I'm going to be leaving for Japan for a couple of weeks at the end of March and I'm looking to keep the blog alive during that time by publishing a series of guest posts here on my weight loss blog. I'm looking to tee up at least 10 posts, which would all need to be submitted to me by March 20th so that I can edit, format and schedule them for posting. Then while I am scarfing down fresh sushi and slurping on noodle bowls your guest posts will appear every day as if by magic.

Wondering why you should write a guest post on my blog? Know the why but would like to learn the how? Check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook. Chris is a blogging consultant who wrote the Problogger book with Darren Rowse.

Don't want to spend $10 to purchase his eBook? Then check out my own guest post guidelines, submit a guest post to me and then as a reward I will send you a copy of the Guest Posting Workbook. That's right – I'll be buying a dozen copies of his eBook and I'll be offering them up to everyone who submits a guest post to be published during my trip to Japan.

Topics can be varied but should be related to issues such as weight loss, health, fitness, exercise, jedi mind tricks, etc.

Interested? Submit your guest post to me before March 20th by clicking here. Upon receipt of an acceptable post I will send the instructions to get your free copy of the Guest Posting Workbook.

Thanks!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Write a Guest Post for My Weight Loss Blog

2009 was definitely a tough year for me on the health front but I've stayed with it and am committed to finding a way to be successful – and this blog and you my great readers are a couple of those things that are going to get me there. I thought it would be interesting to recap which posts were the most popular over 2009 as rated by a plugin I use on here called Popularity Contest. Popularity Contest keeps a count of the post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which posts are most popular. There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a 'popularity score' for each post.

Here are my most popular articles written in 2009:

#10 – Successfully Losing Weight in Your Forties
Featured a video from The Today Show featuring Grandma Brenda Willis who lost 140 pounds in her forties. What I liked most about her story, other than her age, was that she dropped all of that weight (248 to 108!) by starting with a slow and steady approach of "starting to eliminate things from her diet one at a time" and adding exercise "one step at a time."

#9 – On Tour With a Weight Loss Rock Star
This post was part of a virtual blog tour being conducted by Jennette Fulda, author of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir. Later in the year I would meet the woman known as PastaQueen at a Nutrilite Bloggers event. Oh, and she did my website redesign. Thanks Jennette!

#8 – Do You Binge Eat Like Me?
I claimed my method of binge eating was different than others but all the great comments seem to say that there are a lot of people struggling in a similar way.

#7 – Eating at a Super Bowl Party
In the interest of full disclosure I recapped everything I ate at this year's Super Bowl party – and the results weren't pretty.

#6 – 5 Things I Have Learned Since Gaining The Weight Back
I summed up this post by asking: So that's some things I have learned. But will I take them to heart? Unfortunately at this point I would say the answer is no.

#5 – I Am The World's Worst Weight Loss Blogger
I wrote: Not only have I been ignoring my blog and my health but I have been ignoring my fellow weight loss bloggers out there. I haven't been reading about your progress or your struggles and I have not been joining in on the conversation. I feel bad about that. I'm not providing support in any way and that's what this community is about. I'm still not doing a great job with that and I am hoping I can do more of it in 2010.

#4 – Music Infused Headband by i360
This was a product review for a pretty cool headband that let you plug your iPod right into it. I haven't been using it much since well, I haven't been running but then even when I was it was indoors and this was too hot. But I think it would be great out in the winter and maybe I still have a chance to use mine. I held a contest for a free one and MizFit won it.

#3 – Weekly Update – 2/22/2009
I hadn't been doping updates for awhile so this was the first one in many moons and I was hoping it would lead to doing them regularly in 2009 but it didn't happen. Really need to do this in 2010.

#2 – 9 Weight Loss Bloggers' Favorite Fitness Gadget
I thought it would be interesting to hear from other weight loss bloggers what gadgets they use in their journey, so I asked a handful of bloggers from my blogroll "What is your favorite fitness gadget and why?" Leave it to Shauna from The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl to pick the Enell Sports Bra – I didn't see that one coming!

#1 – Whey Protein and Weight Loss
I published 13 guest posts in 2009 and as it happens one of them, this one, was the most popular post of 2009 on my blog. David Stanhope from Whey Protein King shared his knowledge of whey protein.

