Memorial Day is fast approaching, and we're all thinking about our plans for the summer. For those of us planning beach trips, it's time for the body to come out of winter hibernation.
Earlier this year, we looked at services that give you exercising tips. But good exercise, as experts say, isn't everything behind a great beach bod. Eating well is another major component.
Below is a roundup of tools that help you track your calorie intake and exercise routines, as well as help you find support from others who are working toward the same goal.
Beach bod tools
A Calorie Counter gives you nutrition facts.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)A Calorie Counter Tracking your calorie intake is important. That's why A Calorie Counter is a useful tool. It enables you to search the USDA Food Nutrition database for anything you've eaten throughout the day. Once you find what you're looking for in the results, it reveals nutritional facts and a box that lets you change your serving size. When you update your serving size, the nutritional fact image changes to show you exactly how many calories you consumed. I was happy with the size of the database, and changing your serving size takes seconds.
BuddySlim.com BuddySlim operates on the belief that trying to lose weight alone is too difficult. Because of that, it enables folks who are trying to lose weight to form communities around their common goals and inspire each other to keep exercising. The site lets you search for others by diet, exercise, goals, location, or gender. Once you find a "buddy," you can keep in touch through a free e-mail account the site provides, as well as blogs and forums. The tool itself features a weight tracker so you (and others) can monitor your progress. But the real value of BuddySlim is its active, engaging community.
The Daily Plate The Daily Plate is primarily a calorie counter. But it does quite a bit more. The site lets you track how many calories you've burned by exercising throughout the day. You can set up weight goals and track your progress toward them with charts and graphs. Although I was happy with The Daily Plate, I wasn't overly pleased with its calorie tracking. It's not nearly as useful as A Calorie Counter.
DietTV.com This site provides an end-to-end healthy lifestyle service with calorie tracking. But one of its best features is the option to create a workout regimen. It asks you for your current weight, finds out what your ideal weight would be, determines what kind of exercises you'd like to do, and creates a full-body workout.
I was able to create a regimen that included 60 minutes of exercise, four days a week, on an elliptical machine, supplemented by weight exercises to build muscle mass. It was a fantastic tool. I also liked that DietTV lets you join a support group. Since forcing yourself to work out can be difficult at times, joining the various support groups on DietTV could help you stay motivated. Each group lets you upload your weight, include photos of your progress, and communicate with others. It's a great system that more of these tools should have.
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A D6 attendee tries the Walkstation.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)Here's an idea that only goes half way: Furniture maker and D6 sponsor Steelcase was showing off its Walkstation product. It's a stand-up desk integrated into a treadmill. So now you can take a walk while you're working.
I tried it and it's not as awkward as you might think. You have to get the speed on the treadmill just right, so you can walk without thinking, but once you do it is actually possible to read and type while walking.
The device is thousands of dollars, steep for the average worker. I fully expect the Walkstation desk to show up on CSI soon, as metaphor for wretched executive excess.
And here's why the device doesn't go far enough: It lets you expend your energy but doesn't do anything with it. In an era of emerging environmental consciousness, I don't know how it's legal to build exercise equipment that doesn't feed the energy that people expend working out back into the power grid, or at least back into the equipment itself. I'm serious.
See also: More Walkstation coverage on Crave.
Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.
My New Year's resolutions for 2007 were largely a flop, although I did frame and hang some vintage 1930s cruise ship menus as promised.
Joe's Goals' simple setup can manage a massive matrix of resolutions.
But if you're dead set on changing your life in 2008, many Web sites can assist with tallying and tracking resolutions. Some will continue to ping you with reminders, or even enlist other folks to pester you over the next 12 months. Facebook users can pick from various third-party widgets for setting and sharing goals, but other sites offer more customization.
Sweet and simple, Joe's Goals help you log progress on to-do items within a simple calendar. Just add a check mark to stuff that's done. You can show off your score card to others with badges for MySpace or your blog.
LifeTango's brainstorm wizard steps you through the goal-setting process, nicely leaving each item private by default. You can also send items on your list to friends, family, or the general public. The site functions well, but its orange and blue tones could use a makeover, and there's not much to do off the site.
43Things makes it quick to get started by typing in a goal and seeing, for instance, that 3,885 other people have pledged to "exercise more." You can post 43Things items to or from a blog. The site has removed its groups, which had become a target for spammers. But users can cheer each other, or pay $1 for a SuperCheer.
To pass the buck and the blame, 43Things' Should Do This tool lets you make suggestions about what the rest of the world, anyone or anything from Al Gore to poor people to Fox News, should do.
Remember the Milk beta makes your to-do items and reminders available in Gmail, via SMS, the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, Skype, and popular IM clients. Integration with Google Calendar and contacts would let you connect to, say, a co-worker for an instant chat at an appointed time. Remember the Milk also can pinpoint tasks on a map and export your lists as Atom and iCal-ready feeds.
I find that Remember the Milk is the most portable goal-setting service of the bunch; you can take it with you instead of repeatedly returning to its Web site. Still, it would be nice to see such services import to-do items from software such as Microsoft Outlook.
For even less complication, Hassle Me simply sends you a nagging e-mail or IM nudge for any goal and time interval you pick.
Work that body
In poll after poll, Americans name eating less and exercising more as top goals for the new year. But who wants to count calories? Just tell Fit Day
or The Daily Plate what you're eating, and they'll do the work, drawing charts of the nutrition you're getting or should be.
DietTelevision beta (more here) does the same, adding motivational videos alongside personal recipes suggestions with shopping lists. You can track food and water intake by texting the site from a mobile phone.
Um, drink too much? FitDay's pie charts can show so in a snap.
Traineo also helps you track a diet and workout plan, joining groups or calling upon four personal "motivators" to keep you on track. I like that you can rate your daily diet from poor to great if you're in a hurry and don't want to log every bite. However, some groups seem to be sponsored by diet products.
The Revolution Health portal (more here) launched Resolution 2.0, a tool for setting goals with a group that include working out more, being a better parent, and complaining less. Professionals, including personal trainers and doctors, lead the groups.
Like the general goal-making services, these fitness sites offer plenty of tools, but I'd like them to do a better job taking you off of their pages by integrating with more third-party calendars, e-mail services, and mobile devices.
Overall, I prefer FitDay's tight interface and quick setup. Daily Plate made me first skip an offer for a paid subscription, and then sent my password in a clear text e-mail. I just wish that FitDay listed more common consumables, like pad thai, so I don't have to look up peanuts and noodles separately. Daily Plate lists pad thai and other takeout staples of my diet.
If you need extra help with becoming well, more than 500 online support groups at DailyStrength aim to tackle tough problems such as substance abuse and disease.
If going green is on your wish list, Make Me Sustainable (more here), and Yahoo Green (more here) help to set goals, such as swapping out old light bulbs and toting reusable bags to the grocery store. Carbon Rally (more here) adds peer pressure to the mix by encouraging teams of users to compete.
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