Traineo Review – fitness done “Web 2.0″

Traineo launched in August 2006 with the mission “to create the most effective weight loss and fitness community on the web by combining the latest software technology with sound information and services from the world’s leading health and fitness experts.” It’s been getting a lot of press lately, even earning an article on Arrington’s TechCrunch. Traineo is gaining the reputation as the poster-child for Web 2.0 weight-loss, and serves as a good starting point for reviewing online fitness journals.

First, let’s get that Web 2.0 moniker out of the way – what does it mean, and what can it bring to fitness? Web 2.0 was first coined by O’Reilly, and is a vague, near-meaningless descriptor meant to define the “new web,” an advancement beyond the idea of static, text-based pages. While the Web 2.0 descriptor is difficult to nail down, it’s easier to identify features following Web 2.0 principles – social networking (enabling interaction among users), tagging / folksonomy (enabling interaction between users and the data) and websites as applications are all examples of Web 2.0 features. Traineo is spiced with Web 2.0 principles including a call-in show packaged as a podcast, user-created groups, “motivators,” forums and more. With all these new-age features, how does Traineo do with providing the basic fitness journal features?

Traineo’s developers clearly intended to create a simple, easy-to-use weight-loss service that focuses primarily on community support, secondarily on daily caloric intake and eschews more complicated notions of nutrition. Traineo members share information through forums and support through “motivators” and private messages. Traineo offers several search features for finding like-minded members, and allows members to form groups complete with their own private forums and message areas. Recording data is as simple as choosing a caloric intake and exercise for the day.

The nutshell – If you are looking for a simple, user-friendly service to log only daily caloric intake and exercise, do not care to record or analyze daily nutrition, and are seeking an active support group with several communication features, Traineo is the place for you. If, however, you are interested in learning more about your daily nutrition and the caloric and nutritional value of the particular foods you eat, you will quickly outgrow what Traineo has to offer.

Read the full review after the jump.

Security and Privacy policies
Being both a geek and an attorney, I’m naturally drawn to privacy and security policies. Here’s the interesting part of Traineo’s privacy policy copied from http://www.traineo.com/FAQ-security:

The information we collect is used to improve the experience for our users, used to customize the content and/or layout of our page for each individual visitor.

• traineo.com collects personal information about you when you sign up for a traineo.com account. This information includes your age, weight, height, sex, and other personal fitness details.
• traineo.com also stores the data you enter about workouts, exercise, weight, activities, goals, and all other data collected in the online forms on our website.
• traineo.com logs information such as your IP address that you access our server with, and the pages you visit at our website.
• traineo.com may use this information to target specific advertisements or to suggest items to you.
• traineo.com will provide any information needed to comply with any applicable laws or legal proceedings.

Additionally, here’s Traineo’s legal disclaimer:

traineo.com has been developed to build an online community to help our users reach improve their fitness, reach their weight loss goals and lead a healthy lifestyle. The authors of this web site are providing information for educational purposes only. The information provided within this website and from our services is not intended to be a diagnosis or prescription. Before beginning any diet or fitness program please consult a physician. Discontinue any exercise that causes you pain or severe discomfort and consult a medical expert. The authors of this web site, and all its content, cannot guarantee any exercise, health, weight loss or fitness results or improvements to the users of traineo.com.

Even considering the targeted advertising clause of the privacy policy, I imagine this is pretty standard stuff.

Signing up and profile.
The sign-up process is completed in three easy steps: enter some basic account info (e-mail, username, password, etc), some vitals (weight, height, age, gender, etc) and choose some “motivators” (more on the later, you can skip this step). Entering information is a smooth process, thanks to Web 2.0 – information you enter is validated as you fill out the form (as opposed to after the form is submitted) and informational tips pop up as you click in fields.

Profile settings include hiding your weight and profile page (different setting for members and non-members, nice touch); receive weekly email messages from Traineo containing update information and “motivator reports” (I haven’t yet received an email, so I can’t comment on that feature); and set your visibility and contact options. You can further enhance your profile with a goal weight, date to achieve the goal, photo and self-description. The result is a profile page, which displays your photo, description, weight loss progress, charts for diet, exercise and weight change, contact information and Traineo groups you have joined (more on groups later). You and others (depending on your visibility settings) can access the profile page at [account name].traineo.com – for example, my profile page is http://thelifeledger.traineo.com/.

Navigation, usability.
Traineo’s main screen is well-designed and mostly user-friendly. Navigation elements are placed in visible locations and logically grouped – logging features are in the middle of the page, links to other areas of the site are tucked away in the upper right corner. Traineo provides a visible reminder of your progress with a “___ lbs to go” widget, and provides at-a-glance information from motivators, forums and groups below the scroll. Glancing at the main screen, you are immediately reminded of your weight progress and have one-click access to logging features.