While a challenging year on many fronts I did have fun finding creative ways to learn and share about health and fitness and I just want to thank all of you have stuck with me despite my complete and utter failure as the weight loss role model I really wanted to be. It isn't too late for me though, so here's to a great and successful 2010 to all of us.

Happy New Year!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

2009 Popular Posts

I almost hesitate to write this post because my friend in weight loss Tony is going to rake me over the coals, in ways that only he can, for thinking about something other than exercising and eating properly. I deserve every bit of it Tony!

But I've been putting together this redesign for some time and I am pretty happy with how it turned out – and hoping I am close to focusing less on the site and more on weight loss. Yes, I know you are getting sick of hearing that. Trust me, I know.

But here's the thing, I have to find some way to balance all of my interests and frankly one such interest is building websites. However, I have my limitations. I'm no designer. The original theme I had used on here was getting long in the tooth and I was bored with it. And having discovered the WordPress Thesis theme and how easy that made maintaining websites through theme upgrades (without that you'll probably end up just never upgrading your theme) I knew that at some point I wanted to convert this website to Thesis and if I was going to do that I wanted the site to be significantly different than what it was before and different than other Thesis sites. And I knew I wanted a "mascot" instead of my actual picture, which I had been using on here but that I wanted to get away from. I value my privacy.

Mascot Design

So, first things first I knew I needed a designer to draft a mascot. After some research I settled on The NetMen Corp. They have a very clear process documented on their website and it pretty much worked exactly as they said. I completed a form describing some details about what I thought I wanted, and then they presented a couple of different artists concepts. I chose the artist that was closest to my vision and then we engaged in back and forth tweaking until I was satisfied with the look. Unfortunately I have lost the original drawings but let me tell you they couldn't have been any more different – the first artist took a more realistic approach while the second artist took a more cartoony approach. The real drawing scared me so I stayed away from that one!

That's the "mascot" in the upper right there. It's supposed to be me after I have lost my weight. See the outline? I thought it was a creative way to show that. The outline is the bigger me. Maybe I'm the only one that sees it though! Anyway, it works for me. I'm standing on a scale and looking sort of sporty. It captured the look I was going for.

There are tons of options out there for getting custom logos and mascots made, but I can recommend The NetMen Corp as a good group to work with. If I ever need one again, however, I'll probably give one of the contest sites a try where artists compete for prize money you put up. A very novel concept and having many artists work on your project means it is more likely you find exactly what you are looking for.

Website Design

After my mascot was in the bag I needed to get someone creative to design a new look for my website. I knew I couldn't do it justice. And as luck would have it fellow weight loss blogger Jennette "PastaQueen" Fulda had recently hung out a shingle as a website designer. How perfect! One of my original inspirations could help me design the very website she inspired in the first place. That's synergy. Or maybe syzygy. Nah, I just wrote that because it gives me an excuse to use one of my favorite words. Syzygy. How great a final Wheel of Fortune puzzle would that make? Anyway, more like synergy.

Jennette was great to work with. She took a similar approach to The NetMen Corp where I filled out a form responding to a bunch of questions, she came up with various looks and we hammered the look out back and forth until I had something I liked.

Looking to redesign your own website, weight loss blog or not? Check out Make My Blog Pretty – and tell her John sent you. You will be in good hands!

Now the original plan was that Jennette would do the coding and then I would take that coding and convert it into Thesis. But guess what? There is a reason most Thesis sites look the same. It can be tricky to code! I had done some minor coding with other Thesis sites but nothing like what I would need to do to take Jennette's design and plug into the Thesis theme. I needed help. I needed a Thesis Conversion wizard.

Thesis Conversion

To be honest before I started searching I didn't even know Thesis Conversion wizards existed, but before too long I found that it is becoming a popular niche. I quickly came to the conclusion that Greg Rickaby dESIGN was the Wizard I was looking for and Greg did not disappoint. He bills himself as "The Developer for Designers" which means he usually works directly with the designers, not the end customer like me. The process he goes through is very simple – you send the Photoshop file (PSD) of the design, and he works his magic and does all the coding to turn it into a Thesis skin. And some point he gives you admin access to the test site so that you can see exactly how the Theme is configured. Of course he is using the latest and greatest version of Thesis so that you can edit the custom files directly without having to need an FTP login, which makes it very nice.

