Home
>
Weight Loss
>
Technology & Weight Loss: Putting An Online Tool to Use

Technology & Weight Loss: Putting An Online Tool to Use

Because the Internet allows so many millions of people to be connected to any single site, function or feature, many programmers and marketing folks have put their heads together to come up with some really neat online tools. Many of these tools are not only useful and convenient, but they are often times free to use. We like free! Some examples include area code locators, mortgage calculators, metric conversion charts and many, many more.

Today I ran across a free tool that is available to us courtesy of the US Government. The Deparment of Health & Human Services, National Institutes of Health, makes this tool available. The tool is called an interactive menu planner and it's worth spending a few minutes exploring.

The tool's original intent seems to be as a menu planner that one would use on a daily basis in order to calculate the total calories, total fat and total carbohydrates for all three meals each and every day. Because the interface is a little bit "clunky" and the tool takes a while to plug in an entire day's meals, I don't think it's really practical to use every day. However, that doesn't mean that it's not useful. Load it up in a browser and take a peek for yourself while I point out a few things that I found interesting.

The first thing you need to do is to select the number of daily calories you plan to consume. The number can range from 1200 to 2000. There are no guidelines as to how many calories you should start with so use common sense to select a number. Factors such as body size (less the fat you want to lose), type of occupation, amount of daily exercise, and age should be taken into consideration. Your doctor may have a suggestion as well.

Once you've selected a daily calorie target, select "Breakfast" as your first meal. Mentally segment your daily calories into three fairly equal parts. If you've selected 2000 calories, you should try to aim for around 600 - 650 calories per meal, leaving a few left over for an evening snack. Move over to the right where the food itself is located. Start at the top and select a food item from the food groups you typically eat for breakfast. It doesn't matter if it's what you ate today, or are planning to eat, the education is in the experience.

As you select a "food item" you must remember to also select the number of servings in the next column. For instance, if you typically eat two kiwi fruit at breakfast, select "1 Kiwi" from the "food" column and select "2" from the servings column. The thing that I really like about this tool is that it updates after every item is selected. Continue on through breakfast adding items as you go. You may select multiple items from any of the food groups. As you continue, you will see the menu for breakfast grow longer for each added item.

Try to ignore the totals on the left-hand side until you have finished selecting each of the items that make up your typical breakfast. Once done, look at the totals to see how much damage you've done. If you find, like I did, that you need to make some adjustments to each meal if you want to get three meals a day in, you can remove some of your items or reduce the number of servings. To do so, simply select one of the items already in your breakfast menu and change the servings to zero to remove it completely, or just lower the number to reduce it.

Once you've set your breakfast menu, continue on to lunch and repeat the process. After you've finished your lunch menu, repeat the process for dinner. If you still have some calories left over, you can go ahead and treat yourself to a snack; if you exceed your total allowed calories at any time, a warning message will pop up.

There are a few things about this exercise that I believe are particularly educational. The first is the degree to which the daily calories can be thrown off by simple things such as beverages. For my breakfast I selected a bagel. I watched carefully as I slowly added a tablespoon of cream cheese and some jelly, thinking they would cause a dramatic increase. To my dismay, a couple teaspoons of jelly and a tablespoon of cream cheese added only 75 calories. It was the bagel that was the major offender, coming in at a whopping 320 calories!

I decided to see how much the daily totals would be affected by selecting a large glass of "Kool Aid" as a drink. I have children in the house and "Kool Aid" is available and convenient. But is it a good decision?

For my lunch menu, I selected "8 oz. Kool Aid" as a beverage. But wait, do you know how small an 8 oz. glass is? I plugged in "2" servings just to be safe. To my horror, that single beverage selection came to 232 calories, or just over 11% of my daily total! I quickly "zeroed out" the "Kool Aid" and opted instead for water.

Another shocker was the cream that I use in my morning coffee or tea. Drinking two cups of black coffee adds only 20 calories to your daily menu. However, if you lighten up those two cups of coffee with a couple of tablespoons of cream each, you can add nearly 100 calories to your diet. A teaspoon of sugar adds only 15 calories, and that's typically the item we'd be inclined to abandon first.

