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Gone till November

Posting will resume on 11/5.

As snarked on: reality blurred

As the wisdom of my words come back to haunt me:

But some people complain to the paper that they can’t do all of that so they don’t lose weight. Well, duh.

“You watch it because you want to know the secret. But the reality is, you can’t. So why bother? Everybody in the real world seems to have the same consensus: nobody has that much time to dedicate to losing weight,” Renee Peters says. She’s the host of a discussion board called the Fatfighters, and says, “I find myself in the beginning of every season raring to go. But then they’ve lost 70 pounds and I’ve only lost 5 in the same time frame, and I find myself eating ice cream.”

Watching TV and eating ice cream instead of exercising, or a reality TV show: I wonder which one is actually to blame for her lack of weight loss.

For the record, I don't need an excuse to eat ice cream. It just makes watching people exercise that much more exciting. Plus I didn't "blame" the show for my lack of weight loss, but now that Andy Dehnart wants me to assign blame, fine. I blame him!

As seen in: The NY Times

“I find myself in the beginning of every season raring to go,” said Renee Peters, 35, a serial dieter and computer programmer in Atlanta, who is the host of the online weight-loss forum the Fatfighters. “But then they’ve lost 70 pounds and I’ve only lost 5 in the same time frame, and I find myself eating ice cream.”

Story here. Granted I wish they'd link to the blog or used the URL in the name, beggars can't be choosers right?

Utter Neglect

I want to apologize to my gracious readers for not keeping the blog portion of this site as current as it had been earlier this year. On a personal note, I've had major upheavals in my life and it's been hard to keep all the balls juggling. I moved, myself! and by myself! I mean I packed my crap, loaded the truck, drove the truck, unloaded the truck and unpacked my stuff! This was done in July, I think it took me all of August to physically recover.

Then we, in Atlanta, had the 100+ degree heat wave for almost 2 weeks.

Then I gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time, feeling like a big ole, pun intended, hypocrite to post rah-rah messages about losing weight.

Then I went from living with me and my kitty to sharing a home with my mom. Again.

Did I mention this home is a fixer upper and up till last Friday, we've been taking cold showers, no hot water installed. Oh and no a/c. No kitchen and a gutted bathroom. All during a 100 degree heat wave?!?!

There's more, but I think you get the idea. I've been busy, miserable and distracted.

I can't promise to post my frequently in the coming weeks, I'm barely keeping my personal blog updated, but I can promise to post @ least once a week and as things settle down offline and I find a new routine, I'll pick up the pace.

Admin wise, I'm still approving sites as they join the directory, I'm in the process of pruning the FitRoll, I catch the spam comments a few days late, but I remove them and I try to answer email once a week instead of daily, by the way I also went from super fast DSL to 44k DIAL UP!

Life will get better

Thanks for being patient and you can always reach me via the contact page.

-Renee

Make money blogging

Oops, last thing before I really really go on vacay, I got an email:

The BlogHerAds network is reopening to new applications on July 10th, and we're really excited to be building a great network of diet and exercise bloggers.

If interested in being part of the network, go here for more info.

My job is done, gone moving and I'll be back on or around August 6th.

Vacation Time

The Queen Bee, which would be me, is taking 2 weeks off from posting. I'm changing hives, ok, I mean I'm moving and will be packing this week and getting settled in next week. Posting shall resume on Monday August 6th.

Till then, if you are looking for new reads, check out:

- any one of the Directory Sponsors,
- any one of the 50+ sites on the Fat Fighters FitRoll,
- any one of the 88 sites in the WebRing or,
- any one of 500+, yes over 500, sites in the directory.

By the time your done, I should be back posting

Tomorrow

Winner for contest will be announced tomorrow. Sorry all, I got a bit of food poisoning over the weekend am still recovering.

Winners Notified

Contest winners have been notified via email. Please reply to the email with the requested information by the deadline date. Unfortunately, any replies sent after that date will not get a copy of the book. Thanks.

Room for 10

The blogroll got it's bimonthly, if by bimonthly that means every two months, pruning. There is now room for 10 sites. It's a GREAT way to get your blog read and find fresh new reads.

Just keep in mind:

Sites that have closed, password protected, removed the FitRoll code and/or haven't updated in 2 months are removed.

Next pruning of the FitRoll is on May 1st.

Sites are removed without notice, sorry I manage too many other projects to email gentle reminders. If in June you wonder why your site was dropped, it likely did one of the above. However, if you set up a new blog, remove the password, add the code back or start back updating, provided there is room, you can get back on the FitRoll.

Happy Holidays

From one fat fighter, to fellow fat fighters, I wish you a safe and happy holiday season. Thanks for being part of this experiment during the last year. This site has been through many incarnations and I'm still trying to find something that's helpful and relevant. Some things were dashed, others were started and stayed around. I appreciate the support through each phase.

The directory has grown in leaps and bounds and as on December 13th, my goal of having 350 blogs by the end of the year was met by the 350th blog: In Pursuit Of Fitness. At this posting, there are 356 sites!!

Heading out from 2006, the blog will be taking a long deserved break till the New Year, returning to it's fat fighting duties on January 2nd, 2007. Over the holiday I'll have some time to really hammer out a better direction for the site that is consistent.

