Best Weight Loss Blogs: 2012

The votes have finally been tallied in the "Best Weight Loss Blogs" poll, and we have some winners!

Contest rules, many of which are arbitrary and unfair, can be found back at the nomination post. Among other minutia, there is an explanation as to why the latest nomination post comments were not the only source of blog votes. There were also prizes offered to encourage participation generously donated by BodyLogicMD,  SmartForLife, Popcorn, Indiana Chip’ins,  Life Coach Tim Brownson, and Shakeology Meal Replacement shakes.

Top Weight Loss Blogs

In a nod to the time honored tradition of "being polite to the hostess," so many sweet folks mentioned Cranky Fitness that it placed first, but it seemed a bit tacky to include it. But thanks so much!

The top vote getter of actual serious votes was DK FitSolutions. Congrats DK FitSolutions, you motivated people, sent out the troops, and won a $50 gift certificate and a first place finish!

And here are the other top vote-getters, broken into clumps by popularity (but within a clump, votes were similar or tied):

Top 3 blogs:
DK FitSolutions
MizFit
The Great Fitness Experiment

Also very popular:
Tippy Toe Diet
Fit to the Finish
Truth 2 Being Fit
Bitch Cakes
Health Breaks Loose
Carb Tripper
KCL Anderson: Before & After
Ryan D. Sullivan (No More Bacon)
Sheesh
Calorie Lab: Dr. J
Nerd Fitness
Oh She Glows
Waisting Time
The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl
A Weight  Lifted
Fit Bottomed Girls

[Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Would this be an opportune time to mention that if you want a funny but sneakily informative ebook to help you on your fitness and weight loss journey, Cranky Fitness: Exercise Your Ass Off is available as a PDF, or for Kindle, Nook or iPad for $3.99? What, it's actually a totally stupid time to interrupt? Oops, sorry! I'll let you get back to the list.]

More Multiple-Vote Blogs:
Feed Me, I'm Cranky
Roni's weigh
YumYucky
Marks Daily Apple
Finding Radiance
My Journey to Fit
Debby Weighs In
Peanut Butter Fingers
Eat Move Write
Loretta's Journey
MrsFatass
Jack Sh*t Getting Fit
Priorfatgirl
The Sassy Pear
Starving Bitch
Escape from Obesity

Other Nominated Blogs:
(And note: there are some GREAT ones in here, and they're listed in no particular order, so it's worth at least skimming to the end to see what titles might appeal to you:

Diet Blog 
The Token Fat Girl
Scale Junkie
Chocolate Covered Katie
Healthy Tipping Point
Carbie Girl
Fat to Fit Mommy
Runs for Cookies
Iowa Girl Eats
Coach Vance
Beth's Journey
Flab Mountain-From Cow to Wow
Fat Girl in a Skinny World
Running with Perseverance
Strong is the New Skinny
Ugly Finish
Illusion Free Fitness
Livin' La Vida Low Carb
Keeping the Pounds Off
Happy Texans
Tom Corson-Knowles
My Fitness Pal
Doing a 180
Live for Food
Eden Eats Everything
Freakin' Fitness
The Fitnessista
Eighty Twenty
Journey to Fitville
The Skinny Chronicles
Goals for the week
The Health Guru
Runs for Cookies
My Sumo Weight Loss Blog
The Lighter Perspective
Diet Schmiet
A Life Changing Journey
Big Girl Bombshell
Evil Cyber
Can You Stay For Dinner
Healthful Pursuit
The World According to EggFace
Healthy is Hot
Banana Buzzbomb
Man Bicep
Fitfluential
Fit Mommy
Kelly Olexa
SkinnyEmmie
AlltheWeigh
I Am Woman Hear Me Run
Wellness Mama
Fit and Feminist
Girl Heroes
Why the Weight?
Teamgiles
Peas And Thank You
Fooducate
Carrots and Cake
The Kim Challenge
Tricia Minnick (formerly Endurance Isn't Only Physical)
My Bizzy Kitchen
Katie J is On Her Way
Miss Zippy
Something Brilliant is Brewing
From Fat to Fab
Skinny Hollie
Outsmart the Fat
My Journey To Fit
I'm Just Puffy

Is Your Favorite Blog Missing Or Underrated? Discover a Broken Link? Looking for More Ideas? Stop by the Comments!

It would be great to get more recommendations, hear additional praise for favorites, or discover errors or broken links. This post may be updated occasionally and stuff from the comments incorporated into the list.

Note: suggestions for sites that are not really sincerely trying to blogs but are aimed at selling a weight loss services or product, even if these products/services are legitimate and not total crap may, at my discretion, be deleted anyway.

And now that we're done and your head is reeling and you may be more susceptible to brainwashing attempts by struggling bloggers, would anyone care to hear about that ebook again?

Click on it... if you dare!

Thanks for stopping by!

Note: Lipton Cup Photo: Cape Cod Times

Best Weight Loss Blog Update: Nominate Your Favorites and Win Prizes!

Photo: Cape Cod Times.

