A New Social Network For Health and Weight Loss Is Launched.

Sept. 7, 2011 - PRLog -- ToLoseWeight.com recently launched to positive reviews and promises a social community specifically tailored to people interested in fitness and weight loss. In development for over a year, ToLoseWeight.com received first round funding by a privately held venture capital firm to implement its growth plan.

According to the CDC, 68% of all Americans are either overweight or obese. It is an alarmingly high percentage of the population, and one that ToLoseWeight’s founders feel is underserved with community driven solutions. Many experts believe that obesity in America has already reached epidemic proportions, and proactive solutions need to be discovered and implemented immediately to solve this significant drag on healthcare costs. Studies show that obesity will cost the USA a staggering $344 billion in medical related expenses by 2018, consuming 21% of all healthcare spending.

Investors feel strongly that this next wave of rapid growth in social networking will happen in sizable niche communities like health and weight loss. As these segments grow, strategic investments in these markets are likely to grow as well. Facebook has grown rapidly with general social networking, but ToLoseWeight.com may be on the vanguard of a new breed of social networks more focused on specific interests and communities.

With regards to weight loss, the “buddy system” has proven to work extremely well in the real world for decades. Because of this, bringing the Facebook model to fitness and helping people learn how to lose weight seems to make a lot of sense. It is well known that if you have a trainer or a fitness-dieting partner to work with, your opportunity for success rises exponentially because of the support and encouragement to continue. ToLoseWeight.com’s focus aims to be an entire support community where users can get inspiration, information, recipes, diets, fitness plans and a variety of other support features.

“ToLoseWeight.com was created to be a powerful social platform where people can meet, interact and share goals, and give encouragement and expertise. The site features an immense amount of social functionality and interaction.” says one of the founders, Mark W. Smith.

“It has a weight loss forum with discussions in virtually every important weight loss topic, a blog platform where you can post your own article, a section where videos and pictures can be posted, and most everything else expected in a contemporary social network. Users have the freedom to create groups in an area of their interest, promote their event and connect and build relationships like never before. There are also up to the minute weight loss news feeds, and Twitter feeds as well” says Smith.

The site is free to become a member, and people can join and sign in with their existing Facebook , Twitter, Google or Yahoo! account. Users then have the option to have their interactions, postings and “likes” on the site automatically post to their other social networking accounts. For example, a new forum comment or blog article will post automatically to the user’s Facebook wall if they want it to. So members will be integrating and interacting with their entire social network at once, should they choose to do so.  

The stated goal of ToLoseWeight.com is “to help its members to reach their weight goals and lead healthier lives”. The site offers nutrition, health, and fitness tools, support, and resources that are completely free, in a market segment where sites typically charge their members for similar services. Members can interact with the community as much or as little as they want, and after signing up they will have their own “homepage” that keeps track of their interests, interactions and friends.

Smith went on to say that, “We encourage health and fitness professionals to join and create their own groups to expand their influence and impact to a wider number of people, and even offer their services to other members that want to receive personal consultation. If you want to announce, plan and promote certain events, ToLoseWeight.com provides a free base of operations to get like-minded people involved and get it off the ground.”

This provides what amounts to a free soapbox for experts in the field to expand their profile and audience, promote their specialized services, and (hopefully) help their new followers learn how to lose weight.  

People interested in joining the “Weight Loss Social Network” are encouraged to visit ToLoseWeight.com and either sign up, or simply browse around at their leisure. Time will tell if couch potatoes will unite, and make the internet and ToLoseWeight.com the new frontier for weight loss and healthier lifestyles.

# # #

ToLoseWeight.com is a new internet social community specifically focused on helping people interested in fitness and weight loss.

ToLoseWeight.com was created to be a powerful social platform where people can meet, interact and share goals, and give encouragement and expertise in the field of health and maintaining healthy weight.

The goal of ToLoseWeight.com is to help its members reach their weight goals and lead healthier lives, and become a main hub for fitness and weight loss on the internet.