1. What is BodyDaemon?

BodyDaemon (BD) is a free Lifestyle Monitoring tool. We allow you to track every aspect of your health and fitness, either in private or as part of a helpful community.

BD was created by myself - Jim McArthur - and Kuldip Jessall (follow the links to visit our journals). We're both software developers based in Birmingham, UK. I'm a keen fitness enthusiast with particular interest in strength training & the rehabilitation of knee injuries.

This is a commercial venture, but is also very much a labor of love. The original idea dates back to a conversation with a friend in a University gym several years ago - it's taken a lot of effort to transform this idea into the site you see today.

BD went live in March 2008.

We're committed to providing a high quality service to members - we want the site to be as good as it possibly can be. If you ever want a new feature, ask - usually we can create it within a matter of days.

We offers many features to members, some of which may not be obvious. Here you can find out about every aspect of what you can do on the site.

2. Your Journal

The Journal is the focal point of BD. All members get a journal, allowing them to record as much or as little of their fitness as they chose.

2.1. Profile

Your profile allows you to tell visitors about your interests, age, where you live, etc. You'll also find an Activity Feed, which will tell you events of interest, such as:

• Whether you're on target to meet your goals;
• Recent activity of your friends;
• Breaking a personal best;
• Members leaving comments on your journal wall;

2.2. Privacy

Share as much or as little as you like - a journal can be completely private, or you can choose to share some sections and not others (for example, you may not want to share your body with the public, but you're happy to tell visitors about your workouts). You can also set up your journal so only your friends can see.

2.3. Journal Feedback

If your journal is public and you've enabled feedback, other members can post comments in your journal. This is a great way of keeping motivated. You have complete control over posts, and can delete or disable them as you wish.

2.4. Friend List

You can make friends with other members of the site. You'll receive details of their events in your Activity Feed.

2.5. Chat Groups

Join existing discussions, or create your own group to talk about anything you like.

2.6. Private Messaging

BD contains a facility allowing you to send private messages to other members. You can choose to be notified by e-mail when someone sends you a message.

2.7. Workout Diary

Logging workouts on BD is simple and easy:

• Spreadsheet-style input screen
• Auto-suggest when entering exercises
• Drag-and-drop re-ordering of your workout
• Use a workout routine to save time when logging a workout
• Record both resistance training and cardio easily
• Add your own custom exercises if they're not in our library
• Very quick - recording a workout shouldn't take more than 2 minutes!
• We tell you if you've broken any personal bests, and your predicted maximum lifts

2.8. Workout Routines

If you regularly perform the same workout, you can add it as a workout routine:

• Print the routine and take it to the gym
• Share your workout plan with others
• Allows you log workouts even quicker with a button click - you just scroll through and fill in the numbers!
• Submit your routine to BD and have it featured on the site

2.9. Custom Exercises

Our Exercise Library has over 250 exercises listed, but if you can't find what you're looking for, you can add your own exercises. If you tell us about them, we'll add them to the directory.

2.10. Personal Bests

You tell us what you're interested in, and we'll monitor it for you and let you know if you beat your record! We support the following:

• Maximum reps (don't care about weight)
• Maximum reps with a particular weight
• Heaviest weight lifted for a particular number of reps
• Furthest distance travelled
• Quickest time to cover a certain distance

2.11. Workout History

You can view a quick history of all workouts - when you performed them, what exercises you did, and any notes that were added.

2.12. Food Diary

Keep a diary of what food you eat:

• Record as much as little as you like - just calories, a detailed breakdown, or food names only!
• Define 'favourite foods' and add them at a button click
• We have a food database with over 10,000 foods you can pick from.
• Once you've added food for a day, we give a detailed breakdown of meal timings, % calories eaten at different times of the day, and more.

2.13. Meal Planner

Plan what you're going to eat in advance! You can prepare a list of food and shopping list for each day in your meal planner. You can also import days from our Meal Plan Directory, or other members.

2.14. Favourite Foods

Record your favourite foods, for one-click access from the meal planner and food diary.

2.15. Body Composition

Record details of your body, including measurements, weight, bodyfat %, photos and more. We'll calculate your BMI for you. You can record as much, or as little, as you like.

2.16. Injuries

If you're injured, you can keep a diary of your injuries and record progress. We'll help you find other members to swap notes with!

2.17. Goals & Interests

You can tell other people your goals & interests. This'll make it easier for like-minded members to find you. For example, here's a list of members with the goal "Lose Bodyfat".

2.18. Custom Goals

If you have something you'd like to acheive by a certain date, tell us what it is. We'll monitor your progress and let you know whether or not you're on target. Examples of goals would be:

• I want to change my waist size to 32 inches
• I want to perform 5 chin-ups
• I want to acheive a bodyfat of 12%
• I want to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.