Do you have a favorite weight loss or fitness blog and feel it deserves some recognition?

Would you like to win one of several lovely giveaway prizes for yourself and possibly your favorite blogger?

Yep, as threatened promised many months ago, it's time to update the musty old Best Weight Loss Blog list that Cranky Fitness readers compiled back in 2009. Weirdly enough, the thing remains an extremely popular destination for googlers on the web! Yet I feel terrible knowing hundreds and hundreds of poor innocent folks arrive here every day looking to find the best weight loss blogs... and instead find themselves wading through a bunch of abandoned blogs and broken links.

(Oh, and another favor I have of readers: I'm on the hunt for affordable web development help and looking for advice!)

So here's the scoop:

The Best Weight Loss Blogs-- 2012 Edition:

Quick summary, for those in a hurry:

Get To The Freakin' Point for Once, Crabby!

 1.  Vote for up to 10 of your favorite weight loss blogs in the comments below. Define "weight loss blog" however the hell you want.  You could win something for doing this.

2.  Don't wait forever; nominations will close in a couple weeks or so to allow time to evaluate and compile winning blogs.

3. Best blogs and reader giveaway winners will be announced on March 26 to allow me to compile results.

4.  If you don't check back later, you could lose out on a prize you won.

Longer FAQ Version, For Those Avoiding Actual Work:

1. So Just What Are the Fabulous Prizes?

OK, so here's the funny part... I don't know yet!

My guess is there will be a thing or two that is Big and quite a few other prizes that are Smallish.

For some unknown and illogical reason, I suddenly decided NOW, RIGHT THIS MINUTE was the time to have this thing... just after I'd said "no" to about a million product review pitches.  However, several great possibilities for prizes arrived in my inbox just hours after I decided to do this, and I suspect I can drum up other stuff over the next few weeks.  Worst case, I'll re-purpose products and books etc that I already have, pay for a few new things and hope the Lobster is not reading this sentence, as well as do a lot of unattractive behind the scenes groveling to round up prizes. But wouldn't it be fantastic if sponsors with vaguely health/fitness related stuff were to spontaneously offer up their very fine wares or services in exchange for the chance to inform Cranky Fitness readers of their incredible benefits?

2. How Will The Top Blogs Be Chosen?

Reader nominations will be counted, plus, unlike last time, I get to nominate and vote too. And I'm not capped at 10 because hell, it's my blog.  Many great and popular blogs got left off last time because people assumed of course someone else would nominate them, and I don't want that to happen again.   There are also some prior nominations from an earlier post; see below if you give a crap.

At the end there may be a runoff of some sort, especially if there turns out to be a good prize for the blog winner.  Or if I get lazy, we may just leave it as a big-ass list with the highest vote-getters on top.

3. Why Would A Well Written and Popular Weight Loss Blog Give a Shit What Cranky Fitness Readers Have to Say?

For whatever weird reason, the old Cranky Fitness poll brings in tons of new readers googling to find weight loss blogs.  Blogs that end up high on the list get clicked on a lot, and not only does this bring them direct traffic, I believe it helps the blog's search engine rankings. The new 2012 poll will take a little while to build up the same awesome powers, but it will be greatly aided by the drastically edited old version directing people straight to the new post.  I even feel comfortable saying I PROMISE that top ranked blogs will eventually get a lot of new readers from this silly thing, especially if they are small blogs right now.

Plus I'm hoping to have a nice prize for the top weight loss blog.

And hey, remember how a few months Crabby went scrambling around debasing herself in order to hustle up votes when she got nominated as one of Shape Magazine's Best Fitness Bloggers?  Well, that's because she herself likes the new readers that popularity contests can bring.

4. What Can I Do to Increase My Chances of Winning a Prize?

Prizes will be chosen semi-randomly. Some randomness will be definitely be involved, but preference will be given to entrants who:

•  leave nominations complete with blog names and urls to make compiling easier;
•  mention this contest to others (and let me know via comment or email that you've done so); or
•  are nice humans who aren't spammers or folks just stopping by to nominate their own blogs and no one else's (although you're quite welcome to do so).

5. How Can I Rig This Thing To Make MY Favorite Blog Rank Higher?

 Image swiped from here.

Besides nominating your favorite blog, you can tell me and others WHY it's awesome so we may want to vote for it too.  You can also go to the blog itself and let the blogger and/or the readers know about the nomination, so that those who would like to see the blog get more reader and SEO recognition can help it out.

6. Wait, This All Sounds Vaguely Familiar...

Yep, if you were here over the summer when Cranky Fitness first emerged from its slumber (the blog was pretty much abandoned for about a year and a half) and you voted in the pre-poll, those votes and nominations will definitely be counted as explained earlier.  However, to be eligible to win a giveaway prize this round, please comment and vote again.  And yes, this means the early birds get two worms!

Another Reader Blog Poll You May Want to Check Out

Tim at A Daring Adventure, who like Crabby is also a Life Coach and GoogleWhore, has just compiled a list of the 20 of the Greatest Self-Improvement Posts Ever Written.  A great resource, and if you're still avoiding actual work, go check 'em out.

