Top Ten Health and Nutrition Downloads

Need a little help working off those extra pounds? Download a virtual helper.

By Linda L. Grubbs, PC World

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You've missed your morning workout three days in a row. To make matters worse, your pants feel like they shrunk a size in the weekend wash. But you grab fast food for lunch anyway to meet your afternoon deadline. Unfortunately, getting into shape requires more than just good intentions. Meal planning, exercising and scheduling workout sessions are all part of staying fit. This week's list will turn your PC into a mix of Richard Simmons and Tae Bo creator Billy Blanks.

Develop a meal plan that's right for you with Mealformation, a menu management program that creates a nutritional profile of your eating habits, and then calculates your dietary allowance based on the information in your profile. Keep a catalogue of your most healthy recipes with From Scratch, shareware that lets you organize and search for recipes by preparation time or ingredients. Use Crosstrainer II to create workout schedules for cardio and strength training, and you'll be ready to work off those extra pounds.

1. Mealformation: This menu management and analysis program lets you develop an individual meal plan. It calculates the dietary allowances for calories, total fat grams, cholesterol, dietary fiber, and protein. It comes with a large database of popular food items and their nutritional values.

2. Now You're Cooking: This program helps you plan meals and manage grocery costs. You can create recipe categories, perform searches for recipes across cookbooks, and prepare a shopping list (by aisle) from your weekly menu. You can also calculate the cost of your shopping list, import and export recipes, and convert "Meal Master" and "Mastercook" recipes.

3. DietWatch Diary: Use your Web browser to keep a log of your diet, your weight, and your exercise regimen. You can chart personal data and compare your nutritional profile to others. The program delivers up-to-date reports on your diet, reveals dependencies, tells you the latest diet news, and shares diet and nutritional information.

4. Recipe Processor: This recipe manager displays ingredients and directions in a scrollable window. Each recipe shows you the number of calories and the amount of protein, carbohydrates, fat, cholesterol, sodium, and fiber in each serving. You can create separate cookbooks and attach .bmp images to each recipe.

5. Food Watcher Plus: Keep track of your diet with this food nutrient counter. Record your daily intake of calories, fat, cholesterol, fiber, carbohydrates, and protein. Then set a target for your daily intake based on your height, weight, age, and activity level. The registered version includes a nutritional fact database for over 5000 foods. Other features include a weight projection tool, multiple-day support, food search options, and meal printing.

6. From Scratch: This program looks like a three-ring binder, into which you can enter an unlimited number of recipes and ingredients. Ingredient quantities are automatically adjusted for the number of servings. You can print recipes and search for a recipe based on name, ingredients, keywords, origin, time to prepare, instructions, notes, or nutrition information.

7. Life Form: If you are carrying a few extra pounds, trying to get in shape, or want to feel better, then this fitness program can help you. It's divided into eight sections: Information, Food, Exercise, Measurements, Chemistry, Ratings, History, and Graphs. You can tailor the program to meet your needs by using as many or as few of the sections as you like.

8. Yoga: This collection of yoga materials features instructions, articles, photos of postures (asanas), and a yoga directory. It defines Hatha Yoga, Agni Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, and others. It discusses moral commandments (Yama), rules for purification (Niyama), breath retention and regulation (Pranayama), and meditation (Dhyana). Included articles cover self-realization, reincarnation, soul, balance, and other topics.

9. Crosstrainer II: Get in shape for summer with this health and fitness software package. You can schedule your workouts, track your nutritional intake, and record your weight fluctuations. Record and analyze your progress with the easy-to-use LogBook. Other features include Palm support, reporting options, and the ability to create shopping lists.

10. Stretch Break Pro: If you get aching muscles and stiff joints from sitting in front of your computer too long, this program will help you increase circulation, relieve tension, and guard against repetitive strain injuries. Every 30 minutes, a window opens and animated figures do stretches for you to follow. You can adjust the time between stretch sessions and the number of stretches included per session.

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