Lose Weight By Social Gaming
It’s awesome to watch social media and health intersect as new fitness games and social networks are motivating people to get fit. These games and communities hold you accountable to your goals — by simply tracking your exercise and diet, punishing you for not going to the gym, or rewarding you for your progress with cash or other prizes. Participating and exchanging updates with friends can motivate you from skipping the gym or reaching for that second brownie.
Nike’s new Nike+ FuelBand is an innovative wristband that tracks your calories, steps, and daily activity level in terms of NikeFuel. Nike announced partnerships with Path and Foursquare and integrated with Facebook, allowing users to sync updates online.
Set a goal for your daily activity level and watch the LED lights on the wristband change from red to green as you accumulate the NikeFuel points throughout the day. Merging the physical and digital worlds, the Nike+ FuelBand aims to help users make life a sport.
A startup called Fitocracy, currently in limited private release, is turning fitness into an addicting game by pushing users to beat challenges against friends to earn points, levels, and achievements in fitness activities.
Here’s a great success story, on the extreme side: one Fitocracy member lost 300 pounds and now can deadlift with one leg. He’s 71 years old. Now that’s an accomplishment!
One of our clients, Audax Health Solutions, Inc., recently launched a health and wellness online community that is currently in beta. With Careverge, all the tools and resources that can help you achieve good health are stored in one place. You can securely store your health information, schedule medical reminders, and sync your fitness tracking devices to get real-time reports. Create a plan to achieve your fitness goals and track your progress individually or with teammates within the Careverge community.
We can expect to see more technologies that seamlessly merge social media and health, as new apps and consumer-friendly devices allow us to record and learn more information about our bodies. What do you think the future of health and fitness gaming will look like?
