The LIVESTRONG.COM Blog

The State of New York passed a law in April requiring all restaurants to list the amount of calories per meal on its menus. Since then, the New York Times and Gawker Media Women’s blog Jezebel have covered the trend of calorie counting, asking whether or not counting as a popular diet craze.

The greater good
Does requiring restaurants to post the calories of the meal on the menu really make a difference? Will restaurants take notice of how a high-calorie meal affects a customer’s desire to patronize their business? Apparently so—Starbucks claims to have saved the nation 17 billion calories since last October by switching out 2 percent milk instead of whole (but really, what health-conscious person doesn’t request skim anyways, right?), and a large order of French fries from McDonald’s has shrunk from 570 calories to 500 (although Morgan Spurlock may be to blame). The New York Times goes on to say that several restaurants have gone on to reducing portion sizes of their meals to reduce the amount of calories, although it didn’t affect the price.

What if you want to spoil yourself?
Sometimes at the end of the day, I really want to have a treat. I’ve eaten my six 200- to 300-calorie meals but my sweet tooth needs satisfying. Do I really want to know how many calories are in that lemon tart from Le Pain Quotidien? Maybe not, but isn’t being informed better than guessing? I happen to think so. After all, you can just ignore the calories or work them into your caloric budget if you really want to treat yourself.

The State of New York passed the law to fight the growing rate of obesity and diabetes, and it seems that the calorie craze is spreading. California became the first state to force fast-food restaurant chains to post calorie information on menus in September, and there are two proposals moving through Congress that would make calorie postings a requirement nationwide.

So how do you feel about it? I personally believe in calorie counting (I lost 20lbs on The Daily Plate cross my heart), but would YOU want to know how many calories are in your favorite meals, or when it comes to spoiling yourself is ignorance bliss? Let us know in the comments.

Last week, many of you got confused when we removed the search bar from MyPlate. (You can always search The Daily Plate and the rest of the site using the big search bar at the top of the site.) 

But we heard you, and we’ve returned the in-line search box on MyPlate to its place of glory. Enjoy!

You may remember our YouTube contest from a few weeks ago, won by the inspirational Zach DeRidder. Well, Zach’s prize bike arrived, and he was kind enough to share a few photos:

Enjoy, Zach! You’ve certainly earned it!

(Editor’s note: If you’re looking for the search box for The Daily Plate, read this post. And if foods you’re tracking end up on the wrong day, make sure to set your time zone.)

Our own Joe Perez, EVP of Product at our parent company Demand Media, is in Austin for the LIVESTRONG Challenge. (Even though he hates the Longhorns.)

Last night was the Welcome to Texas Dinner at the Salt Lick (Austin’s premiere meat showcase).

        

The Glorious Meat Pit at The Salt Lick

The LIVESTRONG team welcomes all at the Austin Airport.

        

Willie Nelson entertains the crowd last night:

Joe in training before the big run:

After intense carbo-loading and too-few hours of sleep, Joe was ready to take the challenge — along with many, many others!

Spectators:

More racers:

Finally, Joe at the finish line!

As part of yesterday’s batch of bug fixes, we made some tweaks to the MyPlate page. Unfortunately, one of those tweaks has left some of you confused!

In previous incarnations, MyPlate had a search box in the middle of the page. You could use that search box to search for foods you’d eaten and fitness activities you’d engaged in. To get the most important information on MyPlate higher up on the page, we removed that search box. But don’t worry, you can still search The Daily Plate for what you ate!

You’ll just want to use the search box at the top of every page of the site:

When “The Daily Plate” is highlighted under the search box like it is in that screenshot, it functions identically to the search that used to be in the middle of the MyPlate page. 

Hope this helps!

We’ve rolled out another major release, full of bug fixes and feature enhancements. Here we go:

1. Time zone preferences weren’t working properly on LIVESTRONG.COM. Users who added foods to MyPlate for “today” would have them end up on “tomorrow” or “yesterday” instead, because our system wasn’t respecting the time zone you’d set. This is now, mercifully, fixed!

2. Images weren’t properly syncing from TheDailyPlate.com to LIVESTRONG.COM. They now should be syncing, at least once a day.

3. MyPlate now shows more of the important content you care about (your foods you’ve tracked!) higher up on the page.

4. TDP Mobile is now working better.

5. The “Foods I Added” module on user profiles wasn’t working properly. It’s fixed now!

6. Favorites now work better on your profile

You’ll note we’ve made various other interface refinements and fixes as well, and there’s another batch due next week. Stay tuned, and as always, please let us know what you think!