And Now, Crabby's Desperate Plea for Web Help:

It's time.  I'd really like to move Cranky Fitness and my coaching website to a new blogging platform without losing readers!  I'd also like to upgrade the look a bit, learn enough to be able to tweak things myself once it's up, and maybe even get some graphics help on headers and banner ads.  I'm eyeing the Wordpress Thesis theme but don't know anything about how wordpress works.

The thing is, I need affordable help, and could offer a little bit of money and a LOT of promotional exposure for someone who knows their way around blog transfer & set up, and who might be looking to expand their web design business.  An on-going banner ad, a blog post all about the amazing transformation, some carefully crafted SEO key-word rich endorsements... you get the idea.

Anyone know of someone who might fit the bill?  Please email me at crabbymcslacker at g mail dot com.

So, what are some of your favorite Weight Loss Blogs?  And thanks, awesome readers, for all your help, past present and future!

P90X Giveaway Winner (Plus Crabby's Secret Plot to Conquer the Health Blog Universe)

Did you win the P90X giveaway? And what's this about "secret plots?"


So here's the deal:

Hold Up Crabby, Not So Fast: Where the Hell is This Week's Giveaway?

Sorry folks, I'm afraid this week's planned giveaway got postponed! Why? Well, it's a combo giveaway/review, and I didn't actually get around to trying the product yet. Not just because of general laziness, or even the fact the product requires some simple assembly and the Lobster is out of town and she's is the only one in our household capable of assembling anything more challenging than a cup of coffee.

No, as it happens, the excuse... rationalization... really good reason for the delay is that a review post of a fitness contraption really should include demonstration pictures! And the Lobster is the Official Cranky Fitness Photography Department, and she won't be available for a few more days.  So the next giveaway post is just going to have to wait a bit.

Last Weeks Winner: So who did the Random Number Generator bestow with the P90X? That would be:

Commenter #8: Laura (akaWonderWife!)! Congrats, Laura! Please email me to claim your prize by end of day Friday the 12th!

And so what's this about a scheme to take over the Blogging Universe? Well, I'm hoping to get some help here folks.

Sneaky Conspiracy To Help Cranky Fitness (and all your Favorite Health/Fitness/Weight-Loss blogs) Get More Readers:

Here's a weird thing I've noticed from my blog statistics: If you google "best weight loss blogs" or variations thereof, often Cranky Fitness lands fairly high up on the list. Why? I have no idea! And not surprisingly, anything to do with "weight loss blogs" is VERY popular with search engines. (And just wait for all those New Years Resolution googlers.... mmm, fresh tasty newby blog readers who don't know where to go...heh heh heh... sweet innocent googlers just waiting to be snapped up by voracious audience-hungry health and weight loss bloggers, yumm... )

But the sad thing is: googlers who arrive here land on a vintage "readers choice" blog post that misses out on some of the best weight loss blogs, and includes a lot of blogs that no longer exist. Plus, there are no categories for health blogs, fitness blogs, humorous blogs etc!

But what if Cranky Fitness were to leverage this undeserved Google karma and host an updated list of all of the truly best current health, fitness, and weight-loss blogs? The ones that we all know deserve more readers but don't necessarily have advertising budgets or corporate sponsorship? (Though there will be a category for those, too!). Wouldn't that be better for the googlers, better for the bloggers, and, err... um... perhaps better for Cranky Fitness?

Problem is, Cranky Fitness needs to regain lost readership before mounting another Reader's Choice official poll, or it will be a pretty short list.  The big-deal poll (which will also include a giveaway inducement, I'm thinking) probably won't happen until fall.

So then, why am I announcing this now? 

Loyal Readers Get Extra Clout: People who are here now, in the health blogging world's deadest, dustiest, dullest summer season, are my favorite folks! You're the people whose judgment I trust the most.  I've been out of the loop for a while now, and I simply don't know which the best blogs are anymore.  So any of you that comment or email me with suggestions as a result of this post: these will count at least double. And they won't keep you from nominating or voting again later either! Also, this time I'm going to give myself nominating and voting power too, to make sure good blogs don't get left off because no one thought to nominate them, and your choices will be on my mind ahead of time. (Note: all these Nefarious Vote-rigging Schemes will be fully disclosed in the Official Rules of the Reader's Choice Poll, because whatever, who reads the rules anyway?)

So whaddya say? Anyone want to clue me in to the best weight-loss and other health & fitness blogs? A link and a brief description of the blog's awesomeness, either by commenting here, email, or on Facebook, would be most appreciated!

Readers' Choice: Best Weight Loss Blogs

A few years ago we asked Cranky Fitness readers to let us know which were their favorite weight loss blogs.

As of 2012 the list was getting pretty darn old and many blogs had folded.

Sorry for the extra click, but please check out the New, Improved and Much More Current 2012 list of Best Weight Loss Blogs!

And thanks for visiting Cranky Fitness!