 PRODUCTS
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You've seen claims like this before. In Diet Power's case, however, the claim is quite true -- not because of any magical ingredient, but because Diet Power software understands math and physics. Most weight-control programs assume you have an average metabolic rate (calories required to maintain your weight) -- typically 2000 calories per day. Your rate may differ, however. It may also fluctuate over days or weeks. Even if it's only 10 percent off, a "maintenance" diet designed by one of those programs will lead you to gain or lose more than 20 pounds a year. To get around this problem, Diet Power monitors your true metabolic rate by comparing your weight changes with the foods you've eaten and the exercise you've logged. If the rate goes up or down, the program adjusts your calorie budget by just enough to cancel the difference.* It does so daily. This self-correcting system guarantees that if you consistently record your meals and exercise and stick to your budget, you will reach your goal on schedule. You have to supply the perseverance, of course. But most people who use Diet Power say it's surprising how seldom they feel hungry. That's because they can see which foods are healthful, yet filling. The program teaches good nutrition effortlessly. * You can also choose a constant calorie budget, if you prefer. Makes Any Diet (or Diet Drug) More Powerful Although it's supremely effective by itself, Diet Power can be used with other weight-loss regimens, diet drugs, herbs, or supplements, either to increase their power or to find out quickly whether you need to switch. What All Diets Have in Common The human body, for all its wonderful complexity, acts much like a machine. It burns fuel (food and drink) to do work (moving and thinking). The fuel must be correctly formulated (nutritionally balanced), or the machine will run poorly. The mileage (metabolic rate) depends on the year, make, and model (age, sex, and individual). Unlike ordinary machines, however, your body can accept a huge surplus of fuel by converting it into an onboard energy reserve known as fat. All weight-loss diets work by making your body burn off this reserve instead of adding to it. To lose weight, you need to expend more calories (the basic unit of energy) than you eat. There can be no exception to this rule: it's an immutable law of physics. Diets differ only in how they tune the engine. Low-fat diets, for example, substitute a leaner fuel -- mostly vegetables, fruits, and grains, which contain only half as many calories as fatty foods do. The Zone Diet uses a different scheme: keeping blood-sugar at a level that makes the engine burn "hotter." (Exercise does the same thing by putting a heavier load on the engine.) A few diets (and most diet drugs) short-circuit the microchips that tell the engine when to demand more fuel -- the equivalent of driving with the CHECK ENGINE light on. These all sound very clever. Yet most people who lose weight fail to keep it off permanently. Why? Meet the Governor No diet can succeed if you shed the pounds too fast. (Most experts recommend losing no more than two pounds a week). When you starve the engine of fuel, it responds by giving itself a tuneup that increases fuel efficiency. (Don't you wish your car would do that?) Suddenly, even the skimpiest meals begin feeding your fat reserves. If you respond by cutting back further, you may lose the weight again -- but then your body gives itself a better tuneup that only makes matters worse. And so you become a "yo-yo dieter." What you need is a "governor" that enables you to keep the engine running at a perfectly even efficiency. That's what Diet Power is. It shows you exactly how fast your body is using fuel, so that you can put in the right amount at the right time to keep the fat reserve shrinking at a constant rate. By canceling out the fluctuations, it keeps you precisely on target. In short, Diet Power succeeds by mastering a truth that other programs overlook. Where they assume everyone is the same, Diet Power treats you as the individual you really are. The Right Octane Your metabolic rate isn't the only thing Diet Power monitors. It also watches your fuel mixture. By clicking the program's Nutrient History button (shown at right), you can check your consumption of calories and 32 other nutrients for the past week, month, quarter, or year. You can also see how your nutrient balance will be affected by any food choice. You can even make sure you're drinking enough water. Here are the nutrients that Diet Power monitors:Calories Susan keeps her eye on the Nutrient History when planning meals. Because she has high blood pressure, her doctor wants her to cut down on salt and increase her intake of