The second thing that I realized is that, with a little bit of planning, a person can still eat a substantial amount of food and stay within their daily caloric budget, especially if you choose wisely. I'm a substantially sized guy with an active lifestyle who should be able to consume 2000 calories per day and still lose weight. Using this tool can help me do so without starving and without busting my budget.

Again, I don't think it's terribly practical to suggest you use this tool every day, but referring to it every now and again can help you ascertain the average number of calories you are consuming each day, make sure you aren't making any bad menu decisions, and help you to win the battle of the bulge!

Interactive Menu Planner: http://hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/menuplanner/menu.cgi

Michael Callen is the author of the interactive menu planner and the Chief Technology Officer for interactive menu planner, an online retailer of dozens of health and wellness products.

recurring maid service Arlington Heights ..

In The News:

Tesla's FSD v14.1.2 update reintroduces Mad Max mode, enabling higher speeds and more frequent lane changes than the standard Hurry profile setting.

A phishing email scam targeting American Express customers shows how cybercriminals use fake urgent messages to steal personal and financial information.

Facebook's new Meta AI feature analyzes your camera roll photos to create polished collages automatically, but requires cloud processing and raises privacy concerns.

A New Jersey teenager filed a major lawsuit against AI/Robotics Venture Strategy 3 Ltd. over ClothOff, an AI tool that created fake nude images from her social media photos.

Microsoft reports Storm-2657 cybercriminals sent phishing emails to 6,000 addresses at 25 universities to steal payroll credentials and redirect funds.

Astronomers have discovered asteroid 2025 SC79, a skyscraper-sized space rock orbiting the sun in just 128 days. the second-fastest known.

The Fox News AI Newsletter delivers the latest developments form the world of artificial intelligence, including the technology's challenges and opportunities.

A cyberattack on SimonMed Imaging exposed personal information of 1.2 million patients, including medical records, financial details and identity papers.

Spotify's managed accounts for kids under 13 now available in at least seven countries, allowing parents to filter and block explicit content and songs.

Friendly text conversations about BBQs and social events can lead to WEEX gold trading scams that target older adults with fake investment opportunities.

California company Skyeports creates self-healing glass spheres from Moon regolith that generate solar power and support plant growth for sustainable lunar living.

Cleafy researchers discover fake VPN streaming app Mobdro Pro that installs Klopatra banking Trojan, giving attackers full control over Android devices.

Police departments across the U.S. and Canada are adopting virtual reality training to better prepare officers for high-pressure, real-world situations.

House Bill 469 would prevent AI systems from owning property, serving as executives, or gaining legal personhood in Ohio under Representative Thaddeus Claggett's proposal.

Public voter records expose retirees' personal details to election scammers who create targeted cons using names, addresses, and voting history data.

Instead of fearing what comes next with artificial intelligence, think outside the box. Here are high-earning AI jobs that don't require a computer science degree.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says polite words like "please" and "thank you" cost millions annually, while direct prompts may improve ChatGPT accuracy by several points.

Chattee Chat and GiMe Chat exposed intimate conversations and photos, revealing users spent up to $18,000 on AI companions before the breach.

New Instagram parental controls allow families to manage teen screen time and content limits through the Family Center with stricter safety settings.

Third-party security breach at Discord exposes sensitive user information including government IDs, highlighting cybersecurity risks from external service providers.

Survey of 1,000 students shows teens using AI for personal relationships while two-thirds of parents remain unaware of their children's AI usage.

Cybersecurity experts warn about a ShadowLeak vulnerability that weaponized ChatGPT's Deep Research agent to steal personal data from Gmail accounts through hidden commands.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving system faces federal investigation following 58 reports of crashes, with six vehicles running red lights before colliding with other cars.

The Fox News AI Newsletter brings you the latest developments on artificial intelligence, with news on OpenAI moving to soon allow erotica for adult users.

Eric Schmidt alerts that hackers can reverse-engineer AI models to bypass safety measures, citing examples like the jailbroken ChatGPT variant called DAN.