Thanks for reading with a huge thank you to the commenters, you make the place special!

Thanks to the 50 wonderful sites on the FitRoll, you give people updated blogs to read and I love the variety of approaches.

I'd also love add a big THANK YOU to my directory sponsors, both past and present:

Present
Finding peace in Lisa
Big Ass Belle
What about your hips...
Making over Michelle
My All Natural Weight Loss...
weightloss115

Past
the pudge budge
the adventures of shrinking girl
the . weigh . i . am
Soul Searching
Qs Weight Loss Site
NetSweat Fitness Blog
LexySmash
Energise for Life: Health, Nutrition, Detox and Energy
Big Ass Belle

Special kudos to Ashar Edith for creating some of the funkier site buttons and I've saved the best for last. Tacita over @ My (vegan) attempt to loose weight., for providing us with many Fridays of tasty veggie eats.

This was just the beginning. There's more to come in 2007. I plan to grow the site into bigger and better things.

Be healthy, be fit and I'll see y'all next year!
- Renee

Blogroll Update

Going forward the blogroll will now prune sites that haven't been current in 2 months vs. 1 month. To celebrate this new feature I've upped the max sites to 65. There are 15 slots open. Click here to join.

Returning Soon

Ok fellow fat fighters, I know the site gathered dust in recent weeks, coinciding with my own personal sidetrack, but updates will resume later this week. Mostly of the holiday tips variety. I'd still like to pursue the pedometer challenge with a modest goal of 500 steps a day/3500 steps a week and adding 500 each week till we hit 10,000 on average.

Yet with the upcoming holidays, people travelling etc, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to do it now or just post tips & articles for the rest of the year and start it up for the New Year. Actually that sounds best.

Relocation

Having this site up for a little over a year, I've struggled with what direction to take it in. As much as I enjoy supporting others, in recent months I've lost sight of what I need to do for me and end lately the site has been feeling like a chore.

I want to get back to the topics and features that interest me the most and because it makes me passionate, hopefully others will be interested too. Those topics include highlighting various weight/health related stories, whether it is medical or pop culture related. I'll post them with commentary and readers can join in with their take. Lately, I've really enjoyed spotlighting blogging losers. Real folks with relatable successes.

As for challenges, they can now be found over at Spark People. For one, it's less maintenance for me to run, plus they offer features I can't, like forums, that make managing a small community easy.

So join the fatfighters group. It's free!

We are in week 3 of the 10k pedometer challenge, aiming for 2325 steps a day.

We've been Sparked

Thanks to Kelly for setting up a fatfighterblogs.com Spark Team. I heard a lot about it, but never got around to trying it out. She says it's great for support, so if your interested, join up.

For some people, myself included, this is a 3 day holiday weekend. I'll be back in town Monday evening. If I have access to a computer, I'll post week 5's check in post, otherwise, look for it on Tuesday.

Gentle reminder, the pedometer daily goal bumps up to 1550 steps per day. So if like me, you've been netting 775 in one motion, walking across the parking lot, that walk back to your car will cover you. It's in week 3 things will get vewwy interesting

Have a good weekend!

Coming up

On a personal level, my move is *almost* complete, when you factor in, I've been moving for almost a month now...*sigh*...but the last thing I have is my computer. When that goes, I go. Over the weekend I'll be back online at home and daily posting shall resume. I've been working on a daily food log for myself, think of it as fitday, in print, I'll make it into a PDF and share with you all. I also found some good tips on shaving off 150-200 calories on your eats, and I'm bringing back the 8 week walking program I ran earlier this year. It's a really cool program for beginner, intermediate and advanced walkers.

Clarification

Lest what I posted yesterday be misunderstood, anyone can enter to win one of the books, if you left a comment on any August entry, you'll get an extra shot. Else, poor Shelley will be stuck with getting 3 books and I'm sure she doesn't want that to happen

Hrrmm...I can also deduce visitors to this site are international and/or those who've already won something for a grand total of 10 peeps..

When it rains

Late last night, I got an email from my hosting company saying the version of forum I'm using has a security risk and that I have until today to upgrade or they will disable the forum.

I have zero idea on how to jimmy it to work. Web/HTML stuff, no problem, technical/software stuff, big problem. So sometime today, the forum is going away I'm sorry all. If I had the time, I'd try to figure out how to make it work. They offered to do it, for a price, and it's just not in the budget.

Chin up though, it doesn't mean the challenge is over, we are in week 3. It'll just move back to the blog. The only downside is, it's a bit more public, but if you already have a blog, I'm sure you are used to the lurkers

In other news, the fitroll has been pruned. Only 4 sites were removed this month, which is amazing to me. If you are looking for good, current reads check out the fitroll. I skimmed the sites this morning and people are doing their own challenges, talking about plateaus, life events, eating routines etc. Very motivating.

Two sites waiting in the wings, trixiebelden & xena, joined the roll leaving space for 2 more.

For the first time in like, ever, the sponsor slots are full. Go say hi to:

Qs Weight Loss Site
Diet or die ...
My (vegan) attempt to loose weight.
Ashar Edith

Okay, enough meta talk, tomorrow we shall forget about the lbs and work on getting fit & healthy.

