fitirl-blog

[fitirl-blog]

Group quests, Mobile, Improved Food Tracker.. And more

Be on the lookout for invites.. Mobile is here...

But it doesn't stop at mobile. Read more about the other updates after the break:

Improved Food Tracking

Fantasy Fitness

Avatar System

Photo Journal

Group Quests

Improved Food Tracking - Players can now select three main nutrients to track, along with a main diet goal (i.e. calories or carbs). Choose carefully because your points depend on it! Not only did we add flexibility in nutritional tracking, but now the DayTracker monitors 9 total nutrients. Also, if players have specific nutritional goals, they can customize their target values. For example, if a player wants to restrict their carbs to 30 grams a day, the DayTracker will reward them for that.

Fantasy Fitness - This is arguably one of our favorite new features. Player vs. Player ;) Create fantasy leagues, pick your captains, or simply open it up to all players. As a league, players can join a team to compete against other teams on a weekly basis. Check the forums to join our first test league!

Group Quests - Just like it sounds, group quests are individual quests with a social twist! Players team up with their friends, family, or other random players to complete challenges as a group. Sometimes there is nothing more motivating then a teammate cheering you on or picking you up when you are down. Just like solo quests, we're continually adding new content.

Stats Panel - We also added a basic stats panel to the home page so players can easily and quickly review just how far they've come.

Avatar System - Want to increase your selection of avatars to choose from? Earn it! Avatars are part of the game and can reflect how far you've progressed. The more food and activities you've logged, the more avatars are dropped as in game items. It's the latest FitIRL status symbol!

Titles - Players can now earn titles that reflect their achievements in the game and show off their hard word!! Want to be called "The Quick" by all your challengers? Complete one of the intensive running quests and milk those bragging rights!

Photos - We all love progress pictures! We are firm believers that visibly noticing weight loss is one of the easiest ways of getting and staying motivated. Players can now upload their progress pictures, track their progress, and share it with their friends. As players upload pictures, they're tagged with weight and time (which remain confidential by default). A timeline can then be created so a player can view their progress and transformation.

If you haven't signed up for our beta yet, do so here: beta.fitirl.com

[fitirl-blog]

FitIRL: An Introduction

With plans to open up our beta testing in the coming weeks, we wanted to take some time to explain a little bit more about who we are and what fitIRL is.

  About us

fitIRL is the side project of a group of friends who were unhappy with the weight they’d gained from sitting around playing video games and working behind a computer all day. We figured if we like playing these games so much, why can’t we design our own online game that gets us off the couch and out doing things to improve our health. So we went to work building the site, dedicating our nights and weekends to making fitIRL an enjoyable way to get in shape. We are not a start up. We all have regular jobs we go to everyday that support us and have wives and families that take up our time as well. We are building fitIRL because we need it and want to use it for our own good, and we hope others will too.

About fitIRL

We know there are plenty of sites and mobile applications out there now that let you “level up” by logging your exercises, maybe even have “quests” that you can complete. That model is pretty well played out, but in our opinion it just doesn’t do enough to call it a “game” and eventually just gets old. So instead of trying to turn fitness into a game like these other sites, we set out to design a game that is played by eating a healthy diet, getting exercise in various forms, and finding ways to build a healthier life everyday. From the very beginning we focused on designing the game and letting the fitness stuff fall into place later. We went way beyond just leveling up and earning badges by translating as much as we could from a traditional MMO. Of course we have the levels and the quests too, but we have so much more. Since we’re still in closed beta we want to keep some of our game play to ourselves at this point, but we can promise you what we’re building is unlike anything available today. As we release new features we’ll post info about them here.

Working with your goals

Whether its collecting items to earn even greater rewards or grouping with your friends to take on a challenge together, fitIRL can be played in just about any way you like. We don’t force our fitness philosophy on you like other sites have admitted to doing. We don’t care how you exercise, just that you do exercise. Enjoy running? Great, get out and run. Would you rather lift weights? That’s fine too. Just about anything you do that burns calories is an acceptable form of exercise on fitIRL. Yardwork, walking, yoga, playing a round of golf, they all count and add to a healthier lifestyle.

On the other side of things, we don’t tell you what to eat either. Counting calories? Set your preferences as such and earn points for meeting your calorie goals. Trying keto? fitIRL can track your carb and fat intake as well. We track 9 different nutrients for the food you enter and let you set your goals for each one. A database of over 70,000 foods makes it easy to find what you’re eating and log it. And the whole time you’re doing it, you’re earning points, rewards and competing against your friends.

fitIRL can also adjust to your higher level fitness goals as well. If you’re looking to lose weight you can track all of your weight loss with fitIRL and see your progress over time. Upload photos and tag them with your weight at the time the photo was taken to track the changes in your appearance as you lose weight. You can also use fitIRL to maintain your current weight and just get healthier. Train for a 5k, reduce your BMI, learn a new sport, whatever you want. You are in complete control of what is shared with your friends through our privacy settings. Nothing is shared without your permission.

Social Motivation

It should come as no surprise that fitIRL also has a social side. Our activity feed lets you see what all your friends are doing each day. From new photos, to exercises, to a weight loss accomplishment, you can see everything your friends decide to share. Use your friends announcements to keep yourself motivated. Congratulate them with high fives to earn rewards and give them extra points. The game itself is also designed to be social by allowing you to queue for quests that you take on in small groups (think 5-man dungeons in traditional  MMOs). Our PvP (player-vs-player) system is truly unique as well. This is another area we don’t want to share too much about just yet, but we promise its like nothing any other site offers.

Driven by users

Since this is not a business for us, we have the luxury of being able to build the site the way the users want it built. Just from our first round of beta users alone we got some great suggestions and requests that we built into the site that made it much more usable and enjoyable. As fitIRL continues to grow and evolve we want to continue to tailor it to what the users want. We are doing this for the good of everyone and want to keep it that way.

Get involved

As mentioned above we are going to be opening fitIRL up to more users in the coming weeks. To get on the list visit fitirl.com and sign up. If you get friends to sign up with you then you are moved to the front of the list. The more people you get to sign up, the farther up the list you go. You can also follow us on twitter at @fitirl