Nov
10
2009
Health and fitness are a big business, but despite all the products, memberships and other junk you can buy to get and stay fit, America is still fighting with an obesity problem. If that’s surprising to you then just consider some of these numbers.
There are 30,022 health clubs in the U.S., with over 45.5 million members as of January 2009. Spending in 2008 for health club dues was 19.1 billion dollars (that’s $19,100,000,000.00). So why is it that we’re not more healthy as a nation? Are people not using those memberships?
What I’ve observed is that many people are interested in being health and fit, but they’re not motivated. Yes, there’s a difference, and it’s the type of difference that caused my friend to purchase a two year contract for a gym membership that he’s never used. He wanted to be fit, but he’s not motivated to go and use it.
One growing trend I’ve seen on the internet is the number of people that use blogs to track their exercise and fitness. They share the blog with their friends and family and then blog about what they’re doing. It’s motivating from a psychological perspective since they are essentially committing to others that they are going to do something and live a certain lifestyle. They then want to be consistent with what they said they would do.
So to make it possible for members of my maintainfit.com exercise log to receive the benefits of blogging about their fitness and sharing their experience with family and friends, I’ve created this site, blogmyfitness.com. At some point any member that signs up for a maintainfit.com exercise log will have the choice of creating a personal blog here.
At the present time I’m going to hand pick some beta testers. If you’re interested then punch in your name and e-mail address to the right (where it says “Join Waiting List”) and I’ll add you to a list to receive an invitation to have your own blog here. The blogs won’t cost anything and you can personalize them to you. You even get to choose your own blog URL or point an existing URL to your blog, like mine, http://daniel.blogmyfitness.com/ .
At the moment I can’t guarantee that everyone that signs up will get one, but I’ll keep you in the queue to have one as soon as resources are available. Keep checking back for more updates.