Post Hiatus

I do apologize for the lack of posts last week, well for all of July for that matter. You know what they say about life and making plans. Here's to a more productive new month. I'll see you in August.

Which, er, would be tomorrow

Going going...almost gone

Hotcakes indeed. 7 spots snapped up like a Manhattan apartment. 3 spots left. Welcome to the fitroll iportion, Shelley, Terveys & Michelle.

Ok, I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend, not posting about the fitroll......but getting week 2 of the challenge up and going. It's never too late to join

Times like this, I'm glad I came up with the zany idea to forget about the lbs.

To the non-challenge readers: the blog will still get updated. The content will be related to what we are doing in the challenge each week. No worries, I won't leave you out

Have a good weekend all.

Fitroll Expands

Due to popular demand, the fitroll has increased from 50 to 60 sites max. As of now there are 7 spots open, welcome to Skinnygirl, Kieran & Sparky's Girl . All the details on how to join and where to get the code can be found here [link removed, fitroll is full]. But sign up quick, rumor has it the spots go like hotcakes. The skinny healthy version, of course.

Forum Stuff

The logo for the challenge has been added to the right side. In the forum, as promised, I posted directions on how to add the logo to your site/blog. It's a pretty easy copy & paste job and no need to upload images. Hosting has been taken care of.

You'll find some new threads in the forum, mostly housekeeping stuff, but places to report problems, suggestions or leave any questions for me. I'm going to be honest, I do a ton of reading during the day and while each week has a "homework" assignement, I won't get all teacher on you and check to see if you did it.

This is where the group comes in handy and hopefully you all will cheer each other on and if you see a struggler or a question just hanging, don't be shy to answer or pat someone on the back. It's what I would do

Challenge Week 1

Good to see some new faces coming on board this week. This entire week, in addition to coming up with a healthy goal you want to accomplish, is like an online mixer. It'll give you some time to figure out what you want to work on for the next 8 weeks and get to know your challenge buddies. I sent an email to the fatfighterblogs.com mailing list. This gives them time to sign up too. Later today I'll send the forum link to all the new peeps.

Angie asked how to use the button Chrissie designed:

If you are web savvy, just save the image to your computer, upload it to your hosting space and insert the applicable coding on your site/blog. If you are not web savvy, later tonight I'll make a user friendly format to put it on your site that will involve little more than cut & paste.

I haven't had a chance to check on the forum just yet, but Sunday night Morgan was my guinea pig and helped me sort out some technical problems. So far I haven't heard anything back so I'm guessing all is well. I'll post a thread for technical issues to be reported.

I'm geeked so many peeps are on board, pumped and raring to go. Here's to getting healthy and forgetting about the lbs.

Forum is up

I emailed all who signed up for the challenge the link to the forum. One email got bounced back, if you didn't get an email and did sign up, please contact me for the link.

For now it'll only be open to those participating in the forum. It's not too late to join, I'm going to make it a week long event to complete each task, still working out the kinks, but if you want to get heatlhy, are frustrated by going up and down a lb, this might be for you.

Room for 3 and more

I finally got a chance to go thru the fitroll and there is now room for 3 sites to join. Rules and perks of joining are here.

I also updated the webring. Due to no longer having the code on their blogs, 6 sites were removed. It's quite a bit of work maintaining the various blog promotion tools. If the webring were the only one, I'd send emails to see if the code was inadvertently removed but there too many tools & sites joining up to keep track of.

If yours was one of the sites that got dropped from either the fitroll or webring, and since then you have either updated your site or put the webring code back on your site, please reapply. Otherwise, new bloggers are more than welcome to join the group.

I'm hoping to introduce another guest blogger in coming weeks. Most of you know Tacita posts her yummy veggie eats, if you have a special subject matter you'd like to write about, so long as it's health and fitness related, contact me. A single post is plenty, so don't feel you have to commit to this forever.

Lastly, as I've been unpacking, I've come across a few books I'd like to pass along. I won't hold a lengthy contest to score them, I'll do a "first to comment gets first dibs". The week I plan to do the giveaway I'll post an announcement on Monday and will try to do this on Wednesdays for consistency. I *may* have enough books to giveaway one a week for the rest of the summer.

How Cool

Yesterday I got an email from Andrea and this part really made my day:

I recently lost 75 pounds and I don’t think I could have been so successful without the help of your site. Being able to read the blog and the articles/advice that was posted was such a great help. This site gave me such motivation. So again, thank you.

This site is always in limbo for me. I know what I want to do, but always run out of time. I knew there'd be less posting during June as I moved. Then wondered if I should make it a once a week thing vs. daily thing.

I do have another direction I plan to take the site in and now that I'm settling in, I should have more time to make it happen. Over the weekend I'll flesh out what I want to do and hopefully on Monday, fatfighterblogs.com version 2.0 will be up and running, no new design, I'm way too busy for that, just an new format for providing you info and tips.

That the site was helpful to at least 1 person fighting the fat, motivates me.

On the Move

The Queen Bee is changing hives and will be offline packing & moving all her honey pots. She'll be back to her daily posts on Monday June 5th. US fat fighters enjoy the holiday weekend, everyone else, see ya in a week.

