LAUNCH: www.EatLessWorkOut.com

Since January 19 of this year, I have lost 18% of my body weight. For someone who has struggled with weight control for over a decade, I saw that a massive success and wanted to share all the lessons I had learned with anyone willing to listen. How did I do it? Simple: I ate less food and worked out.

For most of 2009, I've been blogging about my progress, and have been forthcoming about every emotional challenges I faced. In turn, I've received countless notes of gratitude for presenting it all online for free. When I visited my doctor in September, he was very happy to hear my story; most of his patients don't lose weight and consequently develop serious health conditions like heart attacks, diabetes, etc.

BIRTH OF A WEB SITE
I decided to collect my blog posts into one place to let others really benefit from my story. I thought first about setting up a simple web page on rosspruden.com but then I realized I could do much more with a stand-alone web site. I tossed around a few different options, chose an URL, and used that site to teach myself Wordpress. Four months later, I have an official site which I'm launching today: EATLESSWORKOUT.COM I've mostly used this site as a sandbox to create a professional looking site, maybe even to sell some T-shirts and/or have a central blogging platform so I can write more about eating less and working out. The site is still in beta (it needs a decent forum, a sturdier login section, a store front, and minor tweaks here and there), so there's still so much work ahead. It's been both frustrating and fun to learn as I go.


At some point, the concept became much more. I began to see Eatlessworkout.com as a kind of philosophy, a superset in which all other weight loss programs could be included. Whenever people asked me about my story, I found I could write about it at length and, over time, it occurred to me I had enough to write a book about it all. So I decided to pull the trigger and go live with an official web site on January 1, 2010. The site's message was ideal for people making a New Year's resolution to live more healthfully. I'd like to see the site become an inspirational meeting place for anyone trying to be more sensible about how much they eat and how active they are. Ultimately, I'd like to write a book about it all and sell it via the web site.

BEHIND THE CURTAIN
After my last series of articles on being a filmmaker in a digital age (The Roadmap to Free and The Roadmap to Value), and while reading Mike Masnick's Approaching Infinity: Embracing Opportunities in Abundance, I had an epiphany about how to position Eatlessworkout.com in the marketplace. If I believe so strongly in the "Connect with Fans + Reason To Buy" business model, I should put my money where my mouth is and see if I can make it a profitable enterprise by implementing a Free model (e.g., release the infinite goods for free over the internet in bolster the value of the scarce goods, which are sold). What better way to connect with fans than blog about what happens behind the curtain?

So I have two somewhat different audiences for EatLessworkout.com—if you want inspiration to lose weight by reading my personal weight loss story, read the Eat Less blog. But if you want to see how a CwF+RtB strategy works in the real world, then follow my blog here. (I'll tag each post with a cwfrtb label.)

BECOME A FAN!
Eat Less. Work Out. is on Facebook & Twitter. Come join the fun!