Sparkpeople.com

4392 Marburg Ave.

Cincinnati, OH 45209

Website: www.sparkpeople.com

SparkPeople is an online diet website, started by Chris Downie in 2001, that currently has no associated offline products or supplements. This website has some of the heaviest traffic of all diet websites on the Internet, with an estimated 119,000 daily visitors in early May 2007. It was second in traffic, with only Weight Watchers.com beating it. This no doubt is a reflection that its services are free. They can offer their services free of charge because they are advertiser supported.

SparkPeople claims to be the only premium, personalized weight loss and healthy living website that is completely free of charge. Business Week in 2006 named SparkPeople.com "Best of the Web" in the health category.

The SparkPeople program combines medically accepted nutrition and fitness with goal-setting and motivation that helps people stick to their program. SparkPeople has been reviewed in the past by expert consultants like Dr. Ronette Kolotkin, former Director of the Behavioral Program at Duke University's Diet and Fitness Center. The site is free and advertiser-supported.

As a child, founder Chris Downie had shyness and anxiety that runs in his family. He developed a personal improvement program to conquer this that combined things that help your body (like fitness and nutrition) with things that help your mind (like goal-setting and motivation). A co-worker used this same program to lose 50 pounds and told him that he changed her life. He realized this could be a business someday.

The company that he started with a friend was an online auction site named Up4Sale.com that became eBay's first acquisition in 1998. This company ended up being worth approximately $100 million after eBay's IPO. He ended up meeting his wife at eBay. After reaching his personal and professional goals, he set a goal to start a new company that would SPARK millions of PEOPLE to reach their goals. he calls this an example of "for-profit social entrepreneurship" because it's a great business opportunity started specifically to help people reach their goals.  For the first several years they were very small and did a good amount of R&D to build the program and website.

The site combines interactive software features (meal planner, recipes, calorie counter, fitness planner, exercise demos, message boards, a personal homepage, weekly newsletters, tips and articles, expert answers, etc.) with content (proprietary 4-stage healthy lifestyle change program, regularly updated articles, etc.) and advanced social networking community features (personal homepages, teams, etc.)

The SparkPeople main "diet plan" is the basic American Heart Association recommendation of around 55% carbs/ 15%protein/ 30% fat, focusing on good carbs and fats... but with the calorie counter people have the flexibility to tailor it to other types of diet plans, including low carb/ Atkins, South Beach, Mediterranean, and more.

SparkPeople does provide counseling via message board by credentialed staff professionals including dieticians, personal trainers and more. The professional counseling is done in a large group. But, SparkPeople is also set up to provide a very high level of peer support in many forms, including teams that members can start or join based on any subject.

These are the meal plans offered: vegetarian, No Red Meat, No Pork, No Chicken/Turkey, No Fish, No Eggs, No Tofu, Low Sodium, Low Cholesterol

The SparkPeople program is also designed to address the psychological aspects of weight loss. This is because the program combines a medically-accepted nutrition and fitness program with a goal setting and behavioral change program.

SparkPeople has a proprietary 4-stage program that helps with this. The four stages are:

1. Fast Break - setting and reaching small goals

2. Healthy Diet Habits - medically accepted nutrition and fitness program

3. Lifestyle Change - teaches members goal setting and motivation

4. Spread the Spark - members learn how to use their healthy lifestyle change to reach goals in all areas of life   

SparkPeople also owns two other related websites:

BabyFit.com - nutrition, fitness, and community for pregnant women and parents

SparkRecipes.com: a recipe site with a focus on healthy recipes.

There are no fees to use the services of SparkPeople.com.

Considering that this is a free service, there is really nothing to complain about. You get many of the same features of fee-based diet websites. The site is clean and easily navigated and the email newsletters contain useful information for dieters. The diet plan is based on regular food and the American Heart Association guidelines, and there is the opportunity to customize it to your preferences. One limitation is that the advice and feedback is geared to a large group and if you're looking for that very personal one-to-one dialogue you probably won't find it here.