Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 1130

We have received many requests to create diet software with the same user interface and nutrition capabilities as Living Cookbook. Interest in this product was so overwhelming that we have decided to make it our next product. Most of the framework for the software has already been finished, but we would really like to learn more about what users would like to see this application do (or not do).

This software will not favor a particular type of diet. It will be an information management tool for dieters. It will help users track nutrition, recipes, meal planning, exercise and weight. In other words it will be just as easy for a low-carb dieter to track carbohydrates as it will be for a low-fat dieter to track the various types of fat.

The tentative features are:

- Create multiple personal profiles (e.g. one for you, one for your spouse, etc.) each with its own meal planning calendar, weight target, progress reports, nutrition reports, etc.

- Flexible and customizable reporting engine that will let you create summary reports, graphs, and bar charts to help you visualize your progress. You will be able to choose from a variety of built-in reports or create your own.

- Create, edit, import, export, organize and print recipes, menus and meal plans.

- Perform nutrition analysis for any meal, day, week, month (or other time period), recipe or menu.

- Calculate (or estimate) the number of calories burned by performing various physical activities.

- Enter weight goals, enter (and chart) daily weights, and calculate estimated weight loss over time (using nutrition and calorie expenditure data from recent days).

- Ingredient database. Over 6000 common ingredients with complete nutrition data.

- Cookbooks with low fat, low carb, and other diet recipes.

This application does not have a name yet. It's tentative release date is first quarter 2024.

We welcome your feedback.

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Registered: Nov 2024
Location: Florida
Posts: 4

In the ingredients section a place for adding sugar alcohols, even though sugar alcohols are added in the ingredients the carbs should be able to be subtracted out since the body does not absorb them. The ability for the software to subtract fiber from the carbohydrate count in order to get and amount of carb that really counts. These two functions would be most helpful in calculating lowcarb diet information.
Thanks,
Cherry

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Registered: Oct 2024
Location: Lincoln AR
Posts: 69

Lee,

I would name it The Living Diet Software The reason I would name it that is to create a LIVING software package. The LIVING means to me is that it's always changing, growing getting better.

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Jim Sposato

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Registered: Dec 2024
Location:
Posts: 16

Just a suggestion, but one that may help your user to "design your own" effective weight loss program.

I am sure you have probably already thought of this.

An interesting feature you might consider adding to this software is the ability to display a chart of perodic (daily, weekly, etc) weight gain or loss superimposed upon a chart of caloric intake for the same period.

This would assist serious dieters in determining their maintainence caloric requirements and the optimum caloric intake or dieting method.

For example - it is said that too low a caloric intake causes slowing of metabolism and may, in fact, be counterproductive.

Also, some suggest that frequent small meals are most effective, others feel that fasting one day and eating "normally" the next is better.

It would allow the user to develop an effective weight loss program based upon his body's response.

Perhaps you might allow the user to customize a comparison chart in some way, such as comparing weight loss to carbohydrate intake, or carbohydrate intake to caloric intake etc.etc. Or allow more than two comparisons, such as fat intake, caloric intake and weight loss.

You may also be able to incorporate the method in some way, such as frequent small meals, Weight Watchers Program, Grapefruit Diet, or whatever the user is trying. perhaps by allowing the user to enter a caption or designate a color for the line or chart background that corresponds to a color he chooses to represent that particular method.

Another possibility is a "health chart". This would allow the person to document, for example, fat intake and reference it with changes in serum cholesterol (or LDL and HDL) levels. Or caloric intake or carbohydrate intake referenced to blood sugar.

Ruth

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Ruth Burkhardt

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Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 1130

Ruth,

Fantastic. We are definitely on the same page. Our design exactly matches what you described. You will be able to "design your own" weight loss program just as you described. You will also be able to create (and customize) time-series charts showing nutritional data, weight, resting heart rate, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure over time.

We are planning to build templates for most of the popular diets. These templates would include charts customized for the particular diet. For example, the Atkins diet would show carbohydrate consumption and ketone levels over time (in addition to the usual weight tracking, etc.).

