|
Weight-By-Date™ Pro
Reviewed
by: Lianne
Reitter, send
e-mail
Published
by: ProVariant
Software, go
to the web site
Requires: Pentium
or equivalent AMD Processor (Pentium III or Duron recommended),
Windows 95 or higher (Windows 98 recommended), 16MB RAM,
20MB of free disk space, dialup or broadband Internet
connection
MSRP: $39.95
(download)
It’s
something a lot of us have to face at one time or another.
Your jeans haven't really shrunk in the wash - you have
grown in the hips. It happens to me every year, just after
New Year's Day and I have to toss aside my cavalier “it’s
the holiday season” attitude and take on a more serious “summer
is coming” mind set. Each year it seems to get more
and more difficult to get rid of the pounds I put on during
the holidays. But this coming New Year’s resolution
is going to have a lot of help by way of some modern technology
and Weight-By-Date Pro, a new calorie counting, nutrition
watching and exercise logging software from ProVariant
Software.
You might
think that this is just another diet gizmo that somehow
uses a computer to sell you yet another useless diet book,
or drags you to a late night TV infomercial for a portable
gym. But some of us have gone through enough weight induced
aggravation every year to know that the key to losing weight
is keeping the calorie intake below the calorie burn rate
every day. What Weight-By-Date™ Pro does is help
you track every calorie in and every calorie out.
The software
begins by gathering your personal statistics. Now for heaven's
sake be honest, don't suck that gut in while you are taking
your measurements, and don't lie about your weight. Without
an honest starting point Weight-By-Date Pro will not be
able to properly track your progress and you will just
be wasting your time. Once Weight-By-Date Pro knows what
you are starting with, input your goal weight, then estimate
how long you want to take to get there. Weight-By-Date
Pro will calculate how many fewer calories you need to
take in, in order to reach your goal. Right off the bat,
Weight-By-Date Pro has probably helped you because now
you know that you can't possibly loose those five pounds
in a week and you have been saved a lot of frustration
and disappointment.
So,
with all your vital statistics recorded and a realistic
goal set,
the real fun begins. Weight-By-Date Pro’s
interface is simple yet robust. Down the left side
of the program window are buttons for the Calendar you
will use, a Journal in which to list all your food items,
exercise programs and notes, a Planner to record future
meals and workouts, charts to show your progress in weight
loss, your Body Mass Index and the like, a Tools button
to easily access the Weight-By-Date Pro calculators and
a Links button to get to pre-selected web sites (or those
that you choose) which will provide you with even more
help in reaching your goal weight.
Access
the calendar within Weight-By-Date Pro and you will find
a familiar
interface. As with the calendar hanging
on your wall, you record your current weight in today’s
box. Also showing for current date, is the number
of calories you can eat for the day and a quick link to
your journal. The journal is where most of the action takes
place. Here is where you will record every morsel of food
you eat and with over 6000 preloaded food items, it shouldn't
be too hard to find everything. Each food item is detailed
with its nutritional information and calorie count.
You
may want to just watch your salt or fiber intake; Weight-By-Date
Pro can track as many as ten different nutritional items.
Track saturated fat and calorie intake along with your
Vitamin B or alcohol intake. You can get down to the dirtiest
detail of your eating and drinking habits. Pick your food
item and the number of servings you had (cup, half cup,
etc.) and you're done. Weight-By-Date Pro records the food
item and reduces the number of calories you have left for
the day. Just that fast, just that easy. Now if you are
like me, you have the same breakfast every day. Using the
Recipe feature in Weight-By-Date Pro you can program every
food item you have for breakfast and then just record the
recipe every morning instead of going through each food
item day after day. Using the recipe feature takes
a lot of the tedium out of tracking the foods you eat too.
But
you are not just eating all day, you are working your
butt off
too. Even that walk around the block with the
dog must count for something? Well of course it does. We
know that increasing ‘calories out’ is just
as important as sensibly reducing ‘calories in’ and
Weight-By-Date Pro allows you to easily record those too.
From the same
Journal menu,
record your workout for the day. Maybe you did a 30 minute
aerobic workout (take 297 off your net calorie intake for
the day) or maybe you just puttered around in the garden
(that’s a cool 184 calories gone). If you keep your
statistics up to date, Weight-By-Date Pro will calculate
exactly how many calories you burned by measuring the work
load against your body weight. The heavier you are the
more calories you burn doing the same amount of work. You
need that kind of detailed information to accurately track
your net calorie loss in order to loose the weight you
want, in the time you want to loose it.
Weight-By-Date Pro can be used by the whole family. Each
family member can log on to their personal profile (password
protected of course) and record their daily progress. And
Weight-By-Date Pro is totally programmable in that you
can add any food or exercise item that might be missing
from the lists. Are you using a point system diet? While
not preloaded, such items can be tracked by customizing
the nutrition list. Weight-By-Date Pro is flexible enough
that anyone on any regimen will find it a great companion.
Weight-By-Date
Pro does not stop with you sitting in front of
your desktop computer. You can
also go mobile. Weight-By-Date™ Pro
has an accompanying add-on program called Weight-By-Date
Mobile. Load this onto your Palm powered PDA and you can
record your meals and exercise programs outside the house,
wherever you go. When you get back home just sync the PDA
to your desktop and all the day's information is updated
to your desktop software instantly.
Even
if you only have a few pounds to lose, Weight-By-Date
Pro can be of enormous help. The more aware you are of
your eating habits the more likely it is you'll reach
your weight reduction goals. Recommended.
Letters to the Editor are welcome and occasionally abused in public. Send e-mail to: whine@kickstartnews.com
|
