add food' screen so you gauge how close that item actually is to the item you are eating.
I also find the calorie allowance a little low, as do the calories for a lot of foods. Adding your own foods in is way to convoluted also. For some reason WW is just much easier to use.
So there - I don't know if you'll come back, and I don't know if you care, but those are my thoughts.
What do you think, those of you that have tried spark?
Apple Pizza
4 hours ago
7 comments:
Thanks for the feedback Purl - we love getting feedback about how to improve the site for members!
Just a quick note so you know how we find out about your blog posts so you know we're not stalking you or anything.
Google has a feature where you can sign up and get an email alert for any term used in a news story or blog. So, we are signed up to get alerts for "SparkPeople". This is one way we can keep learning how to improve the site.
Hope that explains it :).
Thanks again for the feedback!
SparkGuy
SparkPeople Founder/CEO
Woah... how bout those sparkpeople getting back to you! I've never heard of the sight... but I'll check it out :)
That's freaky how they found you so fast and very disturbing. I agree with your thoughts on their site. I tried it once and found that the food tracking was way too time consuming and frustrating.
Purl... come back! We miss you :)
When I put in 'rye bread' I want to see 'rye bread' not a million convenience food items that have the word rye in them.
I had trouble with this too until I realized I was just searching incorrectly. When you're doing a food search click "and" not "or" That way it will only show you combinations of rye AND bread. Instead of any food with the word rye OR bread.
If you want to look at nutrition value before adding it to your table there's a link under the "search" results box that says something like: show nutrition information. That will show you the serving size and the stats for that serving size. Then if you only eat 1 piece of bread, but the serving size is 2 pieces, you can put that you had .5 servings.
I like the fact that you can add your own foods and then they're stored in your "favorites" I have a bunch of foods that I eat on a regular basis. So I put them in SP once and never have to do it again.
Also I like tracking nutrients aside from protein, fat, and carbs so that's more helpful for me. (Calcium and Potassium are my problem areas)
I've never heard of SparkPeople before ... but it's good to know they have good customer service! I really should track my nutrionals each day, but don't. I'll have to investigate SparkPeople too!
I really like SP, but it does take time. I find it easier to find food in their system when I search "all these words" instead of "any". I really prefer writing every thing manually, but that takes a long time too. I can never win! I do feel like the calories are low too. SP tells me to eat 1300-1700 a day and work out 4/days a week for 30 minutes. Most days I am eating 1900 calories and working out a lot more than 30 minutes. But my scale isn't budging and I am staying within the same 4lb weight range. That is why I am trying to drop to the 1700.
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