The LIVESTRONG.COM Blog

As you may know, LIVESTRONG.COM was overwhelmed with traffic thus far this year, thanks to thousands of new members who’ve likely made New Years resolutions to live a healthier 2009. Our dedicated tech team were able to make some server and code adjustments to restore stability and speed to the site earlier this week.

But, as part of those fixes, they had to cache some data on the MyPlate screen of The Daily Plate. This was a temporary measure, and it has had the effect of making some of the weekly and monthly totals on the lower half of your MyPlate screen lag behind. It’s our intent to restore full functionality to those totals by the end of the day today.

Caching those numbers definitely made them less useful, but it also enabled us to get the site running much more smoothly, which we felt was a worthwhile trade-off. 

Again, it’s our aim to get the MyPlate weekly/monthly totals fully restored by end of the day.

Thanks, as always, for your patience and support!

UPDATE: We have all the volunteers we need now; thanks!

Planning on losing weight in the New Year? Let us help!

We are looking for five very dedicated Daily Plate users to participate in our new Diet Season Promotion.

Here is what you would have to do:
Track your food and exercise daily on the Daily Plate
Take before and after photos, video testimonials
Write one blog per week to track your progress

In return you will receive:

• A diet starter kit with food scales, pedometer and more!
• Daily contact with our Nutritionist to help you through your diet
• An iPod Touch with the Daily Plate application on completion of your diet! 

If you are interested please email us at:  livestrongdietfaceoff@livestrong.com  with ‘LIVESTRONG Diet Reviewer’ in the subject line.

Good luck and happy dieting!

UPDATE: We have received all the volunteers we need; thanks!

Last night, we rolled out a few new fixes to the site. I’m especially pleased that we were able to address a few niggling glitches that, although small, were major annoyances for some of you!

• When writing in your diaries on The Daily Plate, many of you noted that your apostrophes and quotation marks could get mangled. This will no longer happen! 
• We’ve made a variety of UI fixes and enhancements to the new “Lance” tab, where you can keep up with our advisor Lance Armstrong as he trains and continues his worldwide cancer awareness campaign.
• Group names are now alphabetized on your profile, so that it’s easier to find the exact one you’re looking for.

Some of you may have noted that LIVESTRONG.COM and TheDailyPlate.com were offline for a bit earlier today. We ran into some issues with one of our databases, and it took some time to repair.

As part of the fix, we’ve archived all MyPlate data that’s more than six months old. So, if you’re wondering why you can’t find that burger you tracked back in April — now you know! 

We plan to restore all archived data over the next several days.

Please let us know if you run into any glitchiness that you think may be related to this. Thanks, as always, for your patience and support!

An update to our popular LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker iPhone app went live in the iTunes store today. We’ve added bidirectional sync — meaning foods you track here on the website sync back down to your iPhone or iPod touch now, too!

The updated version also features:

• Improved speed, performance, and stability
• Improved food and fitness search relevance
• Record weight in kg in addition to lbs
• Various bug fixes

You can download the latest free version here. Enjoy!

(Note: Other much-requested features like meals and access to “frequently eaten foods” are coming soon!)

We are thrilled to announce the immediate available of our LIVESTRONG Calorie Tracker application for iPhone and iPod Touch. You can grab it here:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=295305241&mt=8

The application is completely free, and will allow you to track the foods you eat, the fitness activities you do, and more. Check it out, and let us know what you think!

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!

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!