Health and fitness software, what should be in it? Part 1
Let's keep the answer simple; everything that is related to your health.
The most important indicators for your state of health can be measured though your vital signs, like blood pressure, cholesterol level, heart beat, body mass index etcetera. The major input that influence these health indicators are what and how much you eat and drink, smoke, medication use, life style, daily activity and air quality.
Beside our genetic disposition, we are what we eat, drink and breathe.
A good health and fitness software program should be able to capture the above mentioned input and correlate the results with the output, or health indicators. This way you create a cause and effect system that the user can analyze and consequently take corrective measures and improve his or her overall health.
The bigger picture teaches us that an effective health and fitness software program contains modules that can monitor our food intake, record our body measurements and vital signs.
Furthermore it should track our daily activities and convert them into calories burned. Also it should keep track of our medicine and supplement intake and monitor our overall health level. For the sport and bodybuilders we need additional modules that can keep track of our workout activities, sport results and fitness tests
Let's start with food intake.
Most of the time we eat together with our family therefore a health and fitness software program should never be restricted to one user.
People tend to repeat the recipes they cook and meals they prepare on a regular interval. For most people this interval is between 20 and 30 days.
Furthermore people tend to buy more or less the same ingredients for their meals. For this reason a fitness or diet program boosting databases with thousands of food items will be more of a hindrance than a benefit. The reason that I say this is because it will be very time consuming to pick an ingredient for a recipe or meal plan from a list of thousands of ingredients.
Look for a program that has the basic ingredients to build your recipes and allows you to add food items that are specific to your taste.
A food's nutrition facts change depending on how it is conserved, processed or cooked. For example a cup of canned spinach that is cooked will have totally different nutrition facts than a cup of fresh spinach.
Look for a program that can make a distinction between these food properties.
The cost of buying special diet foods can be a lot more (up to 2.5 times) than what the average American spends on food. It is a plus if a health and fitness software program can keep track of the food cost by recipe, meal and day. It is really a bonus if the program can compare grocery prices between shops and help you budget.
A recipe module is imperative to a good health and fitness system.
This is the place where you can experiment and adjust your recipes to your diet's nutritional fact limits. The recipe should calculate its nutritional facts per portion depending on the weight ratio of each ingredient that has been added to the recipe. Naturally you should be able to print the recipe and see the total recipe cost and the cost per portion. Having the ability of adding recipe pictures is a plus.
You should also have the ability to create multiple meal plans in the system. Maybe you would like a separate plan for the kids or baby.
Or for a partner that has a cholesterol problem, high blood pressure or diabetes. Or you simply want to change diets. These meal plans should repeat over a certain amount of days. The timing of the meals should be more then just breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many diets ask for many small recipe portions during the day.
The food items that you select on the meal plan should come from the ingredients as well as from the recipes. For instance you can add a raw apple to your meal plan, which is an ingredient to make an apple sauce recipe. The apple sauce recipe or the raw apple can each be added to the meal plan
As you would expect, the software program should be able to calculate the meal plan cost and nutrition facts by day and for the whole meal plan.
How are you going to keep track of what you actually ate on a particular day and how do you know how to stick exactly to your plan? You do this by printing a meal plan worksheet for a particular day and you note the actual differences from the plan.
We don't have much time in today's busy society; therefore you should be able to register the actual daily food consumption in less then 30 seconds. A system that forces you every day for every meal to select your food items from a list of thousands records is not going to make it in 30 seconds.
Only select a system that automatically populates your meal plan for that day and you only update the actual differences from the plan.
Just adding your daily food intake to a database is not going to benefit you. It will create a "data cemetery", data that is never examined. The food data needs to be analyzed and correlated to other types of data like your body measurements or calories burned. Click on the calorie analysis hyperlink to view an example. The chart makes it very quickly clear that the calorie intake line is under the calories spent line and consequently you will lose weight.
Next article I will talk about activity calorie counting and the factors involved?
.
Meet your weight loss goals with My Pyramid Tracker
Copyright 2006 Adam Waxler
As anyone involved with weight loss will tell you, there are countless weight loss plans and weight loss methods and new weight loss diets coming out all the time.
In fact, just last year, even the USDA released an all new nutrition and diet plan for healthy Americans. On April 19, 2005, the United States Department of Agriculture unveiled its new My Pyramid nutrition pyramid. However, the USDA's new guidelines for a healthy diet plan are not so much NEW as they are more in depth, detailed and helpful in getting people to meet their weight loss goals.
