DailyBurn.com

July 28, 2009 by Colby · Comments
Filed under: Fitness 2.0, Nutrition 2.0 

DailyBurn is another social health tracking website that has an easy to use interface.  It allows tracking of body weight, nutrition, and workouts.  You can set challenges, connect with others for motivation, and socialize in the forums.  The unique aspects about this website is that it allows contributions of custom recipes and workouts, and lets everyone use them.  So you can select a workout that others have created and see feedback about it.  Or, customize your own.  There are workouts created by licensed trainers, but you have to upgrade to a PRO account to see them.  With a PRO account, you can track fiber, sodium, cholesterol, and potassium along with total calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein that come with a free account.  Though limiting in both cases, most won’t regard detailed micronutrient data as important anyway.  Unfortunately it does not split macronutrients into the various types (e.g. MUFA, PUFA, etc).

One thing I don’t approve of are their “facts” advertising their PRO accounts, such as:

PRO Fact: PRO users lose 20% more weight than free users.
PRO Fact: PRO users burn 3x more Cals than free users.
PRO Fact: PRO users lift over 2x more weight than free users.
Obviously a causal relationship can’t be drawn between those, but perhaps a PRO account would increase your motivation to make the most of your money.  It isn’t a bad price compared to similar websites at $15 for 3 months and $45 per year and comes with some unique features like a grocery list based on meal planning that other websites don’t offer.
I also disapprove of their support of the 8 glasses of water per day recommendation.
In sum, though, it is one of the best I have encountered for health journaling.

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WolframAlpha for Nutrition Professionals

July 11, 2009 by Colby · Comments
Filed under: Fitness 2.0, Nutrition 2.0, Search Engine 

WolframAlpha, a powerful search engine that was just launched in May this year, has a few useful tricks that deal with nutrition data.

For example, you can type in any food, and the amount, and WA will give you the nutrition data in a label form along with more information than you’ll probably ever need.  It also will recognize brands, so for example, entering “2 mcdonalds double cheeseburgers” yields the calculated information: http://www07.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+mcdonalds+double+cheeseburger

WA can also add the data from multiple food items, so if you have an interesting meal of corn flakes, orange juice, a peach, and a beer, the resulting nutrition facts are like so: http://www07.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=calories+in+1+bowl+of+corn+flakes+%2B+a+glass+of+OJ+%2B+1+peach+%2B+1+beer

You can see that WA gives options to choose from specific brands (or alternate sizes) if they are not specified, and you can also separate the facts of each item.

Specific nutrients can be easily calculated, for example if I wanted to know the vitamin C content of 5 oranges, I enter “vitamin C in 5 oranges” and it gives the answer: http://www07.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=vitamin+C+in+5+oranges

Other specific examples are listed here: http://www07.wolframalpha.com/examples/FoodAndNutrition.html

Other relevant data examples for body composition, exercise, and more (lots of relevant possibilities for MNT) can be found here: http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/HealthAndMedicine.html

Please comment if you find other uses.

Sources of the data are listed at the bottom.

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Traineo | Fitness & Weight Loss Community

July 5, 2009 by Colby · Comments
Filed under: Fitness 2.0, Nutrition 2.0 

Traineo.com is  a weight loss oriented community with a pretty slick and easy to use interface.

Some of the important features include:

  • setting goals
  • easy to find motivators for encouragement
  • group discussions
  • progress photos
  • log weight changes via web interface or from twitter
  • tweet your activities from the web interface
  • input activities during day
  • input total calories (detailed nutrition logging not available)
  • input diet quality (subjective)
  • personal page to share publicly (yourmoniker.traineo.com)
  • option to pay for professional services

For accountability and group progress it seems like a good community.

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FitOrbit – Fitness 2.0

June 27, 2009 by Colby · Comments
Filed under: Fitness 2.0 

Last week, FitOrbit.com launched, offering online (customized) personal training.

Being involved with various message boards, personal training typically occurs through email or phone exchanges, so this may offer a better organzational alternative.

Though, one of the main advantages of having a personal trainer is that the client receives demonstration or technique correction on their activity, and motivation of someone pushing them.  This site may be better suited for non beginners looking for professional advice.

Here is a good article on it: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/22/fitorbit-launches-with-heavy-backers-connects-you-to-real-personal-fitness-trainers-online/

It can get quite expensive: from $9.99/week for 6 months to $29.99/week for 1 week.  It is assuring that trainers sign contracts and list credentials.

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