Its been over six years since we've launched our forums. During this time it has seen thousands of fresh faces, greetings, meetings, partings, arguments, kind words, life transformations, cathartic rants, and simply happy time pass. It has been with us throughout this time, silently observing and facilitating. But like any wise old man, its bones were getting old. Its joints were aching, and it has been needing a new jolt of energy.

A Mobile World
Did you know that over 30% of you visit our website using a mobile device? For those who do visit us via mobile, we owe you a sincere apology, because our forums have been horrendous on a mobile browser. But the big news is that things are about to change! Our new forums are completely mobile friendly and compatible with iPhone, Android, and pretty much any other modern smart phone.

Each post, topic, and forum shows up beautifully, with the full set of features, and in nice large font. See the screenshots for yourself.

You dont have do anything different, just browse to the forums like you normally would. This means that you can finally put these away:

Not Just for Mobile
The interface on your desktop browser has also been cleaned up a great deal. There is now less clutter on the page, and the overall experience is a lot cleaner. Check out some more screenshots here!

You will notice that each post no longer has 400 buttons below it. Only the buttons that are relevant to each post show up, making your screen space a lot less cluttered. Also, when you reply to another person's post, the entire post is indented inside, making it a lot easier to figure out who has replied to whom.

Launching soon! Maybe as early as next week! Maybe.
And do remember that this is not in any way a be-all-end-all when it comes to the forums. We are in the process of constantly learning and improving upon what we have, and this is just one step along the way.

Stay tuned for the changes! We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Today we released a couple of major updates to Health Tracker just in time for the holidays (as we continue on the path to Health Tracker world domination :). These updates include, 1) Profile display of Health Tracker - If you choose to, you are now able to display/share your Health Tracker within your personal profile. This can be kept completely private, it can be shared with only your friends or with the entire ObesityHelp community. 2) My Workouts - You are now able to build and store custom workouts that can be used over and over again. My Workouts will allow you to log multiple exercise/activity items at one time so you don't have to search for individual exercises each time you want to log your activity or exercise session.

Profile Display of Health Tracker .

The profile display of Health Tracker includes Body, Food Log, Exercise Log and the Macronutrient Report. As mentioned above, this can be kept entirely private or you can choose to share your Health Tracker information with friends, family, your bariatric surgeon or other clinicians.

In order to see the profile view of Health Tracker, when viewing your profile or another member's profile, look for the Health Tracker link to the right of the avatar. If there is no Health Tracker link, the profile view of Health Tracker has been set to private.

The privacy settings for Health Tracker can be found in the "Settings" section of My OH. To access your Health Tracker setting click My OH at the top of any page on ObesityHelp, select "Settings" on the left, click the Health Tracker tab and choose the "Sharing" option. Or, just click here to access your Health Tracker Sharing options :)

Workouts

My Workouts makes it quick and easy to log routine exercise and activity. For those who perform similar exercises on a regular basis, with My Workouts you can create a workout consisting of a series of exercises you often perform and instead logging each exercise indivivudally, My Workouts allows to log a single item (a workout) that contains all of the exericses you have performed. Build it once and log it any number of times.

Under My Workouts you will see a list of workouts that you have created and saved. You can log workouts directly from My Workouts by selecting "I did this", choose the day and click "Save"

You can also search for workouts you have created directly from your Exercise Log.

Create your first workout now!

One other addition

For your convenience, in this release we have also made some changes to the account deactivation process. In case you ever have the need to deactivate your ObesityHelp account, you can access this function by clicking My OH at the top of any page on ObesityHelp, select "Settings" on the left, and under the "General" tab select "Manage". Instructions for deactivating your account can be found there.

Have a great Thanksgiving and look for more updates soon!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this release, please post them in this thread on the Main Message Board.

Last week we released two major updates. First was the public release of OH Groups where any ObesityHelp member can now create their own Group. Second was the addition of Activity Tracking to Health Tracker, which provides a robust and easy to use tool to track and monitor your exercise and activity. Today we have added My Meals and an Activity vs. Weight Loss Report to Health Tracker. 

My Meals My Meals allows you to group and store multiple food and beverage items as a custom meal that can be used over and over again. If you have meals that you eat on a regular basis, you will no longer need to log each food item individually.

To access My Meals, go to your Health Tracker in My OH and click on the Nutrition tab. You will see My Meals listed under Nutrition.

Creating a new meal works similar to your Food Log. You can search for food items on the right and add the foods to the meal on the left. A Calorie Breakdown chart and Nutrient Summary Label are also available for each meal.

Once a meal is created you can add that meal to your Food Log from My Meals by clicking "i had this" or you can search for the meal from your Food Log.

When searching for a meal to add to your Food Log, all meals will be returned when "My Foods" is selected in search. So, to "drill down" on meals that you have created, select to only show "My Foods." When a new meal is created it may require up to 30 minutes for that meal to be indexed and become searchable.

Activity vs. Weight Loss Report Adding to the Macronutrient and Export Reports previously available, there is now an Activity vs. Weight Loss Report. This report will allow to compare Average Time in Activity vs Weight over time, providing you with further insight into what impact physical activity as on weight loss and weight loss maintenance. In Health Tracker, click Reports and then select Activity vs. Weight Loss.

We hope these additions to Health Track reduce the time required to log your daily food intake and makes it easier to view how physical activity impacts your weight.   Create your first meal now! If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this release, please post them on the Main Message Board.