Once we were ready for go-live I surprised Greg a bit I think by actually doing the port myself. I don't think the average designer is going to do that. But it was fun, and frankly it felt good to actually be doing some work on the site, putting in some sweat and tears, after having others do most of the work up until that point. Greg's coding made it easy because he did a very nice job of laying everything out.

I'm not 100% completed with the redesign yet as there are still some design elements I am working through – some in Jennette's original design and some not – but rest assured that if you find problems in the look of the site it is no doubt something I have done, and not something The NetMen Corp, Jennette or Greg did – they were a great team to work with.

Now back to weight loss!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Website Redesign – Finding New Ways to Procrastinate

I can't believe June is already gone and it is the first of July! Where the heck did the month go? You may remember that I announced my biggest giveaway ever, a contest that was open all June. With 7 total prizes and cash to the top 3 including a grand prize of $250 cash to the winner I figured this would generate a lot of entries. In the end, I didn't get as many as I had thought – which was good for you if you entered! Your odds of winning a great prize were really very good. All in all there were 47 different people who entered, and a total of 110 entries.

Want to know if you won anything? Well you are going to have to check the video tape! I have posted both a high quality .WMV video and a low quality YouTube one. I suggest just watching the .WMV unless you can't view it for some reason in which case the YouTube video will have to do. I didn't have my font size quite large enough so it is very hard to see everything in YouTube but I do speak out the winners too so that should help.

So here you go, the winners:

June 2009 Contest Winners! (WMV format)
June 2009 Contest Winners! (YouTube format)

Congratulations to all of the winners! Please use my contact form to give me your PayPal email address (for prizes 1-3) or your shipping address (for prizes 4-7). Remember, I only ship to the continental U.S. If you are not eligible the prize will go back into a prize pool to be used again at some later date.

Prizes must be claimed by July 15th.

One of the things I learned in running this contest is that there are a lot of blogs out there that appear to do nothing but sign up for contests. I don't blame them, but it really goes against the spirit of what I tried to do here. In the future I will probably limit such contests to my fellow weight loss bloggers, which should really help with the odds of winning!

Anyway, I had fun giving away cool prizes. Hope you had fun winning them!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

June 2009 Contest Winners Announced!

CONTEST CLOSED – WINNERS ANNOUNCED.

I've experienced a lot of ups and downs over the last couple of years here on this blog. I've found that even when things aren't going well on the weight loss front that I can count on participation on my blog as a form of a pick me up. And what I've learned is that the only thing I like as much as losing weight is giving away prizes to my loyal readers, like my past bike giveaway. So since I'm just not having any success losing weight right now I thought it would be a perfect time to hold a massive contest so that you can benefit from my largess.

This contest will run for the month of June. At the end of the month I will randomly select 7 winners for the following prizes:

1st – $250
2nd – $75
3rd – $25
4th – Book: The Source: Unleash Your Natural Energy, Power Up Your Health, and Feel 10 Years Younger
5th – Book: The Complete Beck Diet for Life: The Five-Stage Program for Permanent Weight Loss
6th & 7th – Set of NURU Exercise Anywhere cards

That's a total prize pool of almost $425!

(Cash prizes payable through PayPal only – anyone is eligible to win. Prizes for 4th-7th include free shipping to continental U.S. only)

Want to know how to win? Here is what you need to do to be eligible:

At the end of the month I will randomly select 7 winners from the pool of entries (which I will do on video to ensure transparency). Each person may earn up to a maximum of 4 entries. This is how you earn entries:

1) You earn one entry by telling your readers about this contest. Include a link to this post on a post on your blog for a single entry.

2) You earn three entries by writing about one of my product reviews. Choose whichever product interests you the most and whether it's just a funny story or a serious one, write up a post including a link to the review referring to the product you are writing about. For example, maybe you have had some bad luck with breaking glass bathroom scales, you could write a story about that and include a link to my glass bathroom scale review page.

I will use every means at my disposal to detect when these posts are written to give you credit for your entries, however if you want to be sure you will be credited you should add a comment here letting me know how many entries you think you have earned and including links to the posts so that I can verify.

Anyone with a blog is eligible and it doesn't even have to be a weight loss blog – I'd love to read your stories whether you normally write about weight loss or not.