2.19. Blog

All BD members get a blog. It's up to you whether you use it or not :-)

2.20. Reports

You can create reports, visualizing the information you've recorded in your journal. Reports can show multiple facts, so you can compare things over time - for example, you might want to compare your waist size against daily calorie intake. You can use the following data in reports:

• Bodyfat %
• Size of bodypart
• Bodyweight
• Daily Calories
• Protein intake
• Carb intake
• Fat intake
• Glasses water
• Units Alcohol
• % calories eaten after a chosen time
• % calories eaten before a chosen time
• Time of workout
• N-Rep max in a chosen exercise
• Maximum reps in a chosen exercise
• Time spent on cardio per workout
• Greatest distance traveled in a chosen exercise
• Maximum time spent doing a cardio exercise
• Minimum time spent doing a cardio exercise
• Body Mass Index (BMI)
• % progress in a chosen goal

2.21. Timeline

The timeline allows you to quickly scroll through your journal's history, viewing any data you've recorded as an event on the timeline (for example - Workouts, food, body records).

2.22. PDF Export

We realize this is your data and you've spent a lot of time recording it, so we provide an export feature that allows you save your entire journal as a PDF document. This allows you to keep your own copy and have confidence the data won't be lost. It also provides an easy way of printing your journal.

2.23. HTML Export

If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, you can also export your journal to HTML.

2.24. BMR Calculator

Our BMR calculator will estimate how many calories you need to consume to gain, lose or maintain weight.

2.25. N-Repetition Max Calculator

Our N-Rep Max calculator will estimate the weight you can lift a chosen number of times, based on your workouts.

2.26. Fitness Services

If you run a gym, sports-related shop or offer a fitness-related service (such as physiotherapy or personal training), you can add details to our Fit Directory.

2.27. Facebook Application

Our Facebook Application allows you to update your BD journal without leaving Facebook. You can also optionally tell all your Facebook friends about your fitness progress.

2.28. Mobile Access

We've written a mobile phone client, allowing you to update your BD journal from your mobile phone. We'll be releasing this very soon.

2.29. RSS Feed

All public journals have an RSS feed available. This allows friends to keep track of your progress without visiting the site, and means you can easily publish your journal to sites such as feedburner.

3. Community

The community section lets you see what other members are up to.

3.1. User Directory

All members with public journals appear in the User Directory. Here you can search for members by location, interests, age and more.

3.2. Chat Groups

Join existing discussions, or create your own group to talk about anything you like.

3.3. Shoutbox

Our shoutbox offers real-time chat with other BD members.

3.4. Who's Online?

Lets you see which BD members are online.

3.5. Hall of Fame

Shows the top 10 BD members for the following events:

• Bench Press 1-Rep Max
• Squat 1-Rep Max
• Deadlift 1-Rep Max
• Military Press - barbell - 1-Rep Max
• Snatch - 1-Rep Max
• Chin-ups - maximum repetitions
• Dips - maximum repetitions
• Press-ups - maximum repetitions

3.6. Interesting Facts

Shows a bunch of information about BD members - average weight, strength, and so on.

4. Feeds

The feeds section provides a view of recent activity within the site.

4.1. Blogs

Shows recent blog updates.

4.2. Journal Feedback

Shows all recent comments on public journals.

4.3. Chat Groups

Shows all recent activity within chat groups.

4.4. Workouts

Shows all recent workouts by members with public BD journals.

4.5. Injuries

Shows all recent injury information recorded by members with public BD journals.

4.6. Body Composition

Shows a feed of all recent body information recorded by members with public BD journals.

4.7. RSS Feeds

This page shows a list of available RSS feeds.

5. Library

The library section contains a wide variety of useful information.

5.1. Workout Plans

The workout plan library contains many example workout routines to cater for a range of goals, from bodybuilding, to martial arts, through to injury rehabilitation. Workouts are submitted by members of the site.

5.2. Crossfit Workouts

We're proud to offer content from CrossFit, an excellent strength & conditioning program. Check out their website for more information.

5.3. Article Library

The article library is a growing section of the site that will contain a wide range of member-submitted articles.

5.4. Exercises

We have a comprehensive exercise library, with instructions and videos wherever possible. If anything is missing, we fully support and encourage member contribution.

5.5. Meal Plans

The meal plan section is a little sparse now, but in the future will contain many meal plans and shopping lists for a variety of health and physique goals.

5.6. Max Lift Calculator / BMR Calculator

Calculators are provided allowing members to determine their calorie needs, or predicted strength in an exercise.

5.7. Newsletter Archive

BD sends out a newsletter every few weeks. This page is an archive of all newsletters.

5.8. Links

We respect many excellent fitness sites on the Internet (such as muscletalk and t-nation) and would fully encourage you to visit them. This page contains a list of several sites we would encourage you all to visit.

6. Fit Directory

Our Fit Directory allows gyms, shops and service providers (physiotherapy, personal training, acupuncture etc) to advertise their businesses free of charge.

6. What's planned for the future?

In the immediate future, we want to get members - as many as possible - using, and enjoying, BD. In the future, we're hoping to add loads of useful new features, and and work with leading fitness-websites to change the way people record their data.