Good Vegan Eats

Starting Friday, Tacita will be sharing some of her writings on vegan nutrition and recipes!

According to her site

I am vegan and I have been for years. But this did not stop me from getting to weight almost 70 kg. Now I am dieting. It has been over a year since I started: I lost 10 kilos and now I weight 60. I have 10 more kilos to go.

I am so excited to have a guest blogger and it'll be interesting to learn more about vegan eats and see how they chow down. If you'd like to guest blog, post an article on a particular topic from time to time, once or twice a month is plenty, drop me a line. I can work you into the rotation. This Friday: No Fat Stuffed Zucchini.

Housekeeping

Done tonight:

- Removed dead links from the directory, lost 13 sites
- Updated the FitRoll, lost 6 sites, there are now 10 open spots
- Updated dead links in the Birthday Club.

Quick reminder on how this works, links stay in the directory till they don't work or leave a message that they moved. Directory reads are good for archival purposes, many a time I've trolled through outdated sites, so I don't remove old sites.

As for the FitRoll, sites are removed if they haven't updated in one month, in this case since March, or took the code off their site. The FitRoll, being on the homepage, promotes fresh & current reads.

Finally, the Birthday Club, if the site link no longer works, names were removed.

I think I've gotten my blog fix in for the rest of the year. But I got a chance to leave comments, something I haven't done in ages, especially on sites with little to no feedback. There really are some good reads out there. You should check them out.

<-- pointing to the FitRoll

As for the blog changes, since the site will no longer run contests, the link to the winner's gallery has been removed.

Due to having only 1 active participant, the yearlong fitness challenge has been discontinued, all links have been removed and comments to that entry are now closed.

I'll highlight any external challenges I come across or hear about. If you are running one and are looking for participants, drop me a line and I'll promote it here.

Going going

In the last few days fitroll members may have noticed less space on their site. Nope your eyes aren't playing tricks on you, spots on the fitroll have been getting snapped up at a fairly brisk pace, as of today 12 spots remain. Here are some of the newer tenants in recent weeks:

Bill
Louisa
living to feel good
on my weigh
a weight loss success
a.m.
Louisa
Va Va Voom
Stamp Til Dawn

If you are hunting for some fresh reads, check 'em out.

Discontinued

As of this month, I'll cease posting birthday notices on the blog. They all appear on the sidebar anyway so you'll still get your shout out

Percolating

An off-hours post to give an update on the state of the site and make note of a few things.

- Due to the fact that I have a few things I’m working on I want to have finalized, I haven’t yet updated the directory news section or sent out a newsletter for this month.

- There hasn’t been a giveaway since January I have one more book to give out and another one should be here in a few weeks. Those are on tap for May and June prizes. What about April? See below.

- I’ve teamed up with a company and we’ll be running a really cool contest/giveaway in April.

- There’ll be new site content staring in April as well, more later and in the newsletter.

- Also by April all the outdated sections will be updated, there’s been great growth in the directory in the last month I want to make a note of.

- Finally, the status of The Year Long Fitness Challenge, I’ll still run it, but it won’t be as prominent. All the challenge downloads will remain, I’ll create another section of the site and move them all there and off the front page. Each Sunday I’ll post what’s ahead for the current week, but I won’t do the challenge check-ins nor keep anything challenge related posts pinned to the top of the site.

The truth is, running a group challenge in this manner is quite a bit of work for me each week. If I had a larger dedicated group, the time I put into it would make sense. As it stands, for the last month, only 2 people were checking in each week. For a group that size, I’d much rather run an offline challenge via email.

But it was for the best. I got a great learning experience that I plan to use for other on and offline ideas. I know of at least 2 people, publicly at least, who got something out of this. And for everyone else that trickled away from week 1 to week 8, well, they learned things like this don’t suit them. And who knows, maybe it gave them ideas for something else that ended up jumpstarting their fitness goals. So hey, we all win

That’s about it for now. Stay tuned for everything else. I’ll have more details to share by the first week in April; members of the newsletter will get the detailed news first. Again book giveaways start back up for May and June.

Then in July, things may slow down as I have some major personal changes ahead that’ll take up quite a bit off my time offline, but because I plan ahead, the site won’t go blank, just quieter.

As always, thanks for visiting and participating in whatever manner you have been.

Comment Spam

Early last week the site was flooded with comment spam so I installed a new plugin to nip it in the bud, it automatically closes comments older than 5 days or any entry that has been inactive for 3. But now I can't figure out how to reopen them, that's why the comment was closed on that entry Angie. I changed the days to 7, and that should take care of entries closing too soon.

Welcome Terri, it's not too late to join, another round will start in the middle of April, so you can go through the motions till then, just to get a feel of it, or jump right in.

Thanks for the feedback on the group challenge incentive, I'm still thinking over the best and fairest way to do it, if I even do it at all. Family situation has been taken care of, regular daily posting shall continue on Monday, hope you all had a good week

New this weekend

- A new poll has been posted. It’ll be up for the next two weeks.

- All this tough talking about fighting fat prompted me to change the default logo for the directory into this:

The bees are cool, I'm still loving the bees, but over the next few weeks I'll come up with some more symbolic fighting fat buttons. I made one that looks like the boxing glove is punching into soft squishy fat, but I need to work on it some more.