First of all, My Pyramid can be personalized. On the main page of their web site (www.mypyramid.gov), you have the option of entering your age, gender and activity level.
Simply submit your information and instead of getting those vague, wide-ranging recommendations, you'll get a recommendation suited specifically for you.
While this is a tremendous improvement...
Diets > Meet your weight loss goals with My Pyramid Tracker
Moderate weight loss can earn good health benefits
Moderate weight loss can earn good health benefits It is not compulsory to shed enormous weight for a good health gain. Moderate weight loss brings healthy news to your body. Even before you achieve the set goal, you begin to reap the benefits. If you are obese, try to lose the first 10 kg and see how it positively affects your body and mind. Mortality?20% fall in total mortality?30%fall in diabetes related deaths?40% fall in obesity related cancer deathsBlood Pressure?Fall of 10mm Hg systolic B.P.?Fall of 20mm Hg diastolic B.P.Diabetes Mellitus?Fall of 50% in tasting glucoseLipids?Fall of 10% in total cholesterol?Fall of 15% in low density lipoproteins cholesterol?Increase in 8% of high density dipoproteins cholesterolTips to lose the 10kg ?Regular exercise?Say no to junk food?Change your life style?Eat moderately?More salads and carbohydrates in food?Take weight loss diet pillsOnce you begin to feel good about your weight loss and health, you will...
Moderate weight loss can earn good health benefits
Diets > Moderate weight loss can earn good health benefits
Professional Weight Loss Coach Provides Solutions Beyond Dieting
Folsom, CA (ContentDesk) June 18, 2006 -- Losing weight isnt just a matter of dieting. Weight loss coach Brooke Castillo supplies the facts and gives readers the tools to be a weight loss winner in If I Am So Smart, Why Cant I Lose Weight? Tools To Get It Done. Many people are frustrated by diets that dont seem to work. Thats because most diets are formulated for groups of people rather than for a unique individual. For any person to achieve the desired results from a diet, they need motivation and encouragement.
In If I Am So Smart, Why Cant I Lose Weight? Tools To Get It Done, professional weight loss coach Brooke Castillo empowers readers, teaching the psychological skills needed to get a toned, slimmed body, while giving readers the emotional tools for continuing on their own.Certified North Star Coach, trained by Harvards Dr. Martha Beck, Brooke Castillo has not only lost over 70 pounds herself on this method, but shes helped countless people overcome their lifelong...
Professional Weight Loss Coach Provides Solutions Beyond Dieting
Diets > Professional Weight Loss Coach Provides Solutions Beyond Dieting
Eating Chocolate Ice Cream Every Full Moon Promotes Weight Loss
Copyright 2006 Adam Kessler
Are these the kinds of stories that we as health professionals are trying to write to enlighten the public or gain fame and notoriety?
I read this story several days ago about some doctor who claims if you limit your flavors and pick a flavor of the day you will lose weight and has the case studies to prove it.
C'mon!!
First we have the Atkins diet, then the cabbage diet, and now this.
I mean if you really want to prey on the many people who are so desperate to lose weight then do a case study on the above title.
I'm sure you will sell some copies for that book as well.
Now, if someone didn't read the story very carefully they're going to say, "Hmmm, I'll start with a bowl of cherries, that's healthy.
Then move on to cherry ice cream, then some cherry pie, and let's wash it down with some cherry coke."
Laugh, but trust me those people are out there.
They are the...
Eating Chocolate Ice Cream Every Full Moon Promotes Weight Loss
Diets > Eating Chocolate Ice Cream Every Full Moon Promotes Weight Loss
Chinese Gooseberries and Oprah?
Oprah and Harpo Productions, consistently reap awe-inspiring progress and record-breaking profits even after 25 years. While Oprah consistently soars with stellar growth, the rest of the industry seems to stumble, tumble or even disappear. So, just what is it about Oprah that has her consistently reaping hilacious growth for more than two decades and still remain fresh and vivacious as ever? Oprah Winfrey has reinvented herself so smoothly, so successfully and with such precision, very few have...
Chinese Gooseberries and Oprah? Health and fitness software, what should be in it? Part 1 fruit baskets
Diets > Chinese Gooseberries and Oprah?
Health and fitness software, what should be in it? Part 1 fruit baskets
Employment Background Screening
An employee background check can include a number of verifications such as the applicant's educational background, previous employment, social security number, credit history, criminal history, drug history, and medical history.
All these checks are to ensure the employer or the company that the candidate is indeed trustworthy and would not create any problems with the other employees or company records or in general with the company in the future.
An employee background...
Diets > Employment Background Screening