BONUS PRIZE!
I'm not going to attempt to track this formally, but I would like to give extra credit to whoever goes out of their way to Stumble, Tweet, Digg, Blog Post Comment, etc, this post. I'll try to watch for who really excels at advertising this contest through social media and will work with the winner to determine a prize, which would be something related to a guest post, or an interview, or some similar thing.

Contest runs through June 30th, 2009. GOOD LUCK!

Contest Sponsors:

I want to thank the following contest sponsors:

"Why do I feel so tired and drained?" You're not alone if you're constantly asking yourself this question. Exhaustion is epidemic in America and "lack of energy" one of the top five complaints to doctors nationwide. This is because vast numbers of people have lost their connection with the inner energy that is the source of healing and radiant vitality.

But now Dr. Woodson Merrell shows us that it doesn't have to be this way. One of the nation's preeminent integrative medicine specialists, Dr. Merrell tackles this problem head on with his long-awaited first book, offering a way to break the fatigue cycle and achieve the abundant energy that leads to true health. Here is his uplifting, proven program — a breakthrough, six-step, 21-Day Plan for how you can become an "energy creator" rather than an "energy consumer."

The Source is the most comprehensive, authoritative, and cutting-edge health guide available on how to power up your energy, your health, and your life. In his more than twenty years of medical practice, Dr. Merrell has discovered core concepts about energy that draw on both Western and Eastern medical knowledge and healing practices. His plan has helped to transform thousands of people's lives physically, mentally, and spiritually to allow them to feel better than ever before. With myriad paths to energy and wellness, Dr. Merrell's plan gives you all the tools you need — including relaxation practices, a sustainable exercise program, a protocol for detoxifying your body, and organic menus and recipes for each day of the 21-Day Plan.

Dr. Merrell is among the first physicians to give a blueprint for energy generation, providing an accessible, clear solution for living, looking, and feeling better. As you undertake his program, you will tap into "The Source" of life's essential force — energy — and increase yours as you experience incredible changes in mind, body, and spirit. You will power up your body and wake up to life.

Learn more at Woodson Merrell.

Bestselling author and weight-loss expert Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., has inspired thousands of dieters to lose weight and keep it off using the power of Cognitive Therapy. Her techniques emphasize preparing the mind and changing eating habits before making changes to the food you eat. Now, for the first time, Dr. Beck outlines the next step on the road to success: a specific, balanced diet plan that teaches how to eat thin to ensure that weight loss lasts a lifetime.

Based on the eating choices of her most successful dieters and maintainers, The Complete Beck Diet for Life provides a step-by-step approach to weight loss by helping readers successfully navigate the 5 stages of learning to eat thin. Each stage teaches a different skill necessary for losing weight and keeping it off. It starts by first helping dieters change their thinking so they can make permanent changes in their eating. When dieters are ready to change what they eat, they determine the right food plan, including comprehensive suggestions for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and bonus foods, as well as a Think Thin menu formula with 37 recipes for Phase 2 of the plan and 15 bonus recipes for Phase 4. In addition, a sample strength-training plan is provided to help shape up while slimming down; interactive elements include filling out Response Cards, completing daily eating logs, and charting progress on weight-loss graphs.

Find out more at her website, Beck Diet Solution.

NURU's Exercise Anywhere is for anyone who wants to improve their physique–regardless of whether they have access to a gym. Sized to fit in the palm of your hand, these 30 ultra-thin, waterproof cards provide innovative, "do-anywhere" cardio and muscle-strengthening exercises designed to get your blood pumping. Exercise Anywhere targets every major muscle group, including: arms, legs, chest, back, and abs. Each exercise provides variations for people at different levels. Plus, each deck comes with a unique serial code, providing access to the deck online.

To learn more about NURU, check out NURU Planet.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

June Weight Loss Blog Contest – Top Prize $250 Cash

Just a quick note to say I have removed my forums from this blog. I love the idea of forums as a way to get people talking to each other and being supportive, but they take far more work than I had imagined and frankly I simply had been ignoring them for some time. The result of that was the spammers moved in and starting hawking their products, and I really don't want that.