- Speaking of bees, Marci has redone the bee in the logo at the top of the page. The new bee will also make its debut sometime this weekend. I still have to do my part and redo the dashes. The changes are too subtle to notice, but are major enough that I'll now be able to do some really cool things with the logo. Stay tuned...

Hope everyone has a great weekend. Check back tomorrow for Week #2's kickoff post!

Come and get em

On the left side you can download the program and checklist for the walking level you plan to do. If you have problems opening them or need them in another format, let me know.

********

This weekend, I’m retiring the tagboard on the right side. It’s getting spammed way too much and I can’t protect it. I still like the idea of clicking on beakers of fat, so I moved them to the bottom of the comments smiley section. This way, when we have our weekly recap, as you log the walks you got in, you can throw away any beakers of fat you got rid of too.

********

I’m all about symbolism it’s why I used beakers to represent pounds, in some way it takes away the heaviness that comes with weight loss and makes it more like a game. For the challenge, I came up with another symbol. (best Jack Black voice) Ladies & gentlemen, I give you, Shoe:

This trusty pair represents one walk. In the end of week check-ins post, click on how many shoes you collected/walks you got done. I even added tiny # logos on them, no real reason, just because I could. Go ahead, try on a pair (ie, test them out) in this entry. Let’s see how many shoes we can collect as a group in the next 10 weeks.

And remember folks, every shoe (walk) counts! Have a great weekend.

Final techie post

Since it's pretty irrelevant to the content of the site to post the technical changes I perform from time to time, I've set up a site news blog to keep track of everything. Things like feeds, mailing list, making the poll pop up and so on. I was going to remove site news category entirely, but when the directory went down for a week last month, I kept people updated here. News like that will stay. I doubt anyone will need to or even want to read it techie stuff, but if you are wondering where something went or whatever happened to such and such, most likely I'll have it logged over. A permanent link, called What’s New, has been added in the navigation section.

Coming soon

Hey all,

No the site hasn't turned into the Birthday pages . If you read my blog, you'll know I've been on vacation and out of the loop since 12/21. I just got home yesterday and will need the next 2 days just to recoup.

If you are a member of the directory and subscribed to the mailing list, you got the email about the new & exciting things that'll be going on here in the new year. I'll post an update on the site this weekend, but hint hint, the mailing list gets the scoop firsthand.

So no worries about all the Birthday greetings as of late, that's done automatically and there is only one more for January. If I can get myself organized by Sunday, a yearlong weight loss challenge will be launched. Oh and here's a sneak peek of the new & exciting things: there'll be giveaways & contests & prizes!

Stay tuned...

Back up

Yay! Directory support came through. The directory came back online late Friday and things seem to be working just fine. *whew*, I wasn't looking forward to tinkering with it at all, I still have a great deal of work to do to get ready for the New Year, but for the most part nothing would have been as major as reinstalling the directory.

As for the sneak peak of what I have planned for the site, members of the mailing list will get a preview in the next week. I'll post details on the site in two weeks when I get back from vacation. How to get on the mailing list? Easy. It is open to all sites in the directory, shoot me an email via the contact form and in the comment box, tell me the URL of your site. Be sure to use the same email you signed up with or put that in the comment box too.

Still down

But not out. Next Wednesday I'll be leaving for vacation, I'll take my computer with me and work on the directory. I heard back from directory support, but he hasn't answered my last email yet. I'm sure the holidays make this a low priority so I won't hold my breath. If I don't hear back from him by the time I'm ready to go, by which point it'll be a week, I'll just have to reinstall it myself.

No biggie, I'm sure I'll learn lots. There'll be very light, if any, posting over the next week. It'll give me a chance to work on things and also finally upgrade the blog, which will cut down on the spam comments. I'm still not sure if the tagboard will stay up, it's starting to get spammed daily again, but if I do take it down, I'll have something better to replace it. Those beakers o' fat ain't goin nowhere

Have a great weekend. If I don't get a chance to post next week, whatever holiday you and your family celebrate, may it be safe.

Seasons Greetings!

Almost there

There may be intermittent errors popping up over the next few days. I have to break somethings in order to fix other things. Tech support wrote me back about the directory, I'll keep my fingers crossed they can figure out what's up and get it back working ASAP. If not, I'll have to reinstall it and try to get it up and running by the end of the weekend. Thanks so much for the patience.

Just when I was getting ready to post a sneak peak of all the goodies I have in store for the new year this happens

Ah well, stay tuned, some things are worth the wait

Directory Down

Welp, not sure what happened, but the directory has been completely reset, as of this moment it's showing no sites listed. That's the bad news. The good news is that I still see the links in the database and just need to figure out how to get them to show up again. This just happened as I'm posting this, around 10pm Sunday night, so I doubt my emails will get answered before tomorrow morning. I apologize to the sponsored links, as soon as I get the directory back, in addition to the time you had left, I'll add an extra month to compensate for the down time.