From the Desk of Jodi Cararas:

We “dare” each other to do a lot of different things on LIVESTRONG.COM, because we feel that everyone is up to the task of making their lives better in some sort of way. Well, we have taken our “Dares” to another level and are hoping to inspire legions of iTunes members to challenge their workout routines with our new Fitness Essentials video podcast.

And, we want you to jump on the fitness bandwagon, too.

LIVESTRONG.COM Fitness Essentials podcast features 3-minute workout videos created specifically for LIVESTRONG.COM on everything from toning abs to squats. Every week, LIVESTRONG.COM publishes a new video covering a variety of fitness topics, including how to do plank exercises, how to improve cardio endurance, a beginner’s guide to running a marathon and building muscle. It’s all to help you get into tip-top shape.

Seriously, what better way to spice up your exercise regimen than with LIVESTRONG.COM’s fitness videos delivered to you each week? Can’t think of any? Me either.  Also, you can watch them on your computer, iPod or iPhone. Signing up is a snap, too.  Oh, did I mention the best part: It’s FREE!

So, what are you waiting for? Get of your keister and visit the LIVESTRONG.COM Fitness Essentials podcast and subscribe, now.

You can thank me later.

Our developers have been working as hard as ever, and last night they rolled out our biggest release since launch, containing dozens of fixes, features, and improvements. Here’s a sampling:

1. Better Group categorization. Now, when browsing groups, you can drill down by category into subcategories.

2. Better MyPlate layout. We’ve improved the layout for those of you who use The Daily Plate to track the foods you eat each day. By removing an ad, we’ve gotten the important data you care about higher up on the page. More improvements for that page are in store!

3. Fix for profile links from Forums. There had been a glitch with linking from usernames on the forums to a member’s profile. That has been fixed.

4. Vitamin / supplement page improvements. Some links from those pages hadn’t been working properly; they now are.

5. Increased limit for length of Group posts. Some members wished they could write longer missives in Group blogs and comments. We’ve upped the limit on post-size by a big margin. Write away!

6. Search improvements. You’ve no doubt realized that LIVESTRONG.COM has simply tons of content. We discovered not all of our article categories were appearing in search results when you search the site with that bar at the top. That’s now corrected!

7. Video player refinements. We’ve tweaked the video player we use on the site to make it a bit sleeker.

8. WYSIWYG text editor for Groups. WYSI-what now? Don’t worry, some of our own staffers didn’t know that term. It stands for “What You See Is What You Get,” and it refers to a fancier text editor that resembles Microsoft Word. That’ll make posting in Groups even easier, since you can use nice formatting without needing to know a lick of HTML. (Note that our current WYSIWYG editor doesn’t work in all browsers. If your browser doesn’t support it, you’ll just see a regular text entry box.)

UPDATE: There had been an issue with posting replies to Group posts. That has since been resolved.

There are plenty more under-the-hood fixes, and we’re working on a lot more. We’ll be posting a nice long list with everything we’re working on soon, which should help you stay informed about what’s coming here on the site. We value your feedback; let us know what you think!

As you probably know, LIVESTRONG.COM has a team of experts who share their insights with our community. Among them is Dr. Laurie Marbas, a family medicine physician and United States Air Force Officer.

Her professional experience includes patient care in Texas, Virginia and in the Middle East when deployed with the USAF. Her special interests include sports medicine, breast and skin cancer, and health and fitness education. In addition to her work, Dr. Laurie is the mother active children.

Somehow, in between her work and her family, Dr. Laurie finds time to answer health-related questions from our members in a recurring feature on our forums that we call “Ask Dr. Laurie.” Check out her latest batch of answers here, and even post a question of your own that she may answer next time!

This is the second in a series of occasional posts where staffers from behind-the-scenes at LIVESTRONG.COM will tell you about themselves and their roles here. 

This week: Meet Joyce Chen!

As LIVESTRONG.COM’s Director of Product Marketing, my goal is to be as close as to you, our users, as I can, making sure that you learn about the features and all that LIVESTRONG.COM has to offer. It’s my job to hear what you have to say and to hopefully help make the site as useful as it can be for you.

I love working on and using the site, because it’s about helping people improve by providing information on a wide variety of health, nutrition and lifestyle topics. I also am inspired by how LIVESTRONG.COM makes it easy to help people who are committed to improving.  I think it’s amazing that members can find and connect with others through groups, and build a team of supporters who are going through similar experiences. I can really feel good about what I’m doing each day.

In doing so, I have also become quite a prolific LIVESTRONG.COM member and have taken and tracked several of my own Dares, including Dare to Get Pregnant. I am coming up on my 15^th week of pregnancy and am looking forward to raising my first child!

Click on the “Meet our staff” tag below to see all our staff profiles!