Some very confident dieters know that controlling their diet and the foods they consume constitutes the key to their successful weight-loss. "Maintaining a food diary increases your awareness of what kind of foods you eat," explains Cindy Moore, M.S., R.D, a spokesman of Cleveland-based American Dietetic Association. However nowadays, not many people still use spiral-bound notebooks.
Currently, a slew of high-tech handheld gadget make use of bytes to help you track your bites. In my effort to lose several pounds more, improve my diet’s nutrition and curb my junk-food addictions, I road-tested three various programs on three separate appliances, for two weeks each: a mobile phone in order to make a video clip of my meals, that I sent later to my nutritionist; a Palm Pilot to help me in following Weight Watchers’ Points system; and a BlackBerry – the device that calculated my daily lories intake, necessary for weight loss.
These devices obviously work - I got rid of an average of a pound each week by means of using each one and I had the possibility to retool my diet in order to include more whole grains, fruits and vegetables and less processed foods and sweets. If you want to find out how I achieved it and check if taking your diet high-tech is proper for you, read the text below.
MyFoodPhone
How does it work before your meals? At first, take your cell phone and snap a brief video clip or picture of the food you are just about to eat, then press "send" to send it to a registered nutritionist assigned precisely to you by MyFoodPhone. No less than once a week, you log on to myfoodphone.com to get video feedback from your R.D. and observe your progress.
However, in reality there’s no protection to unhealthy eating like having no choice but to demonstrate a weight-loss specialist everything you eat each day. Tempe, Ariz.-based nutritionist Amanda Carlson, M.S., R.D., has noticed my typical habits for several days.
During the weekdays, I normally eat oatmeal and coffee loaded with cream and sugar for breakfast, a sandwich or salad with soda for lunch, in the afternoon chocolate fix of a cookie or a few Hershey’s Kisses, and next some pasta or poultry and vegetables for dinner, with an ice-cream bar for dessert. During the weekend, I’m even worse: Happy hours and dinners out with friends or my boyfriend. These mean wine and high-fat, high-calorie fare. Carlson’s daily dietary Rx: Get in five or six little meals (300 calories each) to maintain my energy up and stop afternoon snack attacks, eat three servings of dairy products or take calcium supplements (1,000 milligrams) to avoid osteoporosis, drink approximately eight glasses of water and include fruits and vegetables with each meal.
At the outset, I was scared by list of duties made by my nutritionist, however it was astonishingly easy to follow. I stuck to oatmeal for breakfast but packed healthy snacks to eat in the course of the day - apples with peanut butter, cottage cheese, carrot sticks, turkey sandwiches and string cheese.
Even though snapping my food at restaurants was awkward, it was effective! During happy hour, my workmate offered me greasy chicken strips. Although I was tempted, I was unwilling to take a photo of it, therefore I ordered a plain baked potato and salad instead.
Weight Watchers On-the-Go
How does it really work? This sidekick to Weight Watchers Online makes it possible for you to follow the Flex Plan (you track foods’ "Points") or the no-counting Core Plan (you consume only foods from the approved list) without taking part even in one meeting. You have to download the Weight Watchers On-the-Go application from weightwatchers.com (with the use of a PC with Windows 98 or newer) to a handheld application via the USB Hot-Sync cable that comes with your handheld. Your PDA needs to run the Palm operating system version 3.5 or higher (which includes Palm, Handspring, Sony and Dell models, however not the popular BlackBerry).
Later, scroll through a database of 27,000-plus foods and check how many points you have eaten or pick the foods you have consumed from a Core-friendly list. Synchronizing the data between your PDA and your account on weightwatchers.com is very simple - you just have to make sure the HotSync cable is linked to your handheld and your computer and push the "HotSync" button on your PDA.
In reality I selected the Flex Plan. On the basis if my height and weight, Weight Watchers allowed me 20 daily points (together with a 35-point grant to spread out in the course of the week). I quickly learned that 20 points do not go very far.
One instant-oatmeal packet for breakfast and poof! Three points were lost. A cup of fat-free cottage cheese and a banana for lunch cost me five, and a Weight Watchers frozen dinner and a salad with ranch dressing took back the following eight points.
The four points that were remaining, left little room for lattes, treats or even healthy snacks such as apples.
Logging my points on the Palm seemed not to be as embarrassing, however it was more difficult to remain on track without a nutritionist controlling me. However, that’s not to say I was on my own. Weightwatchers.com provides motivation and also inspiration: ideas of meals, thirty eight message boards and a database of one thousand recipes.
Additional advantage of Weight Watchers On-the-Go: My workout motivation increased rapidly. As I discovered that I could earn Activity Points for my workouts and swap them for Food Points, I would find myself on the treadmill thinking, "Just run for five more minutes! Forty-five minutes is equal to five points, which is equal to one Starbucks Grande non-fat Caffe Mocha!"
How does it work? Register your Java-enabled mobile phone (the vast majority of new phones support Java applications) for a Calorie Counter account at unc.2thumbz.com, and wait for the order to download the application to your mobile phone. Later, enter your height and weight, and it will conclude how many calories you require per day in order to meet a weight-loss objective by selected deadline. Track your food consumption by choosing foods and beverages from a 500-item database; next, upload your data from your cell phone to the website with the use of the Calorie Counter software (no cables or unusual accessories needed, and your computer can be a Mac or a PC - it just has to have a web browser). On the webpage, check how your diet stacks up to the United States.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) Dietary Guidelines.
In reality, the need to lose twenty pounds by Thanksgiving? This tool is precisely for you! When I set an objective of two pounds in two weeks, the Calorie Counter informed me that, with reasonable amount of exercise three to five days per week, I required to eat no more than 1,718 calories each day. Due to the fact that I was already used to consuming smaller portions from my experience with MyFoodPhone and Weight Watchers, this was no problem.
I ran the Calorie Counter on a BlackBerry, but you do not require a PDA; it will run on any handheld appliance supporting Java text. It was very easy to enter the foods and observe my calories. This program put me in control; with no nutritionist controlling me, and no message boards providing motivation, I needed to make sure I kept myself on track.
When I logged on to the webpage on day three, my calorie charts were almost ideal: between 1,700 and 1,750 calories per day. However, my daily nutrient consumption was a far cry from the USDA Dietary Guidelines: There were only 10 grams of fiber in my diet (the advised is 25), and my sodium was through the roof at 3,500 milligrams (the advised is 2,300). Hence, I included berries into my oatmeal, packed whole-grain sandwiches for lunch, consumed low-sodium legumes with dinner and reduced all processed foods. When I looked at the website on the following week, my diet was back on track.
