Help enforce those New Years resolutions with Vivonic
Written: Jan 18 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Makes keeping track of diet and exercise easy
Cons: Changing exercises from pre-prepared plans kind of a pain
The Bottom Line: Worth buying. Though not perfect, it allows you to track your diet and exercise easily.
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| stevelarrison's Full Review: Vivonic Fitness Planner for Palm (viv2000) for PC |
Whether you want to lose a few pounds, marginally increase fitness levels as you get older, or if you are serious about getting in the best shape humanly possible, it is necessary to follow a good diet and exercise plan. A central tenet of human nature makes it easy to forget everything you eat while exaggerating the amount of time you spend exercising. The only way to be sure of progress you are making is to log everything you eat and all activities you perform. The portable nature of Palm Pilot type devices are ideal for tracking what you eat and what you do.
Functionality of the software
The basic software is based around a food and exercise journal.
Food
The food database contains calorie and nutrition information on a wide variety of foods including food from various restaurants. In addition to having an extensive database, you have the ability to add foods, or to combine various individual items that are found in meals.
Essentially, you have all the flexibility necessary to make it possible to track what you consume without a great deal of effort. There is one thing you should be aware of though. I have found errors in the caloric values and nutritional breakdown of various restaurant meals. While the software allows you to make adjustments, I would like to see greater attention to detail in this area. Keep in mind, the errors are not gross errors. You will generally find breakdowns to be right on, or within a few percentages of actual values. Still the same, for people who are very serious about their diet and exercise, accuracy is important.
Exercise
The software as shipped from the vendor contains a limited number of exercise plans. However, the architecture allows flexibility in plans based on exercise goals. In addition to the basic "Vivonic Fitness Plan" that ships with the package software, you can download free plans from www.vivonic.com that allow the following exercise goals :
Asimba's Very Easy 5k Training
Asimba - Gym based Cardio and Strength
Beginners Walking for Weight Loss
Fitness 101
Intermediate Strength and Cardio Program
Beginner Marathon Training
While I like the architecture of the basic plan structure, I find that it is somewhat cumbersome to change exercise schedules to meet your own needs.
For example, I am mostly into weight lifting. Based on experience, there are certain muscle groups I like to concentrate on during a given workout. The Vivonic canned plans have a different breakdown from what I like to do. Changing the schedule to meet what works for me best is cumbersome.
Ideally, I would love to see the software allow me to build my own custom plans as opposed to relying on plans that Vivonic creates. Given that exercise cycles are repeated twice per week, I find it far too cumbersome to edit the exercise breakdown everyday. (If you make a change to exercise groupings, it only impacts the calendar day that you edit. It will not filter through for the duration of your plan)
As a result, it takes more time for me to enter data on exercises at the gym than it would otherwise. (If you use a pre-prepared plan, you can just check off exercises in your journal as you do them. If you don't have a pre-prepared plan, you have to use SEARCH functionality to enter exercises individually)
On the plus side, the exercise journal does calculate calorie consumption for both cardiovascular and resistance training.
Reports
Reports are relatively basic. They allow you to see calories consumed and calories burned over time. Data can be displayed as a bar graph, line graph, or raw numerical values. You can look at daily or weekly summaries over different amounts of time. The DAILY JOURNALS allow you to see breakdowns of Calories, Fat, Saturated Fat, Poly Unsaturated Fat, Mono Unsaturated Fat, Carbohydrates, Sugar, Dietary Fiber, Protein, Sodium, Cholesterol, Calcium, Caffeine, Water, Vitamins A, C, D, E, B vitamins, Niacin, Iron, Potassium, and Magnesium from the foods you have consumed compared against goals you have established.
Information
The software also contains a FACTS section that gives you pretty basic information about a variety of exercise and nutritional subjects. In all honesty, there is nothing earth shattering here. If I were doing initial research in these areas, I would tend to think that I would want to go more in depth than the software allows.
Missing features
Aside from the aforementioned ability to create custom plans, it would be nice if the software had some ability to make projections for weight loss/gain, strength gains, and cardio vascular fitness.
Conclusion
The software is relatively complete, syncs easily between your Palm Pilot and PC, and allows you to measure progress. The accuracy of some items in the food database is off, but not by a great margin. I would recommend this software for anyone serious about getting in shape, or improving their health.
Recommended:
Yes
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stevelarrison
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Member: Steve Larrison
Location: Scottsdale, Az. USA
Reviews written: 171
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