Thanks for the feedback.

Lee

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Registered: Jan 2024
Location:
Posts: 3

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lee Grainger
We have received many requests to create diet software with the same user interface and nutrition capabilities as Living Cookbook. Interest in this product was so overwhelming that we have decided to make it our next product. Most of the framework for the software has already been finished, but we would really like to learn more about what users would like to see this application do (or not do).

This software will not favor a particular type of diet. It will be an information management tool for dieters. It will help users track nutrition, recipes, meal planning, exercise and weight. In other words it will be just as easy for a low-carb dieter to track carbohydrates as it will be for a low-fat dieter to track the various types of fat.

The tentative features are:

- Create multiple personal profiles (e.g. one for you, one for your spouse, etc.) each with its own meal planning calendar, weight target, progress reports, nutrition reports, etc.

- Flexible and customizable reporting engine that will let you create summary reports, graphs, and bar charts to help you visualize your progress. You will be able to choose from a variety of built-in reports or create your own.

- Create, edit, import, export, organize and print recipes, menus and meal plans.

- Perform nutrition analysis for any meal, day, week, month (or other time period), recipe or menu.

- Calculate (or estimate) the number of calories burned by performing various physical activities.

- Enter weight goals, enter (and chart) daily weights, and calculate estimated weight loss over time (using nutrition and calorie expenditure data from recent days).

- Ingredient database. Over 6000 common ingredients with complete nutrition data.

- Cookbooks with low fat, low carb, and other diet recipes.

This application does not have a name yet. It's tentative release date is first quarter 2024.

We welcome your feedback.

---

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Dawn

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Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 1130

Good idea. The diet software will be compatible with a range of Plam products (as well as Living Cookbook).

Thanks for the feedback.

Lee

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Registered: Jan 2024
Location: Northern California
Posts: 57

I'm wondering how it well it will integrate with LC. Your outline mentions importing and exporting.

Will this be a completely separate application that runs alone only? Or can it be integrated with LC to give us drag and drop functions?

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Cooking Enthusiast

Last edited by Rcrew on 01-14-2003 at 03:52 PM

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Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 1130

The diet software features are a superset of those in Living Cookbook. If you purchase the upgrade, all of your Living Cookbook data will be imported into the diet software, so you won't need two separate applications.

The data interchange features (import and export) will be used when a Living Cookbook user wants to trade recipes with a diet software user.

Regards,

Lee

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Registered: Jan 2024
Location: Lake Erie Islands, Ohio U.S.A.
Posts: 31

Hello Lee,

This forum is fantastic!

What I would like to see see along with the the weight tracking is medical stats. This would include blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol (both good and bad), and insulin. As the body adapts to the new diet the medical stats will change and this would be a good tool to see if that doctor ordered diet is working or not.

Along with tracking carbohydrates and fats I would like it to tracks sugars and vitimans. I hope that is not asking for too much

Thanks, John

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Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 1130

John,

Great! I hadn't thought of blood glucose and insulin. Good idea. Everything else you suggested is already being implemented.

Thanks for the feedback.

Lee

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Registered: Jan 2024
Location: Northern California
Posts: 57

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lee Grainger
...We are planning to build templates for most of the popular diets...
Lee

---

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Cooking Enthusiast

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Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 1130

Rob,

I like your suggestion, but unfortunately Weight Watcher's will be the only diet not supported by our software. Weight Watcher's is a proprietary diet program and their legal team is ten times the size of our whole company. If you want to see what would happen if we included them in our software, try doing a Google search on "weight watchers legal". We don't need that kind of grief.

Lee

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Registered: Jan 2024
Location: Northern California
Posts: 57

Sorry to hear that. I thought that since there was a way to calculate points after fully linking a recipe, there would be a way to use the exercise formulas to do those points as well.

I'm still very interested in the software you're developing!

Thanks, Rob

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Cooking Enthusiast

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Registered: Sep 2024
Location: Berkeley, CA
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You will still be able to use (and configure) MyPoints. There just won't be a Weight Watcher's template per se.

I hope that makes sense.

Lee

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