- Platform: Windows XP / 98 / 2000 / NT
- Media: CD-ROM
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
62 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Helpful and Comprehensive,
By
This review is from: FitDay PC Diet and Nutrition Software (CD-ROM)
I have used Fitday's software for a year now, and I find it very useful for a variety of reasons. Basically, Fitday allows you to store, track, and analyze a huge number of different factors related to nutrition and exercise. This includes food, activity, mood, weight, and measurements.
Specifically, the program has a large number of foods in its database (taken from USDA databases), and allows you to enter your own custom foods either by entering new foods, or modifying entries already in their database. Once you enter your food, you can keep track of your calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein, and a whole host of vitamins and minerals. If you want, you can pull up a graph showing you which foods provided you with different nutrients in a day, or another graph that tells you which friend you ate with when you consumed most of your calories (or fat, carb, etc). There are a huge number of exercises in the database too, which cover just about every activity you might do (including odd ones like shoe repair, digging for worms, and conducting music). You can also enter custom exercises. The program allows you to record your daily mood, i.e. how you felt that particular day. You can also set your weight, height, and other metabolism information (for example, how active you are at work), and the program estimates the calories you burn in a day just from existing. Once you enter your weight, you can set a weight goal, which includes the date you need to lose the weight by. Then, the software tells you how much weight you need to lose per week, and as you lose weight, you can update the software, and it generates a handy line graph showing your progress. If you don't think weight is an accurate measurement of progress, you can enter your neck, bicep, forearm, chest, waist, hip, thigh, and calf measurements, and track all of them. You can find some basic reports on the overview tab, including a comparison of calories burned versus consumed for a given time period (you set that). If you want more detailed reports about food or activity, they too are available. However, there are a few drawbacks to the software. First, no weight loss software is going to come with every food in its database. This means that if you want an accurate estimate of daily nutrients and calories, you will (at least initially) be entering a lot of custom foods. While the software is easy to navigate, entering a bunch of custom foods can become tedious, and those who are not too excited about their diet may find it too much work. Second, while the software permits multiple users, I haven't found a way to transfer custom foods from one user to another, which means that people in the same household eating the same custom foods will have to enter them in twice. Third, the software could easily track more nutrients than it does, since the USDA database it is based on contains many values Fitday omits: vitamin K, lutein, lycopene, caffeine, biotin, etc. While Fitday tracks a lot of nutrients, I still would like to see more. However, despite these minor drawbacks, I have given the program five stars because it really is very helpful. Overall, I recommend Fitday software for those who need to keep track of what they eat and what they do. It is the best way I have found to keep me on track, making me aware of hidden calories and periods of inactivity. Personally, I tend to eat less (and exercise more) when I use Fitday simply because I want to be able to see something positive on the screen at the end of the day. Those not concerned about weight loss, but who have other health issues, could benefit from this software too, since it tracks sodium, folic acid, saturated fat, and other nutrients. While no software is going to help an unmotivated person lose weight, Fitday provides those who are motivated with a powerful set of tools that will give them an edge...if they have enough commitment to use the software regularly.
55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good program, with limitations,
By
This review is from: FitDay PC Diet and Nutrition Software (CD-ROM)
I am coming up on two years of using this program, and it works well. It has been a key tool in losing 40 pounds in two years. The activities section is quite detailed. There is a large database of food items, however they tend to be rather inaccurate. I have gotten around this by adding custom items, which is easy to do, especially for one person. For all the functionality there are some limitations that warrant a couple points off, in my opinion. These include:
- FitDay assumes that you add margarine and salt to everything. This includes vegetables. A work around is to use raw instead of cooked, or enter every little thing as a custom. If you are tracking sodium this is a must. - Even without added salt, Fitday sodium values tend to be much higher than normal items. - The custom database is not accessible by anyone else in the house, on the same computer. That means you have to enter every custom food on each family member's account. Considering most things we eat are custom items, this is a good chunk of needless work. - The program now costs $10 more than I paid for it a couple years ago, yet the current version is 1.0. There have been no updates in over two years, and I understand its about 3 years on the first version now. Greedy? - The reports are great, yet there is no way to export the data, or even print it, to take to a doctor or nutritionist. - There is no entry for trans fats. - There are few brand name items, and because there are no updates most of the branded entries are obsolete. - The search function seems to be based on the last word entered, only. - The listing of search items is weird. For example, search on Chicken, and the first item listed is chicken feet (then Chicken Kiev, then skin). Chicken breast is 14th on the list. There are plenty of other minor things to squawk about, but the bottom line is that the program works really well if you stick to it, and add custom entries weekly. I'd recommend using the free on-line version for a while first to make sure you can stick with it. The on-line version also has the advantage that you can access it from any computer.
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to use and very thorough,
By Photography and Travel Buff (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: FitDay PC Diet and Nutrition Software (CD-ROM)
I have had this software for about a month and I'm very happy with it. It's pretty easy to use and has lots of easy to understand charts and graphs. Apparently most people buy this software to help them lose weight and it will work for that purpose. However, I use it simply to keep track of what I eat and it tells me on a daily and weekly basis what nutrients I'm not getting enough of, and what harmful things (such as sugar, salt, fats and cholesterol) I'm getting too much of.
I did some reaearch before I bought it, and the only nutrition software programs that are better than this one cost several times more.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|