Exercise and the Fun Factor

Would more people use the stairs if doing so was more fun? Apparently, the answer is yes. A team turned a flight of stairs into a piano, and it resulted in 66% more people taking the stairs. Oh, and keep in mind that the stairs were right next to an escalator. Have a look:

The video ends with a great quote: “Fun can obviously change behavior for the better.” We couldn’t agree more.

Talk a little smack in your FitFeud

Last week we rolled out one of our most requested features, something we’re calling (for now), “League Talk.” It’s a simple way for league members to post messages for everyone else in their league.

Motivation is core to the success of any weight loss or fitness regimen, and in a FitFeud that motivation can often come from others. With League Talk, competitors can, um, motivate each other by laying down some playful smack talk or by sharing what they did to win (or lose) that week.

Speaking of winning and losing, we’ve also quietly released an additional update that reveals the weekly winners and losers in a league. So now not only are you striving to win your league overall, but each week you compete to win (or maybe just not lose).

Both of these updates hint at the future direction of FitFeud and reveal our overall philosophy for product development:  a hyper-focus on adding features that help individuals and leagues maintain and increase their motivation to lose weight.

So, let us know what you think of these updates in the comments. Do these help you stay motivated?

Never forget another FitFeud check-in

Despite some unfortunate hiccups, we’ve rolled out a much-requested new feature to all of our faithful alpha testers: Check-in reminder emails. It’s a fairly self-explanatory feature, but here are the details on exactly how it works:

• If it’s your check-in day, and you haven’t checked in, you will be sent an email reminding you to do so.
• If you completely miss your check-in day, you will be sent an email every day after your official check-in day until you actually check in.

Don’t worry, though, you can of course turn off these emails by editing your profile.

As with everything else, we’d love to hear what you think about how we’ve implemented this feature and what we can do to make it better. Please email us or tell us in the comments below. Thanks!

Tips for a successful weight loss competition.

Weight loss competitions are a great way to help people lose weight and get in shape, and usually they are pretty easy to run and go smoothly. However, every once in awhile things can get chippy for one reason or another – it is a competition after all. Here are some tips that will keep things running smoothly and give everyone the best results.

Use the same scale throughout the competition.

We’ve found that different scales can be off by as much as 6 pounds, so weighing yourself on different scales can seriously throw off your results.

If you’re doing a league that does not have weekly result prizes/penalties, you should at the very least use the same scale for the first and last check-ins.

Weigh yourself at the same time everyday.

I’ve found that my weight varies by about 3 days over the course of the day. I’m lighter in the morning, so of course that’s when I weigh myself. :)

Compete with people you know and trust.

This is key. While some weight loss competitions carry some pretty sweet prizes for the winner, it’s all about the ongoing motivation they provide. If the competitors don’t trust each other this will only diminish their motivation to keep up with their weight loss and the competition.

The above are just a few of the ways we’ve found to make competing in a weight loss competition more fun, fair, and motivating. If you have any other tips, please share them in the comments below. We’ll be posting these in an FAQ section on FitFeud soon!

Weight privacy option added

We launched the private alpha of our FitFeud just over a week ago, and we’ve gotten some amazing input from our alpha testers in the meantime. For that, we thank each and every one of you!

One piece of feedback we’ve gotten over and over is that some people don’t want to to reveal their actual weight to the others in their league. This is something we debated internally before releasing the alpha version. The two camps break down like this:

• I don’t want to show my weight. It’s a sensitive subject for me, and it’s a deal-breaker if you show my weight to others.
• Show my weight, and show me what the others in my league weigh. It keeps people honest, and it’s an extra incentive to lose weight.

We see both sides. So, today we rolled out an option that allows a league manager to set whether contestants’ actual weights are shown to the other people in the league. This can be set/unset at any point, but it is a league-side option; that is, it applies to everyone in the league. League managers can find this new setting on the “Manage League” page.

This is exactly the reason why we launched this version of FitFeud; we wanted a fitness and weight loss competition platform that did exactly what people wanted it to do, not just what we could dream up. We’ll continue to ravenously monitor the feedback coming in and implement as many of the top-requested features as quickly as we can. In the meantime, keep feuding and keep sending us your input!

Looking for totally BA PHP intern

FitFeud, our new fitness and weight loss competition platform, just launched into private alpha, and we are looking to add some really cool new features in the next couple months. We’re looking for a web developer intern who knows PHP/MySQL and is interested in learning a lot more to help us with this.

Let’s get to what you really want to know: No, we can’t pay you (if we come into money, we will), but we can offer you these benies:

• Learn CodeIgniter, a powerful PHP framework that you’ll be able to use forever (even to launch your own startup!)
• Learn from an experienced developer, with serious CSS/JS/PHP chops
• Work directly with the (really cool) founders and have real input into how the app works
• Excellent and respected references (the team is well-connected)
• A seriously cool project to put on your resume
• T-shirts, coozies, and other schwag
• Snacks, beer, and dinners cooked by the wife of one of the founders (she’s Italian and knows what she’s doing)
• Rounds of golf with the founders. If you don’t golf, we’ll even teach you (we have a very low handicapper on the team).

If you know what “BA” stands for, that’s a plus. Consider it a little test of how well you’ll get along with us. :) Look forward to hearing from you soon.

FitFeud at TECH cocktail DC

A quick heads up that the FitFeud Crew will be rolling deep at TECH cocktail in DC tomorrow night. We’ll be sporting our fancy new t-shirts and armed with FitFeud-branded coozies to keep your beers cold on a warm spring night. So, come on out to see us and all the rest of the cool DC-area startups!

FitFeud Launches! Sort of…

Late last night, we pulled the curtains back on FitFeud – a competitive weight loss and fitness platform that lets you easily set up weight loss competitions amongst your friends, family, or co-workers. Well, we only sort of pulled the curtains back, because we’re still in what we’re calling a “private alpha” stage, so you have to have an invitation to join. If you ask nicely, we’ll send you one.

During this alpha stage, we will be working hard to add features and squash bugs, as well as respond to your feedback, to make FitFeud even better. Since we’re actively working on the site each and every day, there may be some hiccups along the way. So, if you discover anything awry or have any questions, please let us know.

We want to thank all the people who have already signed up and started using FitFeud. We really appreciate you jumping headfirst into the site to get your competitions going, and we really really really want to hear what you think about the site – good and bad. There is no shortage of ways to contact us, and we encourage you to use any and all of them you like:

• Email
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Uservoice

We’ll be (hopefully) regularly updating this blog with news about the site, requests for feedback on features, weight loss and fitness competition news and articles from around the web, and probably a random Youtube video every now and them. We’ll try to keep it interesting.