So for those of you that realized I had some forums, well I don't any more. For the majority of you that did not realize that – nothing to see hear, move along please.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Removed the Forums

Do you make money from your blog? I think you should be. Should money be what drives your blogging? No – if you only blog because of the money then I think you will fail. Or at least have a poor blog. But folks, there is nothing at all wrong about making a little money to help for the expenses you may incur for hosting, advertising, contests, and whatever else you spend your hard earned money on as it pertains to your blog.

I've seen a lot of bloggers in the weight loss sector with great, heavily trafficked blogs with no advertising. Is it because they think they are selling out? Or because they don't know how to go about finding advertisers? The major reason why I write this blog is to help me on my weight loss journey but there is also an aspect of learning that I am constantly embarking on. When I first started blogging I didn't have any advertisers until Google Adsense arrived. For a long time that is the only form of advertising I used. And it works pretty well.

But then I started digging in a little more, learning about how to introduce banner ads and other different forms of advertising. That is when I learned about the Pepperjam Network.

Want to make some money displaying banner ads on your website? Then check out the Pepperjam Network. That's the simple way of understanding what they are about. You find programs that would be interesting to your readers and you sign up for them. Upon approval you will be given access to a number of banner links which you can then put on your website. If one of your visitors clicks on an ad and ends up buying something, then you MAKE MONEY. Simple as that.

For a more descriptive explanation of what makes Pepperjam Network unique I will quote from their website:

Pepperjam Network (PJN) is a next generation affiliate marketing network, which addresses two primary issues that have been lacking in the affiliate marketing industry for years: (1) poor and unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of transparency. With PJN, affiliates and merchants can communicate in real-time via Pepperjam Chat™, thereby providing a reliable communication system to build better, more profitable partnerships. PJN also provides affiliates and merchants with a measure of transparency, which helps to establish trust and lays the groundwork for open, long-term, profitable relationships.

PJN is designed to make the experience of affiliate marketing profitable and educational for both merchants and affiliates. Unlike most other traditional networks PJN uses Web 2.0 technology to provide affiliates and merchants with an easy-to-use, clean interface. In addition, PJN offers industry leading SID-level tracking and reporting – this robust technology is especially beneficial to search marketing and sophisticated super affiliates that want to take advantage of the most up-to-date technology available to track at the keyword level.

I also belong to a few other affiliate marketing programs and I like Pepperjam Network the best.

Sign Up for Pepperjam Network and Get a $10 Sign On Bonus

That's right, get $10 just for signing up. But the bonuses only start there. As part of their Blogger Incentive Program they pay $10 per post, up to 5 per month, for you to write about any aspect of their service. Yep, this is a paid post and I will be paid $10 for it. Not bad! Now, am I going to start writing 5 Pepperjam posts a month to get the maximum? Of course not – then this would be a pepeprjamNETWORK blog and not a weight loss blog!

PepperjamNetwork…sign up today!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Make Money on Your Weight Loss Blog with Pepperjam Network

The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy with coaching two soccer teams and what seems to have been an unusually high numbers of parties. I've been eating until sick and not exercising. It hasn't been pretty. I'm going to kick start things (yet again) on Monday with a new plan that I believe is going to make a real difference for me. In the meanwhile, I'm going to crank out a few posts I've been meaning to write about.

I'm not sure when it happened but Google finally looked down on this humble blog and setup some sitelinks for me. See the picture to the left, or see it live in the search results for john is fit.

Now the benefits of having sitelinks are pretty minimal for a blog like mine. Do a search for apple to see how they might be more useful, for example.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to try to optimize them, however. According to Google these links are created automatically but they have an interface in their webmaster tools that allows you to block certain links from showing. For example, I submitted a block on the Chow Chow Corgie Puppy sitelink because it doesn't fit with the theme of my blog (not to mention we now think she is a Shiba Inu!). The link still shows but I suspect it will be off soon.

Part of the reason why I blog is that I am fascinated with new things like this. It's fun, although not rewarding in any tangible way, to see this sort of "recognition."

Do a search for your blog or any search result where you are #1 – do you have Google sitelinks?

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

John is Fit – Now with Google Sitelinks!

