Gyminee Burpee Contest from Andy Smith on Vimeo.

We are a completely distributed team, so we frequently use TokBox for team video chat.  Since we have a big release coming out next week, we needed to relieve a little stress. My bright idea was to do a remote Crossfit-style workout.  Since we suck wind pretty bad for a fitness site, we scaled it to a 50 burpee competition.

This was pretty fun, and an example of how motivation is a great tool to improve fitness.  The rest of the team might call it peer pressure

I captured some screenshots of two of my favorite moments.  The first is when Paul actually completes the burpees, and signals that he is finished (look for his hand - top right).

My favorite moment is when Big D almost has a heart attack at the end.

So there you have it - even if you can’t get together with your friends, you can still keep them accountable to do some exercise.

You can see the full article by following this link: Six Best Exercise Planning and Tracking Tools.

• We are growing very quickly and in the process of moving our servers to a much more reliable setup.  This setup will be able to handle a lot of growth and should make your Gyminee experience quicker and more reliable.
• We also made some changes to the code a few days ago that introduced a few bugs with workouts.  We made the changes in order to support the iPhone app that will be coming out soon.  Some of you have reported “missing exercises” in workouts.  We are aware of the bugs and should have them fixed very soon.

Sorry for the problems.  If you have any bugs to report outside of the “missing exercise” bug, please send us email at feedback@gyminee.com.

UPDATE: All of the major exercise-related bugs were solved yesterday afternoon (thanks to everyone who helped us narrow down the problem!). Also, we’re pushing hard to make our server upgrade early next week. We’re pretty excited, it will be kind of like upgrading from a Civic to a Porsche.

As the year anniversary of “The Biggest Loser” Season 5 finale approached on April 15, I found it necessary to take a good hard look at the past 12 months of my life.  I moved to Boston, started working three jobs, made amazing new friends (while still holding on to my old ones), found a great trainer, had tons of fun…and gained 10 pounds!

How would I feel knowing that I put such incredible, intense effort into making myself a healthier person only to gain it all back?  I do not want to be one of those “Biggest Loser” contestants to gain their weight back.  I refuse.  Plus, losing 70 pounds in 6 months really showed me what I’m made of, showed me how strong I am, and showed me that it can be done.  When I saw that scale tipping more and more to the right, I just knew I had to make a change.

One of my best friends from San Francisco and I had discussed keeping ourselves accountable for working out, eating right, and losing weight before two of our other friends get married in July.  However, we had found it somewhat difficult with the 3 hour time difference to keep ourselves on track as much as we’d hoped.  This wedding is very important to a group of about 10 of my friends, since it is the first time we will all be together since we worked at a summer camp 2 years ago.  It is especially important to me because it will be the first time my friends are seeing me since I have lost my weight.

Since my Californian friend sent me the invite for Gyminee, we have been cheering one another on and making sure that we are staying true to our tasks.  It has been really fun keeping each other accountable even though we are a whole country apart.  Having gym buddies on Gyminee makes me feel like I am back on “The Biggest Loser” ranch.  I feel motivated through the support of others and hope that I can help my gym buddies feel the same way!

xoxo

Maggie

From Andy: We are really pleased that Maggie is doing a great job at tracking her workouts on Gyminee.  Maybe she will take advantage of the food options soon. :-)  You can follow her progress or invite her to be your friend by visiting her locker room page.

Your Calendar allows you to see a high-level overview of your tracking behavior, and it also allows you to schedule your Workouts and Meals if you are a PRO user.

This PRO functionality has been greatly improved in a couple of ways.

Calendar Subscriptions

The new “Subscribe To My Calendar” feature allows you to subscribe to an ical feed in any calendar software that supports calendar subscriptions (and all of the major ones support this). So, if you are the type who manages your day-to-day activities using Google Calendar, Apple iCal, or Microsoft Outlook, you can now have your Gyminee Workouts, Meals, and Notes right there alongside the rest of your life. Also, all the changes you make on Gyminee will be automatically kept in sync with your calendar software.

Event Time & Duration

Second, you now have more control over how you schedule your workouts. Settings for time and duration have been added, which provide the level of control that many of you need to properly schedule your activities.

So, let’s say you want to schedule your Cardio workout for every other Tuesday at 3:45-4:30 PM? No problem, and now thanks to the new Calendar Subscriptions you can use your favorite calendar software to help keep yourself accountable to your fitness routine.

Enjoy!

Challenges have become one of the most popular features on Gyminee, and they have really done a great job at helping people stay motivated and see results - users have recorded over 48,800 pounds lost in Weight Loss challenges to date. To help continue this trend, we have added some new styles of challenges.

Body Fat Challenges

Now you can create or join a challenge that lets you compete to see who can lose the most off of their percentage Body Fat. For example, you can join a challenge where the goal is to lose the most Body Fat within 3 months.

Reps Based Challenges

These allow you to compete in certain exercises to see who can do the most reps. For example, you could challenge your friends to see who could do 5,000 Crunches first.

Calories Burned Challenges

This type of challenge looks at all of your exercise activity recorded on Gyminee, and then uses the total Calories burned to update your challenge progress. Currently, these are only available as “Everybody Wins” Challenges (see below).

New Everybody Wins Challenges

A handful of new “Everybody Wins” style challenges have been created. Here’s a few of them (you can browse for more by visiting here):

	Burn 25K Cals Get recognition for all the hard work you’re doing. There are Challenges for burning 5K and 50K Calories well.
	1,000 Pushups How long will it take you to do 1,000 Pushups?
	Lose 10% Body Fat If you track your Body Fat, then this type of challenge is for you.

