calories

Americans are always looking for ways to drop weight without actually doing anything. That's why the Calorie Shaper line of underwear out of Japan is so enticing.

The fabric of the unmentionables features a honeycomb structure that theoretically forces your body to work harder to move. All that resistance is supposed to burn calories, but I'm more concerned about chafing.

Calorie Shapers--which, from what we can see online, sell for between $30 and $38 per pair--are available in training and daily-life versions. The daily-life option is designed to hide under your usual clothing so no one will suspect you're actually exercising as you stroll down the office hallway with a doughnut in your hand.… Read more

Wearable, connected fitness monitors are a dime a dozen these days. But developers of NewYu, a monitor that will be available in September, claim they've got an edge on their competition.

The device, which is meant to clip to clothing on the torso or to a pocket, is purported to provide a more accurate view of calories burned by tracking, and differentiating between, all movements throughout the day.

In other words, NewYu knows if you've been running or walking, cooking or cleaning, shopping, or (presumably) mating...You get the idea. Actually, Van Krueger, CEO of parent company Wellcore, tells me they decided to steer clear of the "mating" category, but that it will register as low-, medium-, or high-impact aerobics, depending of course on the intensity of the, shall we say, heat of the moment.

Krueger says the fitness monitor is able to differentiate among activities by using advanced pattern recognition technology. This works much the way voice recognition does;… Read more

A psychology professor and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Clemson University in South Carolina have teamed up to develop a watch-like device that tracks wrist-roll motion to count how many bites the wearer takes.

In the lab, they report, their Bite Counter has been more than 90 percent accurate in tallying bites regardless of the food, utensil, container, or user.

They say the device, which can be turned on and off at will, is something of a pedometer for eating. It's certainly not tracking types of food. But even if it's intended to monitor mere quantity of consumption, it can only be so accurate.… Read more

Want to lose weight? Forget fad diets: eat fewer calories. Ah, but easier said than done, right? Counting calories is not only a hassle, it's downright difficult for certain types of meals.

Enter DailyBurn's Meal Snap ($2.99), an ingeniously clever--if not entirely perfect--app that takes a photo of the food on your plate, then delivers an estimated calorie count.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? And it is, though there are limits to the app's accuracy. In my quick and informal tests, Meal Snap easily identified a small pile of strawberries, and correctly estimated the calories at 38-57. … Read more

MP3 players serve many purposes in our lives. They drown out the crazies on public transportation, keep our road rage in check during rush hour, ensure that we're entertained on long flights, and help us stay motivated at the gym. In fact, one of the top reasons why people buy portable audio devices is to have them as fitness companions. And you may not know it just by looking at them, but the iPhone and iPod Touch are excellent tools for watching your weight and keeping in shape--you just need the proper enhancements.

First and foremost, if you're … Read more

Anyone who has tried to lose weight knows that two things work: diet and exercise. Hiring a personal trainer might help motivate you to exercise, but studies show that keeping a journal actually helps dieters stick to the plan. That's where Calorie Balance Diet comes in. It's a free utility that makes it entirely too easy to figure out just how many calories you need to achieve your dietary goal, and what foods you should and shouldn't eat to help you stay on track. It also helps you keep useful schedules and records.

A simple wizard lets … Read more

When my eating starts getting out of control, I usually fire up the Lose It app to keep tabs on my calories for a few days.

Of course, it's a hassle to have to manually enter the foods I eat. Enter FoodScanner, a new app that scans package bar codes for quick and easy calorie logging.

Does it work? It does. Is it just as cool as it sounds? It is. Will it earn a spot in one of Apple's "There's an app for that" commercials? Almost certainly. It's just that slick.

To use … Read more

Mealformation is a multifunction food tracker that allows users to create meal plans, track their food intake, and analyze their nutrition. Overall it is a solid program, although some aspects of it could be more intuitive or better explained.

The interface is fairly straightforward, with various functions--personal profile, a food database, a recipe database, and so on--organized in tabs. The thing that threw us about the program is that it's never made clear what content is included and what content has to be user-generated. It turns out that the program does contain a fairly large database of foods, meaning … Read more

MP3 players fulfill many roles for the people who use them. For some, a portable audio device is true to form as an essential commuter companion; others turn their players into home audio systems by attaching them to speakers. But one of the most popular uses for an MP3 player is as a workout motivator, which is why companies have packed fitness-friendly extras into the devices over the years. The most recent example is found in the Haier America Trainer, a 2GB player with a surfeit of features aimed at getting you in shape. At $60, the Trainer is a … Read more