Navigation is mostly smooth and logical, with a few clunky spots. For instance, it takes at least two clicks to navigate to any groups you have joined (the shortest route I have found so far is clicking “My Page”, then scrolling to the listing of groups you have joined). After leaving the main page, returning to the journal features also requires two clicks, which could be alleviated if Traineo used a hidden sub-menu similar to the one displayed when hovering your mouse over the “Members” tab at the top right. Despite those two small gripes, Traineo is a simple, user-friendly and easy-to-navigate web application.

Recording meals.
It is clear Traineo’s designers intended to make it as easy as possible to update weight and caloric information. Abandoning the drop-down select form controls endemic to online fitness journals, Traineo instead gives users two slide controls – “How would you rate your diet today” and “How many calories did you consume”:

The “rate my diet” control allows you to select a value along a range between “Poor”, “Average”, “Fair” and “Great!” (why is it I always hear Tony the Tiger in my head when I read that?). If you hover your mouse over a plus-sign next to one of the values, Traineo provides the following descriptions in true Web 2.0 pop-up fashion:

Daily caloric intake is updated the same way – drag a slider across the bar until it matches your calculated daily caloric intake for the day. In the name of simplicity and ease of use, Traineo provides no database of foods to select from (although there is a link to the USDA National Nutrient Database, which claims to have information for 7,300 foods but is sparse on restaurant meals), no log for tracking actual foods eaten, and no resources for calculating or analyzing your nutrition information (daily vitamins, daily fiber, etc).

Through the magic of an undisclosed mathematical algorithm, Traineo calculates your “Daily Diet Score” based on your rating and caloric intake. Traineo provides a calendar for updating missed days, a chart that plots your “Daily Diet Score” progress, and a suggested daily caloric intake value (at 2110 calories, Traineo is suggesting a daily intake level that will result in just under a pound lost per week with no exercise, understandably conservative).

As mentioned before, Traineo offers little in the way of recording consumption, recording only daily caloric value where other services record foods eaten and offer daily nutrition information. Personally, I find entering daily caloric intake in Traineo onerous – I have to record my meals elsewhere, then calculate the caloric value of each meal myself, then finally I can record my daily caloric intake. In comparison, other services simply offer food choices and calculate the caloric value for you. Traineo would benefit greatly from adding an in-house food database and calculate caloric value and nutrition information for you.

Recording exercise.
Where Traineo’s simple approach to data entry is perhaps too simple for calorie consumption, it works well for exercise. Traineo provides 76 exercise activities to choose from, ranging from standard (aerobics, cycling, etc) to not-so-standard (sex, paintballing, wii) to stuff I don’t recognize (dressage [I assume this isn't getting dressed - no matter how vigorously I get dressed, I don't think I burn 933 kcal], parkour, peteca, spinning). Select an exercise, enter how long you exercised and how difficult it was (or alternatively enter the amount of calories you burned) and click Enter. (Some advice – wait for a few seconds after clicking Enter. Due to the Ajax interface, it may appear nothing is happening, but if you get click-happy you’ll delete your entry.) Traineo lists how many calories you burned with that activity, allows for up to three total activities per day, and gives the same progress chart and calendar used for logging meals.

Journaling, recording other data.
Following the same simple user interface used for recording caloric intake and exercise, Traineo provides two additional data collection types: Weight and Logs. Traineo provides the now-familiar tracking tools for recording weight: progress chart, total lost, lost from last date recorded, and calendar for updating missed days.

With the logs tool, you can create simple custom trackers and charts. Traineo provides several preset logs to choose from, including sleep and happiness; or you can create your own by entering a name and units (for instance, Water and Ounces). There’s a slightly annoying glitch with the navigation elements – the chart names show up as navigation elements to select the tracker you wish to view and update, and scroll side to side if there are more charts than visible space; however, if you only have one or two charts active, they still slide off the screen. This small problem aside, this is a great feature – it may be simple, but this tool makes it possible to track anything so long as you can condense the information into units of something – hours of sleep, ounces of water, 1-10 rating of happiness, cups of coffee.

Reports.
Traineo offers a slew of charts – weight loss, exercise, caloric intake, even customizable ones. Beyond the ubiquitous progress charts however, there’s no real report or analysis tools. Traineo does allow you to export your recorded data in .csv format (which in turn can be imported into Excel, Google Sheets and similar programs), but frankly I’ve not figured out a reason to do this without an API for programmatically fetching the information.

Community.
Traineo really shines when it comes to community features. Traineo promotes the importance of support networks, focusing on four main community features to enable Traineo members to support one another and feel part of a community: forums, motivators, traineo pulse and groups.