One of the blocks of clutter I have in my life is that I go off on these tangents that interest me but that really are something I probably shouldn't be focusing on. Tonight is a great example. I noticed from my referral logs that I was getting some hits from my dmoz entry on the Health/Weight Loss/Personal Pages section. I hadn't looked at the Open Directory Project for awhile and I noted a number of other blogs on that page that I currently read, and most I had never heard of. As I randomly clicked through to a number of the sites I noticed that many had not been updated for awhile.

Having recently gone through some pruning of my own blogroll I know full well that the attrition rates for Weight Loss Bloggers is pretty high. So it really wasn't a surprise.

Then I got it in my head that it would make a pretty interesting histogram to see all 168 websites cataloged on the Health/Weight Loss/Personal Pages directory in terms of the date of the last post.

So I put all the links into an Excel sheet, added a column for last post date and started in on recording last post date. After doing 10 I caught myself, and realized this was the sort of project that would sidetrack me for a couple of hours while providing only a scratch to my curiosity itch. So, in the interest of reducing the clutter in my life I am abandoning this project.

No, not really.

What I am doing is asking for your help to minimize the task and reduce the size of my clutter block. There are 168 websites on the page, I figure doing 20 is a very attainable and relatively quick task that I could ask for some help with. So, I am looking for 7 volunteers to each take a block of 20 websites on the list and send to me via my contact form the list including the link or web site name and the date of last post. Comma separated would be great.

I'll do the first 28, the first person to volunteer will take the next 20 starting with Diet Diaries, and so on and so on. When you sign-up just say which link you will be starting with.

Note that some of these websites can be hard to find a last post date. Do your best, if you can't find an obvious date just mark it as NA.

Thanks for the help. I'll take the data you provide and write up a post with my analysis. I'm really hoping the data are as interesting as I think. Oh, and a big "boo" to the first person who points out that in the time it took me to make this post that I could be half-way through the list. I am well aware of that!!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

An Example of Clutter – and a Request for Help

I finally got around to establishing some guidelines for guest posts and will start accepting submissions now. Guest posts are a good way for me to give you different points of view than what you normally get from me and a great opportunity for the guest poster to get some exposure to their blog, product or service.

Please see my Guest Post Guidelines page for more information and a submission form.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

John is Fit Now Accepts Guest Posts

Have you checked out my weight loss forums yet?

So far we have 21 registered guests and have had over 165 posts. I think forums are a nice way to interact with my readers and also a great way for my readers who don't have blogs to share their story. So far the longest thread belong to tweety, who doesn't have a blog yet and is telling her story in the forum. We'll miss her here when she does start blogging, but we'll follow her over to her new home when she does!

One forum category I'd like to see with more participation is the weight loss in the media section. So far I have created topics on 3 shows I watch – Biggest Loser, Workout and Top Chef (not really weight loss related, but great show for a foodie like me). I'd like to get some discussion going on these shows and more. What else do you guys watch?

Since I just kind of guessed what people might want in terms of categories I just put a bunch together but I am certainly open to suggestions – please feel free to tell me what else you would like to see in the forums. I'm trying to build a low-key community site where we can all share information but have some fun too.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

My Weight Loss Forums

One of the resources I have not found on my weight loss journey was a good, close-knit forum. I've probably tried them all, and for a variety of reasons I just haven't been able to stick to one. I really feel like I am missing out by not having that added sense of community.

So, I have decided to start my own. Check out my new weight loss forums. I threw this together pretty quickly and there is a lot of cleaning up that needs to be done, but I just wanted to get it out there to see if I could get some conversations started.

You see, one of the things I feel I am not doing a good job on with this blog is extending the conversation. Thanks to all of you, I get a lot of comments on my posts. And those of you who have done so know that I respond to many, if not most, of those comments in email. Which sometimes leads to a longer conversation. But all in private.

I haven't yet figured out how I am going to balance the comments on the blog with the conversations in the forums, but I do know that there is a huge benefit in drawing more than two people into a conversation and the blog isn't doing that for me.

I hope you will join me on the ground floor of my new weight loss forums. Please use the Feature Request topic liberally – I'm sure many of you are more experienced with forums than I and can offer some good suggestions that I can hopefully get implemented quickly.

There is a link in the main header of this blog if you ever forget how to get there.

Thanks for taking a look and double thanks if you register and join the conversation there. I think it could be fun!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

John's Weight Loss Forums

While the vast majority of my postings will be about my weight loss journey from fat to fit I will stray occasionally to talk about things related to blogging about my weight loss journey.  If you haven't already read 4 Reasons You Should Be Writing a Weight Loss Blog please do – it explains the importance of blogging to my journey.