*****
Update @ 10:40
I was right, support is closed Sat & Sun. Mon & Tues, I won't be home in the PM to work on this, so it looks like the directory won't be back up till later on in the week. If I have to reinstall it, then it'll be the ugly looking default style, until I can put the fatfighter logo and colors back *sigh* always something, but I'm really grateful I didn't lose all the sites so it's all good

Crossroads

Ok, some spamming fool has stumbled onto this site and I'm deleting comments and/or cleaning up the tagboard every. single. day. This is getting old fast. It means I have to constantly watch the site to make sure no objectionable content and links are posted.

I can solve the comment part, I wont require people to register...too much hassle..but I'll put something like a graphic with #'s that need to be typed for the comment to post.

As far as the tag board, I can't protect that, if it keeps getting spammed, I'll have to take it down for a while till I figure out a better way that people can log their beakers of fat in peace.

I don't know what they hope to achieve since whatever gets through, only stays up for what? A 1/2 a day? Sheesh, if this wasn't so annoying, I'd laugh.

Yea, it's worth it

Results of the why (via Sheryl):

Hi - I joined the Fat Fighter Blog Directory today and found a few blogs that I added to my fav's over there to the left - MegaChallenge 200, a gal's challenge to do 200 workouts to get into summer clothes - a great idea! A Stomach, not a waist basket, this one caught my eye and I think it will catch yours too. I'm such a Scale Whore, aren't we all?

Go check them out!

I'm such a dork that I know the term to use when you talk about someone talking about you is meta, but I'm such a dweeb I don't know what meta means.

What Sheryl wrote is at the heart of what I want the site to become, a resource for bloggers. Over the last month or so I've mainly been posting articles, tips & motivational nuggets, I'll continue to do that for the next two months, but by the end of the year the site will change up a bit.

As of the end of October, the directory had 87 sites, maybe around 97 today. 200 is a nice round number to aim for by years end, but I'll be happy with 150. Once I get enough blogs listed, the real purpose of the site, being for and about weight loss bloggers, will launch.

On that note, I have some offline duties to take care of, plus some doof keeps spamming this site so I have technical things to work on. Be back Monday, have a good weekend!

The why

A little background on why I’m doing all of this and what the big picture is. I’ve been ensconced in the world of weight loss blogs for about 3 years now. I’ve had 4 to 5 versions of my own weight blog for 5+ years. One of the things I noticed, across the majority of the sites I visited, was a sense of aloneness. Yes they may have a blog roll or links list, but they seemed to lack comments, support & community.

I’m not naïve nor arrogant enough to believe I’ll be the be all to end all for everyone. Actually I rather not, that’s a prescription for burn out. Rather, I want to provide a place to promote weight loss bloggers and their stories. I want to provide the basic health info most people seem to get confused about. I want to provide a forum for people who'd like to write articles for larger audiences. I want to provide a central location for health & fitness news. I want to give back some of what I get.

In addition to providing services, I basically want to build this site into a go-to resource for weight loss bloggers.

A mighty tall order, but it’s only because I so deeply believe in what I’m doing & what I envision is why I welcome this challenge.

What do I get in return?

Well, I get a sense of satisfaction from helping others. I can not not help people. It’s in my nature. Whenever I am in a position to help and I chose not too, it hurts me more. I also get to try my hand at growing a community. I’m painfully shy and am always more interested in bringing my different groups of friends together so they could be friends with each other while I sit back in the corner and watch them interact. It makes my heart smile.

This site isn’t comment driven, it’s goal is not to be a popular blog with gobs of comments. I’d rather the weight loss bloggers get all that attention. I even toyed with not having any comments, but changed my mind. It still is a blog so feedback from time to time is always good.

This blog is here to provide two things, 1) support & promotion of weight loss bloggers via directory listings, blogroll, webring and 2) information in the form of articles, tips, motivation, recipes, food reviews, product reviews, trends, etc.

In the coming weeks advertising links will start to appear. Advertising first and foremost pays the hosting bill. My personal policy on advertising carries over from my other two sites, no company has every paid me for my opinion. I’ve actually been approached by a big named online diet company everyone knows about, so well known I can’t even give a clue with the first letter, offering me money to “blog” about them. I refused.

If I talk about something and happen to mention a product, that’s one thing. Crafting my posts for the sole purpose of product placing for the dough is not my style. If a company is interested in paying to have their product mentioned here, I will think long and hard before accepting such an offer and will clearly label any such post for what it is, paid advertising.

I will try my best to keep ads unobtrusive and relevant to the site. Dynamic text ads are out of my control. There will never be pop ups, unders or overs. I hate those things.

Once the hosting bill has been paid, advertising monies goes towards making this site bigger & better. That means offering goodies, being able to compensate contributors (right now it’s purely volunteer) and as I said earlier, giving something back to the community that participates on the site.

Yes this site is a labor of my love, currently running on the sweat of my brow and cramps of my fingers. Making money doing what I love vs. getting a 2nd job doing something I don’t really like has been a dream of mine for a long time & I’m going for it. But I’m not a complete capitalist. Behind the scenes I’m working on ways to share what I’d like to happen with as many people as possible. There is a potential I see in other community blogs that I’d like to bring to weight loss blogs.

Finally, this site is all about me taking a chance to follow a dream. I may very well fail horribly. But like my personal site, even if my traffic counter doesn’t record another visitor, I’ll still be here, and by being here, even if I lose, I win.

