steve2k

Hello all,

I like fitday and like the idea of tracking what I eat, but I'm rubbish at updating it. I can't get to it from work (blocked by firewall) so have to remember it all and update it at home, which means I don't.

Well I recently got an all singing all dancing phone/pda/gps and wondered if I could find a fitday for the pocket pc. At least I'd be able to update it all the time.

"So", I thought to myself, "who would know a program I could use, who could I trust my health and fitness to?" Well, who else indeed. I turn to the reliable, trustworthy, all knowing clyde and athena forum. I don't know of a better bunch of strangers to ask this question of.

So, does anyone know of a good program like fitday that I can load on a pocket pc?

I found this one through google: https://www.keyoe.com/

Many thanks,
Steve

steve2k

Just wanted to check back in and say that so far Keyoe is brilliant, very impressed.

CliftonGK1

An MS Live search for Pocket PC Calorie Counter turned up a truckload of items:

CalorieKing.com
WeightByDate.com
Coehso.com
just to name a few. There's a bunch of freeware ones on there, and I'm going to check a few of them out just because I don't have enough 'toys' on my PDA phone yet.

CliftonGK1

I just tried to DL the free software from Diets In Details, and it comes up on our company's web blocker under the category "Sex". It took me a minute to figure that one out, then looked at the URL www.dietsindetails.com and realized it's blocking it based on the word "sin" as a fragment in the URL.

D'oh!

WhaleOil

I hope this thread progresses. I had never been a PDA fan but I had never had one. I got one of those Palm Z22's mostly for the Shopper program which I admittedly hacked for evaluation purposes only

I loved it. I like Bluetooth capability and at the time didn't want to spend bucks on something I didn't think I might use. I use it a lot for VA appointments among other things.

I'm also a FitDay owner, great program although I don't usualy boot windoze so I don't use it as much as I should.

If someone finds out that FitDay will work on a higher end handheld, I'll buy one tomorrow.

WhaleOil

Never heard of this before, just went here: https://www.keyoe.com/DEA_Handheld.htm

It sounds phenomenal!

More posts about anyone using it please!

steve2k

Whaleoil,
big long post coming up about keyoe.

Keyoe is the I've just downloaded and so far (2 days) I'm very impressed. although I can only compare it against fitday which I struggled with. In fact I was so impressed with the free demo that I bought the full version 20 minutes later.

All I wanted was something that allows me to set some goals (like a limit of calories, saturated fats) and then track my progress each day against those goals in an easy to use interface.
I couldn't get fitday to do that easily, but this does exactly that, and much more.

It's a much nicer interface in my opinion even though it's on the small pocket pc screen, and the reports and charts make more sense to me than fitday ever did.

There are 2 parts to this:
- A food database
- A diary

The food database has a simple interface that allows you to update the database and add your own foods. It's got 2 levels of hierarchy, so for example an oat bran bagel can be found in breads\bagels\oat bran bagel.

It records serving size, calories, fibre, carbs, fat, sat fat and protein for each food item, so not as comprehensive as fitday, but still that's enough information for me.

You can do all this from the diary application too, so you don't actually need this, but I find the interface a bit easier for entering food, it's a bit squashed on the diary application.

The diary application is where you set your goals, track your intake/expenditure and see graphs of where you are. I entered my personal information and my weight goals. Then I selected the diet type I wanted, which calculated the amounts of different nutrients I should be aiming for. I edited the calculated value slightly to set a more aggressive saturated fat limit.

And that's it, I'm off.

The diary summary looks like this (I don't have a picture but it's literally this simple, the bit's in <> are buttons):

<- today ->

Meals: 1698 cal <meals>
BMR: -2627 cal <bmr>
Exercise: 760 cal <exercise>
-------------
cal lost: -1699 cal

goal: -760 cal
budget: 939 cal

This is the sort of summary screen I wish Fitday had, nothing too complicated, just a quick screen to show me if I have the budget for that bagel or should I go with an apple?

Clicking the <meals> button takes me to a summary of food I've eaten that day grouped into breakfast/luck/dinner/snack and allows me to add/edit/delete items. I can also organise this information in a number of different ways. From this screen I can also add and edit items in the food database.

Clicking the <bmr> allows me to change my lifestyle type and it calculates the basal value, or I can set a value manually. Incidentally for seated work, fitday says I expend 3217 calories, keyoe says 2637. I've heard people say fitday overestimates so keyoe sounds like a better value to me.

clicking <exercise> shows me a summary of what I've done today and allows me to pick from a number of activities including cycling, or again add a manual value. 30 mins of cycling (12-13.9mph) fitday says is 324 calories, keyoe says it's 456 calories, quite a difference I don't know which is most accurate. Maybe I should get my HR monitor out and see.

You can switch the summary screen between the calorie summary or any other nutrient in which case it changes to a little bar chart showing the amount you've consumed vs the target. (If you've left the targets as automatic then they adjust if you exercise to take account of the fact that you can now consume more calories).

There are also other features like a journal for your notes, recording todays weight (which alters the bmr automatically), tracking blood pressure, body fat (which you do by taking measurements).

And then there are graphs of how all these things have changed over time.

I'll try and get some screen shots tonight and post them up.

If you're in the market for a PDA, I'm running this on an HTC TytnII and am very impressed.
In this one device I've got a mobile phone, email, photos of my family, calorie tracker and GPS. Brilliant.

steve2k

oh, I just followed the link you posted and it pretty much says everything I did but with pictures. Mine is a pocket PC but the screens are almost identical.

I've I'd followed your link first I could have saved myself 30 minutes.

bdinger

Heh, when I do worry about intake, I just use The Daily Plate via Opera Mini on my Mogul. But if you have to pay for data, I guess that's not the best solution. Let me know how keyoe works, I'm interested in starting to use things like this now that I've gone back to a mobile device with a keyboard.

CliftonGK1

After 15 minutes of working with the free demo, I removed Weight by Date from my PDA.

The calculations function for caloric expenditure is incorrect. When I set up a new exercise (bike commuting) and assigned a value of 750 cal for a 60 minute time, I should hope that a 90 minute ride would calculate to 1125 cal. Instead, I was getting a number in the 1700 range. WTH?

I'm going to check out this Keyoe product instead based on 2 reasons: 1) It's got BF member endorsement already. 2) It's less expensive.

grueling

Its a bit OT, but can anyone recommend a basic PDA?

I have never had a need for one, but a product like Keyoe may be very helpful. After reading a review, I think I could stay with something like this. I have failed before at manually recording.