Last night I signed up for Entrecard, which the makers describe as "Your Internet Business Card."  I had seen a couple of A-List bloggers write about this last month, and I took a peek at it, but it didn't look very interesting to me.  I had already tried Blogrush and was very disappointed with the lack of traffic it brought and I figured this was just another Blogrush and so I passed.

Then last night as I was catching up on some RSS reading I ran across this contest post on Walker Talker, where Debo introduced as to Saphrym, and his Win $250 and 1000 Entrecard Credits! contest.  What intrigued me enough to check out his site was actually not the contest at all but the fact that it sounded like I had found another male fatblogger (we are not as well represented out there as I would like!).  I particularly liked his Dieter History.  There he describes the strategy he has used to lose over 65 pounds since July.

Now since Saphrym is giving away Entrecard credits it stands to reason that he was already using this Internet Business Card service.  So I signed up too.  The basic premise behind Entrecard is that you earn credits by visiting other blogs and dropping off your card.  You then use these credits to purchase advertising on other sites.  The more popular the site the more expensive to advertise there.

For example if you look above the fold on my blog you will see my Entrecard widget which has a link that says "Drop yours" and an advertisement for another blogger.  When you sign up for Entrecard you will get a ton of people wanting to advertise on your site and you should be selective, because there will be some inappropriate stuff.  I've tried to only approve bloggers who I think my readers would enjoy and are somewhat relevant to this blog.  I'd love to see more of you fatbloggers signing up for Entrecard.  But even if you don't please do click through to the bloggers shown in the widget – I think you will find some interesting blogs.

It's too early to do a proper Google Analytics analysis of the traffic generated from Entrecard today but I will say I've had over 50 visits referred from there so far today which is about 10 times more than I get for most sites on a given day.  In addition to that, I also had a previously stumbled article get stumbled again and so far today I've had 1100 visitors from Stumbleupon.  I don't think that is a coincidence.

So, if you are reading this post because you came here from my Entrecard or Stumbleupon, thank you – and we'll resume our weight loss journey discussion tomorrow.  Please remember to subscribe to my feed!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Introducing Entrecard

Last Thursday I announced a contest to give away a new (well twice used) Omron Digital Pedometer to one of my lucky readers. To participate all you needed to do was write an article and link to that post. I would pick my 5 favorite articles and then randomly choose a winner.

Here are my Favorite Five:

And the winner is? Check my first You Tube video:

Congratulations to the winner! I'll be contacting you via email to arrange for shipping.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Omron Digital Pedometer Giveaway Contest Winner Announced!

Last week I hosted a group of 5th graders (my son's lego robotic team) to watch Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? on FOX. If you've never seen the show it can be quite maddening. Because of the adults. The adults on the show are usually really dumb. Last week it was Kellie Pickler, who did no favors to blondes around the world.

Having watched the show with 5th graders I can confirm I am indeed smarter than a 5th grader. But apparently I don't write much better than one. According to The Blog Readability Test you only need an Elementary School Reading Level to comprehend this blog.

Here are the scores for the top 10 commenters on this blog for this month (to date):

• Diana the Scale Junkie - Genius
• Israel - Elementary School
• GroovyBabe - Elementary School
• Skinny Guy - Elementary School
• TB-Milwaukee - College (Undergrad)
• Steve - Junior High School
• JoLynn Braley - High School
• Rachel B. - High School
• workout mommy - Elementary School
• John - Junior High School

Congrats to Diana, our resident Genius!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Seeing Make Lard History's A Greener World reminded me that I've been running Google Analytics here and that I haven't checked it out for a little while. The last time I looked I was still 4 states short in the US and hadn't penetrated much outside of the US and Europe.

Now I've been visited by visitors from 74 countries and all 50 states and the District of Columbia (click the image for full map).

Top 5 by Total Visits:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. India

Top 5 Pages per Visit:

1. Sweden
2. Bulgaria
3. Switzerland
4. Netherlands
5. Bahrain

Top 5 by Average Time on Site:

1. Switzerland
2. Ukraine
3. Sweden
4. Dominican Republic
5. United States

Google Analytics is very easy to install and it really does give you very interesting and powerful looks into your website.

