A strategy is the basic unit of any method or action you take to improve your eating choices, behavior, or physical activity. On thinjoy each strategy is given its own page which provides description and detail. Users can add then add strategies to their profiles. All of the strategies chosen by or created by the user represent their own customized diet plan.

Yes, it can be very similar; strategies on thinjoy can function exactly like a regular diet plan. All diet plans are made up of strategies, usually bundled into a group. You might never have taken a step back and tried to figure out what strategies you are actually following, but they are there. Remember for a diet to be effective it needs to create a caloric deficit. In cases where users are not monitoring food intake these strategies tend to be a little heavy handed just to make sure dieters actually lose weight. With thinjoy you can use a similar approach but you're removing all the guesswork, so you can be sure that eliminating an undesired individual strategy won't derail your entire diet. Take a look at the guidelines of a low carb diet described below:

On this low carb diet you will not consume any foods with sugar, including fruits such as bananas, apples and berries. Potatoes and other starchy vegetables are forbidden as are all refined grains such as pasta, white bread, and white rice. You are, however, allowed to have up to two servings of whole grains a day. You can eat green leafy vegetables and other low sugar vegetables at any meal or as a snack replacement. At meals you can eat as much meat as you like.

On thinjoy, the above guidelines would translate into five different strategies:
  1. A strategy prohibiting any foods high in sugar, including fruits
  2. A strategy prohibiting starchy vegetables
  3. A strategy prohibiting refined grains, but allowing limited servings of whole grains
  4. A strategy encouraging the consumption of low/no sugar vegetables (salad)
  5. And another stating the user can eat all the protein they want.
There are several reasons it is advantageous to have each strategy listed separately. First of all you can rid yourself of anything you think doesn't fit your lifestyle, for instance someone who likes to eat a banana everyday for breakfast might remove the first strategy. As long as this user continues to log her food and meet her energy target she can be assured that her diet will be effective. With the food log plan, she can be assured that her diet will meet nutrient adequacy needs, not just after the fact, but before she even begins or ends a particular strategy.
Does this mean thinjoy is advocating a low carb diet?
We don't really advocate, promote, or ban any one kind of diet. With the use of our tools it becomes clear not only which diet is the most effective for you, but also which one is safe, nutritious, and makes you the happiest. Low carb diets are effective at satisfying hunger, if this in turn helps some users to meet their energy target while maintaining a balanced diet we see this as a very good thing. But remember with the way we have set up strategies no one is confined to one type of diet, they can defy classification and pick and choose strategies to make up a plan that is fully customized to their own needs, wants, and desires.

Another advantage to having each strategy independent of one another is that you can easily share strategies with a wider variety of friends. Someone following the list above could easily share strategies 2, 3, and 4 with a vegetarian friend. They could then in turn share a new strategy making salad their primary food at lunchtime. That would mean a user on a low carb diet and a vegetarian user-pretty much complete opposites in dieting world-would be sharing ideas.

Sharing ideas is important, because different diets work for different people. With the flow of new ideas you can constantly optimize your strategies continually improving the fit of your plan & your lifestyle.

For many users, the way most diet plans are packaged doesn't really work very well. This is because the bundled strategies force users to drastically change their eating patterns. Users following these plans are essentially starting anew. While this can be a good thing for some people, it can also be pretty difficult to completely change all of your eating patterns all at once.

We think it's best to take a softer approach. Instead of starting with a new set of strategies created by someone else, users can start with themselves. They begin to log their food and identify the behaviors and choices they make every day. If these behaviors and choices are positive they can become strategies. For instance someone who eats whole grain breakfast cereal every morning might not have even realized that it is effective to both eat breakfast every day, and to eat whole grains when trying to lose weight. By identifying these positive food choices they can add strategies stating that they are following these methods.

As users become more aware of how they make food choices they will undoubtedly come across problems in their eating habits. They can then search for strategies created by other users to help them identify solutions to these problems. Over time they build a set of strategies completely unique to their own food preferences and lifestyle.


Eating/nutrition strategies deal with all food related strategies. While most of these strategies have to do with energy control (trying to eat less calories), they can also express ambitions to improve nutrition, or simply be a reflection of your tastes, consumption preferences or even your philosophy of food (organic, local, vegan etc.).

Fitness strategies are anything that gets you to be more active. The most common ones have to do with some kind of a formalized fitness or exercise plan, or participation on a sport team. But any method you employ to increase your physical activity is fair game. You may decide to get off the subway one stop early and walk the difference, you can take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk your dog, the possibilities are pretty much endless.

The easiest way to define behavior strategies is to note that if a strategy is neither an eating/nutrition strategy nor a fitness & activity strategy than it is a behavior strategy. Behavior strategies may have to do with making behavior changes, they can just as easily have to do with environment or other factors that influence eating behavior. Probably more than the other two types of strategies behavior strategies are about identifying problem areas and coming up with creative solutions. User creation is essential in this process as behavior strategies can both general and personalized. In time some of these will be rather strange, and others truly innovative and brilliant. So if you think you have good ideas, please sign up and add to our strategies library.

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