Today, Konamoxt, Inc. the maker of Sweat365.com, unveils “The Healthy Corp” a breakthrough product that RE-DEFINES “Corporate Wellness”. The Healthy Corp, is a new kind of Corporate Wellness Platform, that allows corporations to customize their wellness offerings to match their unique corporate culture and address the specific needs of their employees. Corporate Wellness no longer means paying for unused gym memberships, offering access to countless libraries of unread health articles, and forcing employees to participate in biometric screening with the misguided hope of scaring employees into action.  Although in theory each of these components plays some part in a well-rounded wellness program, alone, they miss the target.

To sharpen your aim, The Healthy Corp adds the secret:  Engaging the hearts and minds of employees; creating new habits; and allowing you to do it your way.    The Healthy Corp offers a customizable wellness platform to companies committed to increasing employee productivity and reducing their overall health care costs. Employees engage by utilizing challenges, lively programs, and interactive forums that fit the personality and lifestyle of the individual and the company.  It’s the power of community.

The advantages of a healthy workforce are undeniable.  We already know that healthy employees have fewer medical claims, are less absent, have less disability, and have greater on the job productivity.   The cost of being overweight and obese in America is estimated at $117 billion a year, and three of the leading treatable conditions (asthma, diabetes, and hypertension) are associated with 164 million lost work days per year at a cost to employers of $30 billion.  No wonder companies report spending as much as 50% of their operating profits on healthcare costs.  The question is, how do we create a platform for people to change their habits?

The majority of premature disabilities and deaths are linked to personal behavior.  These behaviors significantly drive up the cost of health care and reduce productivity.  The good news is these behaviors can be changed.   The Healthy Corp platform is designed to facilitate these behavior changes.  It is both flexible and affordable. Companies can customize the platform so that it aligns with their own corporate culture.  The cost of the platform is less than most companies spend on employee snacks and drinks.

Our team works closely with your Human Resource team and Wellness Coordinators to develop an online program and community that taps into the unique personality of your organization to truly engage your employees and inspire them to work toward their wellness goals. More than just static content rehashing well-known facts about the health risks of common lifestyle choices, our powerful platform includes advanced publishing tools and patent pending technology to present the information tailored for the individual, groups, divisions, or corporation as a whole. By leveraging the latest technology in interactive content design, social networks, video, audio and rich multimedia, as well on evidence based research on incentivizing employees to engage in positive behavior changing habits, we create immersive web-based wellness programs that demonstrate real engagement and behavior change.

Konamoxt, Inc, founded by former Real Networks executive Brad Hefta-Gaub, also operates Sweat365.com, a fitness community for everyday athletes.  To find out more about The Healthy Corp, visit http://thehealthycorp.com.

We recently added a feature to your logbook in your Summary Report, that allows you to specify a date range, or two… to get different summaries for different time periods.

To use this feature, go to your logbook, and choose "Change Report Options", select a report type of "Summary", and then you can specify the start and end dates of the ranges you’d like summarized and compared.

For example, I can get a report of the activity I did back in 2008:

From 2008-1-1 to 2008-12-31

• You exercised 322 times on 248 days, for 374.5 hours, and a total of 3,837 miles.
• You cycled 139 times on 135 days, for 204.9 hours, and a total of 3,111.69 miles.
• You did flexibility 2 times on 2 days, for 1.3 hours.
• You did general cardio 2 times on 2 days, for 1.5 hours.
• You did other 4 times on 4 days, for 3.2 hours.
• You ran 105 times on 101 days, for 106.9 hours, and a total of 696.63 miles.
• You did strength training 49 times on 49 days, for 41.9 hours.
• You swam 18 times on 17 days, for 9.9 hours, and a total of 20,558.9 yd.
• You walked 3 times on 3 days, for 5 hours, and a total of 17 miles.

And I can also compare 2009 to 2008…

Comparing 2009-1-1 through 2009-12-31 to 2008-1-1 through 2008-12-31

• You exercised 276 (86%) more times on 117 (47%) more days, for 152.9 (41%) more hours, and a total of 2436.83 (64%) more miles.
• You cycled 47 (34%) more times on 37 (27%) more days, for 106.2 (52%) more hours, and a total of 1889.77 (61%) more miles.
• You did flexibility 22 (1100%) more times on 21 (1050%) more days, for 3.9 (300%) more hours.
• You did other 1 (25%) fewer times on 1 (25%) fewer days, for 0.9 (28%) fewer hours.
• You ran 263 (250%) more times on 264 (261%) more days, for 91.2 (85%) more hours, and a total of 558.01 (80%) more miles.
• You swam 4 (22%) fewer times on 3 (18%) fewer days, for 0.5 (5%) fewer hours, and a total of 2286.59 (11%) more yd.
• You walked the same number of times on the same number of days, for 3.7 (74%) fewer hours, and a total of 12.25 (72%) fewer miles.
• You did general cardio 2 (100%) fewer times on 2 (100%) fewer days, for 1.5 (100%) fewer hours.
• You did strength training 49 (100%) fewer times on 49 (100%) fewer days, for 41.9 (100%) fewer hours.

Check it out… and Happy New Year!

Should anyone eat this product? Should any company be willing to associate their brand with this product? Consider the facts: 791 grams or 1.7 lbs of beef, 2120 calories. This is more calories than the FDA and CDC recommend for an entire day; and that doesn’t include the large fries and large soda that would be consumed in the same meal.

According to recent news from the CDC, now more than 26% of Americans are obese, in 32 states more than 25% of the population is obese, and in 6 states more than 30% of the adult population is overweight. There is only one state in the US where less than 20% of the population is obese.