Part of the fun of running a blog is interacting with your readers. While most readers don't stick around to view more than a page or two, let alone comment, sometimes you have to take that interaction in the form of simply enjoying seeing where they visited you from.

Next time one of you visits Greenland, don't forget to stop by here.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Where In The World Are You Coming From?

The 2007 Weblog Awards are over, and as expected I did not win.  However, I did finish in 4th place in my category of Best Medical/Health Issues Blog with 363 votes so I am pretty happy about that.  I was in last place for most of the competition but mysteriously got a ton of votes on the last day.  I'm hoping they were all legitimate and not one of my readers stuffing the ballot box.  Naughty, naughty if you did!

This contest was a pretty good source of traffic for me with over 200 new visitors being referred from the award site.  However, as I mentioned earlier, I have been having feed troubles so I think I missed out on a chance to add many new readers.

Congrats to Adrian Sudbury at Baldy's Blog for winning the title of Best Medical/Health Issues Blog and good luck to him as he battles leukaemia.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

2007 Weblog Awards Are Over

This has been a good week on the health front.  On the blog front, not so much.  What should have been a great week for me has turned very frustrating as my site has been flaky at best this week.  While it still loads fine in a browser other services that need to access it programmatically like Feedburner are showing timeouts.  I've been getting a nice stream of visitors from the 2007 Weblog Awards but my feed has been broken more than it has been working, meaning that the odds are good that if any of those new readers did like what they saw, that they could not subscribe.  And in today's world that means a lost reader – most people don't bookmark anymore, they simply subscribe to a feed.

It's not a Feedburner problem, it's my web site.  Unfortunately Tech Support at Dreamhost has been as of yet unable to help.  Crossing fingers.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Feed Trouble

I am honored to announce that I am a finalist in the category of Best Medical/Health Issues Blog for the 2007 Weblog Awards! These awards are the real deal, not like that spammy Blog of the Day award that has been going around. The 2007 Weblog Awards will be handed out live at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas!

The Weblog Awards are the world's largest blog competition, with over 525,000 votes cast in the 2006 edition for finalists in 45 categories. Nominations for 49 categories ended October 17, 2007 and voting is scheduled to begin November 1, 2007. Final results will be announced November 8, 2007 at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

While there were many weight loss blogs nominated, I somehow managed to be the only one that made the finals. No matter how the voting turns out that makes me quite proud! I'm up against some great competition. Finalists in this category include blogs on cancer, pregnancy, leukaemia, gluten, general med, emotional wellbeing, chronic fatigue syndrome, autism and the ramblings of a surgeon/scientist.

The voting will be open until November 8th. If you think I am worthy, please click here to see the whole ballot and cast your vote.

You can vote once every 24 hours.  Don't be shy!

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

I'm A 2007 Weblog Awards Finalist!

Awhile back I added a few sections to my sidebar pertaining to comments that I wanted to point out.  While the focus of this blog is my journey to a healthier me I will also from time to time include posts like this where I am learning, and sharing, about the mechanics of blogging.

First, I have added a list of "Top Commentators" to my sidebar via the handy dandy WordPress Plugin called Show Top Commentators.  This list will be reset monthly and it shows the name of the commenter and links to their blog, if they have one.  This plugin installs like any other WordPress plugin, although there is no Admin Options interface – the options are set by editing the plugin code itself.  Not a big deal though.

Second, I have added a list of the most "Recent Comments" which includes an excerpt of the comment.  It also shows Trackbacks. I achieved this by installing the Get Recent Comments plugin.  This plugin is highly configurable through the Admin Options interface.

Third, I have added a community cloud to see at a glance who is joining me on my Journey from Fat to Fit.

Finally, while it won't be visible to those of you who have already commented on here, I have implemented the Comment Relish plugin to automatically welcome first-time commenters.

I really appreciate those of you who have already left a comment on here.  John Is Fit is an important support system for me and the more interaction I have with others on here (and elsewhere on your blog) the stronger that support system will be.

I highly recommend you check out the definitive guide to guest posting, Chris Garrett's Guest Posting Workbook.

Post from: John Is Fit - Personal Weight Loss Blog

Comments Lists Added