Forums.
Traineo features the ubiquitous forum, where members can discuss topics ranging from diet & nutrition, exercise, general chatter and site feedback. The forum is powered by miniBB, offering the standard category -> topic -> message drill-down, search, sorting and forum member profile features. The forum offers updates via RSS (all posts, per category, per topic) or email (per topic). The developers have taken time to integrate the forums into Traineo, which is nice – the skin is consistent, new posts are displayed on the main screen (screenshot above), forum messages include an icon for using Traineo’s private messaging feature to contact users, and any groups you belong to are displayed in the main forums section. Traineo’s forums are immediately recognizable and usable if you have used forums elsewhere, and very easy to pick up if this is your first time. I’d like to see some sort of voting or karma system to help direct me towards the users’ posts that others find most useful, and additional topics like recipes, food and ingredient substitution suggestions and exercise/stretch suggestions. All in all, the forum is easy to use and full of active, helpful participants without being so busy as to overwhelm users.

Motivators.
Recognizing a support network is important to successfully making healthy lifestyle choices and changes, Traineo provides a community tool it calls motivators. Traineo sends updates to your motivators, including your weight information and weekly progress. Traineo provides two methods of finding and appointing motivators: internal and external.

You designate up to 4 external motivators by providing a name and email address for each, which triggers a confirmation email. Unfortunately, Traineo requires external motivators to become Traineo members in order to participate as your motivator. It would be nice to have automatic emails sent to family and friends without forcing them to become Traineo members.

Traineo also provides an internal network of motivators between existing Traineo members. You can browse the entire Traineo membership or limit your search by gender, “buddies”, currently online, location and more. Send a private message to your motivator of choice and, assuming that person accepts, you will be able to send private messages back and forth, and the motivator will receive messages as you update your information. Traineo clearly recognizes it is helpful to , it’s helpful to have someone you are accountable to when losing weight and making lifestyle changes – even if it’s someone you’ve never met – and makes the process easy and automatic.

Traineo pulse.
Another main Traineo community feature is Traineo pulse. In addition to advanced search and filter options for finding other Traineo members to add to your “buddy list” / support network, Pulse serves up statistics on the entire Traineo community at large. Aggregate diet, activity and weight statistics are plotted along progress charts and interesting factoids are presented, including most popular activities, average calories burned and weight lost per member, and pieces of intriguing trivia. If you’re the type of person that compares yourself to “standard” or “normal” statistics to gauge your performance, Pulse gives you something to compare your own progress to without promoting competitive weight loss – after all, it’s all about healthy lifestyle, not biggest loser. Viewing aggregate stats also makes me feel part of the community – I personally contributed to the community’s weight-loss progress. Of course, the stats are only as accurate as the members entering information, but we won’t go there.

Groups.
To promote the idea of support networks, Traineo also provides members’ the ability to create groups. To test joining a group, I joined b5media’s group, started by Jeremy Wright. If you’re just browsing for one to join, Traineo hasn’t provided many search features or filters to assist you, like it has with finding members – searching is restricted to group name, and sorting is restricted to categories, number of members and date of creation. I’d like to see more advanced filters and search criteria, like geographical location, and the ability to set membership criteria, like gender (there are, after all, some gender-specific issues with weight loss). More information beyond a ten-word description when hovering over a group would be nice as well. Group-related features are pretty skimpy as well – mostly what you get is a private forum area and a collection of avatars representing group members. Aggregate charts and stats for your group members, a chat feature and a bookmarks/resource list would be nice; I’m sure there are other group-related features that could enhance the experience. For now, there’s not much there.

I was interested to see what group options are available, so I created the Fatbloggers Traineo group. Creating the group took only three simple steps: choose a name, select a group-type (choose between different categories like “Just Like Me”, “Challenges”, “Families”, etc), select a color scheme and upload logos (optional) and away you go. You can choose from three levels of visibility: allow anyone to join, require your authorization to join, or hide the group and join by invitation only. It appears my initial impression was right – with simplicity comes lack of features. Traineo groups offer a private forum, but little else – aggregate group stats, chat, integration with maps, bookmarks, etc would be welcome additions. Perhaps Traineo developers are designing new features even now – I hope so.

Other Community Features.
Traineo also provides a private messaging system, complete with a graphical inbox and sent items. I appreciate how many people may feel uneasy about publishing their e-mail addresses, and it’s nice to see Traineo provide a method for communication between members. Personally, it’s just one more place to check for messages.