Big fat challenge

They're baaaaaaack!

The beakers o' fat that is. On my site I had a group challenge where at the end of 6 weeks everyone forked over their beaker of fat lost. By the end of 6 weeks the group lost 102.5lbs and I had a page full of fat beakers. Then I started the Up for Grabs Challenge where every Sunday anyone who lost weight logged their beaker.

The logistics were a bit dicey since I wanted it done automatically. By the time I brainstormed this site, it all came together in a nifty little tagboard. Since it's not scientific & purely for jest, there'll be no tally. The challenge & tagboard are open to any "loser" and checking in your weight loss is optional.

Challenge Rules:
Your mission is, should you choose to accept it, to fork over each beaker you've lost every time you weigh in, the main goal to hand over @ least 1. Even a is totally cool.

Check in day is the day you officially weigh yourself. The challenge goes till I get to my own goal. Any one is free to join or stop checking in @ any time.

Use the tagboard to pat each other on the back or kvetch. It's what is there for.

Newness

Well I decided to chuck the daily posting theme, sort of. Each day *may* still have a theme in time. Right now the site's too young and it's easier for me to post off the top of my head. I removed the name of the day from the category. It was way too redundant and cluttering up the sidebar. That's what was bugging me. I also streamlined the category names:

Articles, Birthday Club, Exercise, Food & Nutrition, Motivation, Site News, Tips.

Starting Monday I am happy to introduce new content & contributors:

Please join me in welcoming Elle to the hive, she'll write about various issues (YaY! It’s not just me! ) and let's have a round of applause for Krista. Krista will post food reviews, a newly created category, from time to time. It'll be a weekly feature and when she’s off duty, I’ll pinch hit. Look for it on Tuesdays. This Tuesday, Krista tackles Nabisco’s 100 calorie packs. The Oreo flavor. Yum!

Stay tuned folks, next week I'll launch the another category and *hopefully* welcome another contributor to the hive.

Ok now

All this week I've been brainstorming about what I want this site to be. Over the weekend I need to do some maintenance, fix some errors brought to my attention and make a few changes on the side bar, something over there just isn't working for me as the categories start to get populated.

I'm still torn about doing the weekly theme. When I do it, it feels disjointed & forced, but when I step away from looking at it as a creator and look at is as user, it kinda makes sense. I don't get why I'm resisting it so. It could be that I'm so used to my site being an ongoing story where one topic flows into the other and each day is a build up of the last and the daily theme makes me feel that the previous post was left hanging.

Small kinks that just require a mental shift in thinking and approach. I'll stick with the theme till the end of the year and by the time Phase Two is ready, I'll make an assessement based on how I feel about it and of course user feedback. Next week I hope to kick off some new & exciting content, unrelated to the daily theme, and possibly when I see them both together, I'll feel it's all flowing better.

Have a great weekend!

Bear with me

Let's all consider the next few weeks or so to be the beta version of this site. I still haven’t gotten a feel for what will be posted. Could be just me but I think posting articles day to day will get old fast, yet I don’t want it to solely be about me nor do I want to lecture people on what to do vs. what not to do.

Decisions decisions.

Yesterday I was lucky to get a WONDERFUL offer. It got the wheels in my brain spinning away and I came up with a new take on topics/features that has me giddy with excitement.

I’ll continue to follow the posting plan for this week, maybe next week too. Just keep in mind, as things get finalized, it’s all subject to change. For the better.

I hope.

Posting Plan

Over time this may change, but tentatively the posting days & themes will be as follows:

Motivational Mondays:
Quotes, sayings, phrases to set the tone for the upcoming week.

Tip Day Tuesdays:
Exercise & eating tips.

What Say You Wednesdays:
Health related topics that'll make me ask and may even make you think.

Workout Thursdays:
Posts related to all things exercise.

Featured Food Fridays:
Posts related to all things food.

Saturday/Sundays:
No postings, it's me time.

I like the daily theme since it gives me a single topic to focus on. There may be some cross day posting, but for the most part this is the schedule. As I add more categories, they won't necessarily follow a set schedule.

Now that all known site problems have been worked out, see you Monday with some Motivation!

Sharing the love

One of the things I felt antsy about when I brainstormed this site was other similar sites and the perception of competition. For the record, my point of view is, there is room in the ginormous blogosphere for everyone. There isn't one search engine see google, yahoo, ask jeeves, hotbot, msn, etc etc etc. Likewise, there is not one talk show host, see Oprah, Ellen, Tyra, Tony yada yada yada. Nor is there one TV network, see abc, cbs, nbc, not to mention cable.

There are many health communities out there. I'll use this post to highlight the ones I know about.

Put Down the Dount, FIT Portal & Directory, diet-blogs.org, 3 Fat Chicks, the chubby girl brigade, Big Fat Blog & Embracing Our Size.

So there you go. On the links page of my site I had a 100+ blogs of people getting in shape using various methods. I always kept in mind that my approach to losing weight or writing style won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I share the same sentiment here. Naturally I want as many people as possible to hang out here, but by no means is it the be all to end all.

