SparkPeople is a website-based diet program that provides dieters with a broad range of helpful tools and resources that allow them to be able to create their own weight loss program and monitor their progress throughout the time that they are dieting. The use of the extensive website is completely free, as is the associated mobile app that is available for Android and iPhone mobile devices.

What is SparkPeople?

The website provides a free membership for its users, through which they can track all of the foods that they consume, their daily nutrition levels, their daily fitness levels, and their weight. The website provides dozens upon dozens of informational articles as well as exercise videos and meal plans, at no cost.

The design of the website encourages users to return on a regular basis, rewarding activities with points. Points can be accumulated through the tracking of foods and fitness activities, by reading articles, by sharing in their forum, and through a number of other related activities. Signing in on a daily basis will also help to build points. At various points levels, dieters are rewarded with various badges that they can collect to help to show their accomplishment. The design is a cross between goal setting and a video game.

SparkPeople is a Free Diet Program

While all of the features are available for free, and the diet can be followed without ever purchasing any of the program’s products, it does also sell additional optional tools to help a dieter to make the right choices and to track his or her progress with greater ease. While there are a number of types of fitness gear – from shirts to water bottles – the diet also has a printed book, as well as a pedometer that syncs to a computer to automatically track the number of steps taken and the nature of the steps (walking or running, for example) as well as the number of calories that were burned.

Aside from factors that directly influence weight loss, the SparkPeople diet also helps people to track other issues that affect their overall health and that can have an indirect impact on their ability to lose weight. These include the number of glasses of water a person consumes in a day, his or her mood, and the number of hours of sleep that are achieved every night. Points are awarded for each of these additional “goals” that are tracked every day.

Encouraging Healthier Lifestyle Habits

Overall, this diet helps to improve a dieter’s awareness of his or her habits and encourages better choices through a more informed understanding of where he or she stands on any given day with regards to a range of different health factors.

February 2022 Update – SparkAmerica

In 2021, SparkPeople announced that its current model was unsustainable due to its rapidly growing size.  They therefore decided to recreate themselves into SparkAmerica.  The original features, community and mobile apps all shut down on August 17, 2021.  All accounts were closed, and community members lost their records, tracking, and forum posts, whether they had been participating for days or years.

SparkAmerica launched as an entirely new platform that did not carry old accounts forward into the new brand. The new experience is available only to residents of the United States. It is packaged as a movement and fitness challenge running across the country, allowing members to compete with cities countrywide. The goal of using the ad-free platform is to use the nutrition and fitness tracker while taking part in the challenges, reading articles and recipes and winning prizes.