One last community feature worth mentioning is member profile pages. As I mentioned above, profile pages list facts about members, including weight charts, a small bio and groups they belong to. Additionally, profile pages also offer several ways for members to communicate to you – Meebo (an IM client Traineo seems to be attempting to integrate), private messaging and leaving a comment. You can also leave comments on your own page, a kind of primitive blog. As with other Traineo features, where simplicity is offered, features are lacking – I’d like to see more media-rich features like video, a way to subscribe to profile comments via RSS, site-wide searchable comments, integration with third-party APIs like flickr/youtube/etc – it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at myspace to see how the Traineo community features could be improved.

Reference material.
Traineo maintains a reference library with articles spanning topics from tips for losing stomach flab to snack and “fit foods” suggestions. So far there’s only 20 articles between two categories, Training and Diet & Fitness:

I imagine the Traineo team is working on more articles, especially since they have Michael George and Shelley Rudman listed as “Expert Motivators”, with surely more to be announced. Articles written to date are informative and useful, with tidbits like the following:

The good news is that there are 12 ways you can “boost” your metabolism! The more of these you’re able to incorporate into your life, the more you’ll boost your metabolism. That means you’ll be expending (“burning”) more calories 24 hours a day!

1. Always eat breakfast! Skipping breakfast sends the message to your body that you’re starving because you haven’t had food in 18+ hours. As a protective mechanism, your metabolism slows down. Food, especially complex carbohydrates, fuels your metabolism.
2. Eat earlier in the day! Research has demonstrated that you can lose weight simply by eating a substantial breakfast and lunch, and a light dinner. Dinner should be eaten as early as possible, preferably at least four hours before bedtime.
3. Never eat less than 1200 calories per day! Less than 1200 is usually not enough to support your basal metabolism and thus will slow your metabolism.

[continued at http://www.traineo.com/article-increase-your-metabolism]

The first thing you need to realize is that it is impossible to ‘spot reduce’ fat from one specific part of the body. Fat loss occurs systemically, meaning that you can’t control where the fat comes from. When you burn fat for energy, you will draw it from all areas of the body, and the first place you tend to put it on will be the last place it comes off. The reason everyone has those ‘stubborn’ spots is because each of us is born with a genetic pattern of fat storage, just as we inherit hair colour, eye colour, and other physical traits. In women, the stubborn areas tend to be hips, thighs, and the waist. In men, the troublesome areas are usually the lower abs and the ‘love handles.’ Many people labour away month after month trying to exercise specific areas of their body with the idea that fat will be burned directly off the area they are working. Training the abdominals every day with hundreds of repetitions will certainly tighten and tone the muscles, but it will do almost nothing to remove the fat obscuring the muscles. In fact, it is possible to have a great set of abs that you can’t even see because they are covered up with a layer of fat!

Contrary to popular belief, the best way to burn the layer of flab from your midsection is not to do more abdominal exercise, but to do more cardiovascular exercise…

[continued at http://www.traineo.com/article-achieving-a-flat-stomach]

Articles are enjoyable to read and full of good information. I’d like to see more, and more information about the articles like time written and short author bios.

Tools and calculators.
While Traineo offers small, simple calculations to assist with recording information (like BMI and suggested daily caloric intake), there are no tools or calculators on offer.

Other features.
Widgets are exploding as a phenomenon – it seems everyone’s got them, and Traineo’s no exception. Here’s some examples of Traineo’s available badges:

Traineo also sponsors a podcast titled Fit Talk, hosted by Michael George. Didn’t know Traineo had a podcast? I’m not surprised. Despite podcasts being one of the new Internet fads, the Traineo team keeps theirs well-hidden, tucked away in the library section with no subscription feed. The first episode featured nutritionist Kathy Smith and was informative, although slightly annoying as Michael kept interrupting. Like any podcast, I suspect the first couple are fairly rough, and expect the series to be more polished by now. Unfortunately, Traineo does not provide a subscription feed for Fit Talk; to tune in, listeners have to check either the Fit Talk page or Odeo’s Fit Talk channel for new episodes – annoying and very non-Web 2.0.

One other feature worth mentioning is an RSS feed of logged statistics, including workout, weight and diet updates. Mine, for example, can be found at http://thelifeledger.traineo.com/thelifeledger.xml – while not very consistently updated, it does show some sample entries:

Bloggers in particular will find the RSS feed to be useful. Most blog programs, like WordPress, offer RSS aggregator plugins that display RSS feeds either on a sidebar or on a dedicated page; more enterprising bloggers could combine the RSS feed and some server-side graphing software to create their own dynamic progress charts.

Conclusion.
Traineo has a lot to offer – simple, well-designed application; strong community features that promote accountability and information sharing; and resources that provide fitness and health advice. If you’re looking for a fitness journal that focuses on community and support networks, Traineo has a lot to offer for you. If, however, you are interested in recording and analyzing your daily nutritional intake beyond simply counting calories and recording your daily weight, Traineo will not fit your needs.