2) Progress Image Improvements

Keeping a visual log of your progress over time can be a great motivator. We wanted to improve this experience in a couple of ways. First, we bumped up the supported image size so that people could upload more detailed images. Also, we moved away from a small, contained slideshow viewer to one that allows you to click on thumbnails and easily view images at their full resolution.

Second, we added a new way for users to browse public images. Before now, the only way to view a user’s Progress Images was to click through to their Profile page. Now, there is a Browse Public Progress Images section that lets you easily find other users who have shared some public images.

Side-note: If you see an image that is inappropriate you can now flag it for removal and an administrator will review it. This is also available for flagging posts as spam in the Forums if you are an active Forum user.

3) Workout Program Browsing

The last feature to cover is a small, yet quite useful, improvement to finding Workout Programs. Before now, your only option for finding a Workout Program that may be interesting to you was to enter a search term. Now, when you browse for workout programs you will see a drop-down box that helps you find programs by category (Fat Loss, Cardio, Free Weights, Intermediate, Advanced, etc.).

That wraps up this quick look at some of the new features that have been added to Gyminee. Lots of other stuff is also in the works!

At first glance, canned tuna appears to be an ideal source of protein. A 5 oz can of Bumble Bee Solid White Albacore Tuna In Water will cost you around $1.99 and contains:

175 calories, 2.5 g fat, 0 carbs, 37.5 g protein

However, it’s important to note that The Environmental Defense Fund has issued a health advisory for longline-caught albacore tuna (the kind used in most canned tuna) due to elevated levels of mercury. The EDF recommends that adult men and women limit their consumption of canned, albacore tuna to no more than 3 meals per month (a “meal” is defined as 6 oz).

The EDF also points out that fish is generally healthy to eat, but you should limit the consumption of certain types of fish. You can access a chart here that lists the most contaminated fish, and how much can safely be eaten each month (assuming no other contaminated fish is consumed). The advice is based on EPA guidance and the latest mercury and PCB data.

You may notice what is referred to as “light tuna”.  Canned light tuna is a safer option as Skipjack, which accounts for most canned light tuna, doesn’t grow nearly as large as albacore, so it has approximately one-third the mercury levels.

My Two Cents

As I have mentioned on the message boards, it is never to difficult to find an “expert” to support your side of any argument.  With that said, I don’t believe you would easily find a source that would deem mercury to be non-toxic.  Methylmercury is the most toxic form of mercury.  It enters the body through ingestion, and it is absorbed more readily and excreted more slowly than other forms of mercury.  This is the type of mercury found in certain types of fish, including tuna.

However, all this talk about mercury poisoning should not turn you away from eating fish, which is an excellent source of heart healthy Omega-3 fats and an excellent source of protein!  Not all fish contain toxic levels of methylmercury.

You can still have a can of tuna a couple of times each month, but you also want to make certain to incorporate fish into your diet that are low in toxins. Domestic (US) shrimp, wild salmon, Pacific flounder, rainbow trout and tilapia can be eaten several times each week.

While a bit more expensive than canned tuna, I love wild, canned salmon - which doesn’t need any mayo to taste good! You can literally eat it right out of the can, although salmon cakes are another tasty treat.

Train hard; stay strong.

Susan

Daily Actions

When you visit your Locker Room you will now see three bright buttons. The purpose of adding these buttons is to make it very clear to users (especially new users) what the main actions are that they should be doing. While many of you are seasoned Gyminee experts, it is also important for new users to have a clear picture of how to get the most out of using Gyminee.

Plan This

This is a new feature that, personally, I was pretty excited to see added. When you search for foods, you will now see a “PLAN THIS” button right next to the “QUICK ADD” button. This feature allows you a quick and easy way to plan foods without having to navigate into the Meal Planner. If you’re already a PRO user, then feel free to check it out, if not then you’ll have to upgrade before taking advantage of this feature.

If you’ve been wanting to try out PRO for a while, but needed a little extra push, then feel free to use this coupon code for a FREE 14-day trial. You better hurry though, only 50 people can use this coupon before it expires!

TRYPRO14

To use this coupon, enter it into the “Coupon Code” field when upgrading your account to PRO.

Our three main focuses while designing the native iPhone app are usability, usability, and usability. Removing the number of steps necessary to perform common actions is our main goal. When you first enter the Nutrition section you immediately see the most pertinent information - your daily nutrient intakes and goals. Throughout the day, you can easily view this information with 1 simple tap.

Also, you will notice that the Food Search is right there at the top of the screen. Type in what you ate, and click go.

Here’s an example of Food Search results. All the important information is right there - Calories, Fat, Carbs, Protein, and Serving Size. If you found an exact match, recording what you ate is as simple as tapping the “+1″ button. Streamlining the process of entering your daily food intake is something we’re really focused on - it’s something you will usually do multiple times per day, and it needs to be as easy as possible.

Of course you can still drill down to see the full Nutrition Facts, add it to your Favorite Foods, and customize the date and serving size for your food entry.

Having your Favorite Foods one tap away is very valuable. Here we utilize the iPhone’s alphabetizing functionality (similar to what you see in your iPhone’s Contacts) for quick scrolling through your favorites.

While you can see your daily totals from the main Nutrition page, drilling down into your Nutrition Log will show you the specific foods you have eaten for a particular day. From here you can remove and modify food entries, drill down to view full nutrition facts, and the Food Search control is still right there at the top of the page only 1 tap away.

So, that wraps up this first sneak peek of the upcoming native iPhone application. We’re excited about how the iPhone and other mobile devices will allow us to make tracking your fitness activities much easier. Stay tuned for the next sneak peek!