"Obesity is a major risk factor for many chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. As obesity increases among all age groups, we are seeing chronic diseases in much younger adults compared to a few decades ago," said Dr. William Dietz, director, CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity. "For example, we now see young adults who suffer from heart disease risk factors and other conditions such as type 2 diabetes that were unheard of in the past."

I understand that Microsoft is trying to create buzz, to be a little edgy. But how can any corporation support this kind of high risk behavior? Why not partner with Patron Tequila and offer the Windows 7 Shot Challenge?

Like with any changes, there’s always the chance of glitches and problems. Hopefully we didn’t introduce any, but if we did, we’d love to hear about it so we can fix it.

Thanks for your continued support of the community! We hope you enjoy these improvements!

Ok, here is the fine print. We still need to have some limits on the amount of disk space we can offer. But we’ve picked a number that we’re confident most of you will never reach… 3Gigabytes! Yep 3GB. That’s enough to store over 1,500- 7 MegaPixel photos, or in other words over 7,500 photos from your iPhone! That’s a lot of photos.

You can also use this disk space to upload MP3 files for embedding your favorite audio or podcasts. Or you can use this diskspace to upload map files and GPS data of your favorite biking or running routes.

Another benefit of this upgrade is that we’ve offloaded the serving of this media content off of our primary web servers, and so we will also see overall performance improvements to the website.

We hope you enjoy!

Here are just a few of the Sweat365 members who competed in this weekend’s events.

• SloppyB - Capping of an amazing year of racing, “B” as I like to call him decided to push up his full Ironman Goal from 2010 to 2009 — Clearly from his performance… he was ready. After a solid swim split of 1:11:15, he emerged from the water in 940 place overall and 138th in his division. Then he got on his horse… and pedaled out a blistering 21.54mph average speed over the 112 mile course to finish the bike in 142nd place overall and 25th in his age group! To cap of his race he ran a 9:23/mile average marathon, and finished in 191st place overall for 30th in his age group! AMAZING!
• Mitch Roberts - Mitch is a veteran of Ironman Canada, and this year, he returned with a goal to repeat his Ironman success. He had a great race with a swim split of 1:26:43, a bike split of 6:58:10 (16.07 mph average) and a run split of 7:13:39 (16:33/mile average pace). Read Mitch’s race report here.
• Chris Lynch - His goal was to finish his first Ironman in under 15 hours. He nearly accomplished that goal with a final time of 15:07:26, which is great considering how brutal Ironman can be! Chris put in a solid swim of 1:26:56, a great bike of 7:02:38 (15.9mph), and a very solid run split of 6:18:59 (14:27/mile).
• Doug Greisen - Finished his first Ironman with a time of 14:14:29. After a solid swim of 1:19, and a very fast bike split with an average speed of 19.17mph, he held on to finish the marathon in 6:47. He wrote a great race report which you can read here.

In order to use this feature, you will need to have the Garmin Communicator plugin installed for your browser. If you have a garmin, you probably already have it installed, but if you don’t we’ll detect that it is missing and point you to the right place to download it.

This new feature works on all major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome) on both Mac and Windows computers.

Enjoy!

We’ve recently added a tool to Sweat365 to help you understand your BMI. Learn more here.

Flickr Slide Shows

Many of you have flickr accounts, with sets of photos of your various fitness adventures. You can now embed slide shows of those photo sets directly into your journal entries. to do so, simply type [flickr:url] and replace “url” with the web address for the slide show. For example: Dave recently took some great photos of the Irongirl triathlon and wanted to include them in his blog.

The web url for the slide show is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26611623@N03/sets/72157617915599184/show/

So to embed the slide show he can simply type the following into his blog:

[flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/26611623@N03/sets/72157617915599184/show/ ]

And the result is:

Maps

You may have noticed a few members of Sweat365 have been embedding maps in their Journals recently. Well, you can do this too! All you need is a “GPX” or “KML” file of the route you want to include in your Journal. KML files (also known as Google Earth files) and GPX files (also known as GPS exchange files) are commonly available from either mapping programs or GPS enabled devices like the Garmin Edge or Forerunner fitness computers.

If you have a map of your favorite route, simply upload it to your Journal entry the same way you would upload an image or an audio file. In the Track Workout, or Write Post screen, click on the Add Media button. From there, you can upload your file, and embed it like you would an image.

After uploading the file, you will see the “link” for the file listed, along with buttons that say None, File URL, Post URL, Embedded Map. You can use these buttons to determine of the map will be embedded into your post, or if you’ll simply have a link to the map or the map file on your journal entry.

Most of the time, you’ll want to embed the map, so click the embedded map button.

After clicking the Embedded Map button, you’ll notice that the Link URL now says: [embed_mapfile:....]

Now, simply click the Insert into Post button, and your map will be embedded into your Journal entry.

In the text editor, you’ll see: [embed_mapfile:http://sweat365.com/files/2009/05/alki_6_miler.kml]

But in your post it will appear like this:

We hope you enjoy these new features!

I met several of these brave men and women at my most recent Ironman, where several of them participated in the full and half iron distance races and relays. The courage and determination they show is truly humbling. It’s an honor to meet them and cheer for them as they strive to come back from their injuries and acheive amazing results.

Yesterday, after being introduced by Defense Secretary Gates, President Obama gave a few remarks on the South Lawn before kicking off the “White House to Light House Wounded Warrior Soldiers Ride”. The race raises public awareness of the challenges facing veterans as they recover from life-altering injuries, and it drew quite a crowd, including Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, and Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs Tammy Duckworth.

For more information on the ride, you can visit the White House Blog or the Wounded Warrior Project website.