To me, our sites are like slices in the health related blogs pie. Our slices may occupy opposite sides of the pie pan, but we all have our place. I even created a Resources category in the directory for sites just like the ones above. It would be fantastic if they end up joining the directory too.

Phases breakdown

Earlier on my site I mentioned I was going to roll this site out in two phases: Phase One is from now till December and Phase Two should be ready by January. I hope.

Phase One consists of getting the directory up (done) and populated (ongoing/always in progress), posting to the blog (real content starts next week) and rolling out a new feature or two (coming soon).

Phase Two...ah...this is the tease. I've got some cool stuff in the works and it will take me a few more months to get it all in place. In the next few weeks I'll launch a mailing list. Right now I can directly email everyone listed in the directory, but I don't want to abuse anyone's email address since their intention was to use it just to join the directory. The mailing list will be optional and gives people a chance to opt out whenever they wish.

Back to Phase One, I said this week I'd take some time to explain the setup of the place. I realized there's one area I overlooked that may be confusing. While fatfighterblogs.com is one site, there are two major areas:

The Blog: which is this section, will be updated Mondays through Fridays and contain the meat and bones, the comments, the interaction etc. It'll also have all the neat stuff coming from Phase Two.

You can add the link to fatfighterblogs.com to your blogroll/list of links and check it as often as you check the blogs you read. In the next few days I'll set up the RSS/XML/ATOM feeds for those of you that subscribe to feed readers.

The Directory: by putting the link (http://www.fatfighterblogs.com/cgi-bin/directory/in.cgi?id=YOUR LINK ID) you got in the approval email on your site, using either text or button, it promotes your site in two ways. 1) It ranks you in the popular blogs section on the main page, and 2) it puts you on the Hot Links page. Granted those two perks are totally vanity related, but they both promote your site by giving you more visibility within the directory.

That said, I really want the directory and blog to feature weight loss bloggers and not become an offshoot of my site. It's why I removed my buttons from this site. This is not a personal blog, I want it to be a community blog. A hub. Dare I say? A hive.

There'll always be a connection and slight similarity, because I'm writing on both, but after noticing my site is listed on the popular list, feh, I decided I want this place to be about others not me. I'm still going to link to the directory from my blog, but I'm removing my LINK ID. This way I won’t get ranked in the popular list or Hot Links page (Go Marci & Sarah!) and free up a slot for someone else. Aside from linking back to my site I’ve been doing this week, in future posts there’ll be none or very little crosslinking back to my site.

Last thing, as I get everything up and running this week, all posts have gone in the Site Related category. When the real content starts next week, comments to Site Related posts will be closed as it only contains FYI sort of info. I also don't have comments on birthday posts because the well wishes were getting sent to the person via a middle man vs. directly to their site or email.

Group hug

I promise you all these back to back to back bday celebrations are a total coinky dink.

I'm still tinkering away behind the scenes putting out mini fires that come up. If you see something odd, don't hesistate to let me know. To those that take the time to email me the glitches, even if you think it may just be your computer, you've been a BIG BIG help!

On a side note, I was racked with so much anxiety putting the site out. It's part of a bigger dream I have and what if I built it and no one came. Thank you all so very much for the well wishes, support and especially joining in.

Welcome

You made it...you survived 12 days of disappearing bees. For this. What? You knew the surprise had to be web related right?

For the mystery behind the bees, read this, then come back here for more, I'll wait.

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Welcome back.

So this is the project I've been toiling away till late at night & dedicating every spare second on. Way back in December two thousand ought ought four, I started my blog with the following mission:

The primary focus is the latest news, trends, fads and your commentary. I would love for it to turn into a watercooler of fitness chit chat.

The first few weeks I was pretty good at it, but the focus quickly turned towards me. With my first name in the domain, what did I expect? Soon I found myself juggling me talk with generic fitness talk. Somedays I had upwards of 5 entries. Something had to give.

If you've read my personal blog for a while, you'll notice I post quite a few articles and my thoughts on them. The blog portion of this site will continue that habit as well as highlight interesting tidbits I come across.

There was also a ginormous links page on my site. I tried to keep it current as I found more bloggers, but once I cracked the 50 sites mark, it became quite exhausting to keep checking and updating dead links. The directory portion of this site will take care of that.

That's a general overview/introduction of what the site is. In the upcoming months there will be tons of features, things I started on my blog & let fade away, I'll now be able to completely run them here. Things like my favorite G - C word. Group. Challenges. Yup, they are coming back. And the What say you? I used to pin at the top of my site, a version of that will return. Oh and remember Featured Food Fridays? It's revamped and raring to go...and much much more I may even open it up to volunteers, but your comments & feedback are more than enough.

It'll take me another week or so to get the final pieces in place before I really kick things off. I still need to make sure there are no bugs and fix any glitches you guys run into. I'll use this week to take care of those things and hopefully by next Monday the main mission of this site will ready to go.

I hope you find the blog & directory a helpful resource. Participate when you can and be sure to come back regularly. I've got so much in the works, I'll try to make it worth your time. While people find this place and join the directory (nudge nudge) I'll use this week to post about what's on here. It's all pretty self explantory, but an official explanation never hurt anyone either.

Now go join the directory.

Scoot!