Diet Software

[Foursixty]

I was curious if there is any discussions on adding diet software to this site?

[Team FitSync]

Greetings Foursixty, hope you had a great Thanksgiving.  Many apologies for the lateness in responding to your posting.  You caught all of us goofing off a bit during the holiday.

Short answer is yes, we've been working on a FitSync diet component BUT you can track your food with the current system but let me first address the new FitSync nutrition management system that is under development. 

The objective for our diet system will be similar to the current structure for exercises and workouts; it will be content independent so that users can create their own diets (personally I'm on the beer and pizza diet unless my wife cooks up some fish and veggies) or users can choose from a variety of other diet and nutrition programs. Unlike other sites that are pushing a particular workout or diet, we want to remain content neutral so users can try different things and see what works best.  We don't have a target launch date yet as other projects and client implementations (lots of new clubs and studios going up now) have taken priority but we will keep everyone posted as we get closer to launch.

However, although we don't have a formal diet component with a food database up yet you can still manage your nutrition in FitSync right now.  Here's what I do (I don't really eat only pizza and drink beer - just seems that way to my wife): 

Think of workouts like your daily meal plan and exercises like your meals.  For example, I have a workout called "Meals-Cycling" which I will pair up with my hard cycling workouts that I do three times a week (I ride about 35-40 miles with a combination of flats and hills) around lunchtime.  My first exercise is called "Breakfast-Cycling" and in the exercise notes section I have my breakfast menu which is oatmeal with some honey, a banana, some whole wheat toast and a huge glass each of water and OJ.   Next is "Pre-Workout-Cycling" which is lots of water, two bananas, and a Powerbar that I eat about 30 minutes before I head out.  Next is  "Post-Workout-Cycling" which is a lot of water and a MetRx protein shake followed by lunch within a half hour or so.  I won't bore you with the rest but you get the idea. 

Another thing some folks do is add their meals into their workouts so "Total Body Workout" might have it's first three exercises as  breakfast, lunch, and pre-workout snack and then the regular workout exercises followed by dinner and evening snack.  If yoiu count calories yoiu could track in the "calories" field in a cardio exercise.

Hope this helps.  Please share any suggestions as to what you'd like to see in our nutritional system; do yoiu want to track calories, water, carbs?  etc.  We rely heavily on feedback from our users so tell us what you guys want to see.

Yours in Health,

John Morgan
Director, FitSync Enterprise Support 

[Foursixty]

Well I just got a palm pda and noticed the diet and exercise assistant that Palm offers.  Here is the link to see your possible competion.

http://software.palm.com/us/html/display_palm_product.jsp?navCategoryId=cat90018&id=prod70667

I specifically like what's listed below:

Large Food Database - Use the large food database of almost 10,000 food items containing all the nutrient information to track your diet easily. The food database is configurable and you can add, delete, edit any group, category or food item. The nutritional information label on the back of most products contains all of the information you need to add a food item to the food database.

Popular Restaurants - The food database has food listings for hundreds of popular restaurants and fast food chains.

Food Logbook - Use the Food Logbook to input everything you consume each day. To speed up daily food logging you can create Recipes from a list of food items. Use the new Favorites folder at the top of the food database for all of your common food items. Find food items easily with the new search features. The food database is structured for maximum look-up performance and ease-of-use.

What's keeping me here is the awesome exersice software.  Sooooo user friendly.

Thanks

[Steele]

heya foursixty
Which model Palm did you get?  When I started using FitSYnc i got myself a Palm too.  When that died, I got another one but when that died again, I decided to try out a PocketPC.  NOw I'm a Windoes fan.  With my ole Palm, I got a free diet software from the government, yeah, your tax dollars at work so you might as well use it.  TUrns out all these food databases come from the USDA anyways.  But when my Palm died, all my stuff got lost, yup data and all.  Luckily, all my workout data was safe, saved in my FitSync account <phew>.

[Team FitSync]

Hey Foursixty, thanks for the kind words about our user interface, glad you like it.  We try our best to keep it simple and effective.  Lots of input from trainers, coaches, and pro and college athletes made it what it is so credit to our test groups is due.

There are so many diet applications out there we can't begin to count them but synchronizing the handheld with the Web is a different game.  Hopefully we'll be as successful with our diet interface as we are with the exercise piece but the real key is what you do with the data.  The reporting piece is the real key so that's what we're spending most of our time twisting our brains around. 

Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions.

John

[Ted Tilton]

Here is my opinion.
I
 have used many products on the market and there are seriously only a few that are really good, and even they have issues.
I think that keeping the system open is a great idea for a programming language not a 4GL or a 5GL  tool.

It is my personal opinion only that the best software out there, does things for you instead of you having to do it yourself.

So what is my point? you might ask.

I think that if a diet solution or Diet sync so to speak is being researched and looked at. It should have the ability to do shopping list, perscribe diets by calorie or by macro nutrient specifics that the trainer determines and have a review feature so trainer can agree or disagree and change if they like. 

I think that there can be a way to do this, let's say I want to create a plan with 6 meals a day for a weight loss client who needs 3000 cals per day. I should be able to fill out a form and hit calculate and then it just happens.

I also think that the user/client should have the ability to select foods from a list of what they actually ate with all nutrition info available to them to help make the proper choices if they did not follow your plan.

If you really want to see a software that really does this well, check out www.welnia.com
They are awesome. I have used the product for 2 years now and It my only hope that fitsync can try to compete against them from a nutrition perspective without having to have multiple peices of equipment.

I love the idea of having fitsync also have a diet solution as well, keep up the good work and I hope to demo the beta soon!
I'm sure you will create the best tool the industry has to offer.

PS. Another thing you might look to do and that is to can a few diets by famous nutritionist etc... almost like podFitness.
This could put you on the map!
OK gotta go train,
Love the product, talk soon
Ted