potassium. She usually decides on dinner just before she leaves work, using the copy of Diet Power on her office computer. (She carries her records back home on a "travel disk" or by emailing them to herself.) Looking at her Nutrient History one afternoon, Susan discovers that the chicken bouillon she had with lunch has already blown her sodium limit for the day. Meanwhile, she's still behind in her potassium intake -- it's been low for a week. She decides to do something about this. Using a lightning-fast search of Diet Power's 11,000-food dictionary, Susan pulls up a list of items that are both low in sodium and high in potassium. Voilà! The best choice for dinner tonight is grilled salmon with a baked potato -- and for dessert, fresh cantaloupe. This nutrient-tracking feature comes in handy in myriad ways:
Most of the nutrition secrets described above are covered in Diet Power's 100,000-word Help system, which you can open by clicking the button shown at right. Diet Power's help is among the world's clearest and easiest to read. ("Finally -- instructions the average person can understand," said one reviewer.) Written by a top editor of Reader's Digest, the system offers advice on what you're doing right now, instead of forcing you to search. It also offers animated tutorials. The Help system can also make you an expert on everything from Alcohol to Zinc. Here's a taste of what you can learn from it:
...Diet Power can instantly reveal the nutrients in any of its 11,000 foods --or in any recipe you create from them. You can find any food or recipe in seconds, simply by typing a few letters of its name. (If it has two names, you'll find it under both -- even if you misspell it.) You can view its nutrient profile in either pie- or bar-chart form. Creating recipes is a snap. Just drag and drop the ingredients into the Recipe Box, type in the directions, and give your concoction a name. Your recipes are listed right along with the other foods, ready for you to check their nutrients or make printouts for friends. (You can e-mail recipes, too.) If you happen across a food that's not in Diet Power's dictionary, you can add the food to the dictionary by entering nutrition facts from the label. You won't have to do this often, however. The dictionary already contains 8500 generic foods -- everything from Abalone to Zabaglione -- and 2500 items from fast-food and restaurant chains. You can even find wild game and other exotica, complete with nutritional data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For the Fitness-Minded......Diet Power awards extra calories for exercise, which you record by clicking the Exercise Log button shown at right. The program knows the "burn rates" of 1000+ activities, from conventional aerobics (walking, running, bicycling, swimming) to competitive sports (tennis, basketball, golf), to martial arts (boxing, fencing, karate), to exercise machines (stair climbers, exercycles), to occupations (bricklaying, carpentry), to house- and yardwork (mowing, wood chopping, laundry), to leisure pursuits such as skiing, dancing, mountain climbing, scuba diving -- and more. Every burn rate is automatically adjusted to your current body weight. A 150-pound runner, for example, won't burn as many calories as a 185-pound runner. If exercise raises your metabolic rate, Diet Power will notice this and increase your calorie budget accordingly. Similarly, if your workouts slow your weight loss by increasing your muscle mass, the program will decrease your budget to keep your weight on track. (You may want to adjust your goal weight in that case, however. A lean and fit 170-pounder will look better, feel better, and be healthier than an out-of-shape 160-pounder of the same height.) Other FeaturesHere are just a few additional things you can do with Diet Power:
Anyone at least 14 years old, between four feet and seven feet tall, and weighing at least 75 but no more than 499 pounds. (People outside those ranges often have nutritional needs that the program doesn't cover.) Up to nine different people on the same copy -- provided all live in the same household. (Larger groups can buy or license special editions. See "Prices," below.) System RequirementsDiet Power works on any computer running Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, or XP. The program performs best, however, on machines of the Pentium class or higher with at least 8 megabytes of RAM. You will also need at least 20 megabytes of disk space to install Diet Power on your hard drive. (If you download the program instead of getting it on a CD-ROM, you'll need 40 megabytes -- but this will shrink to 30 megabytes after installation and 20 megabytes if you then erase the file you downloaded.)
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