CNET Editors' review
Fitness Assistant is an intuitive tool that lets users track their nutrition and physical activity. Although similar Web-based tools are available for free, Fitness Assistant does deliver both an easy-to-use interface and relevant features.
The program's interface is uncluttered and intuitive, displaying the day's calorie balance, calorie composition, and a monthly calendar. Graphical buttons across the top of the interface give users access to the program's features. Everything was well-organized and easy to find. Although the program does not have a Help file, it does have a set of FAQs online. As for features, the program contains everything you would expect from this type of application. The program comes with a large database of foods and their nutritional information, making it easy for users to track their dietary habits. Simply search for what you've eaten, select the proper quantity, and Fitness Assistant will save the information for you, allowing you to keep track of your daily intake of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. The program also makes it easy for users to track physical activity with a database full of exercises and the number of calories they each burn. Users can set weight-loss goals and then track their progress, logging their weight, nutrition, and exercise throughout. We found Fitness Assistant to be a very useful tool for users who are looking to make a healthy change to their lifestyles.
Fitness Assistant has a 15-day trial period. It installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program to all users.
Publisher's Description
From X3MSoftware:
Fitness Assistant helps you manage and improve all aspects of diet, health and fitness. Set weight goals and get accurate calorie daily targets. Get motivation by hitting your daily diet goals. Track diet, fitness and exercise. Get accurate calorie advice. Calculate BMI, strength, calories, body fat and more. Record workouts, cardio, measurements. Build graphs and reports of your progress. Fully customizable food log, food database, menu and recipe tracking. Get in the Active Zone, and keep all the lost weight off forever.
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All versions:
4.5 starsout of 11 votes
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Current version:
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"Excellent program, easy to customize."
Version: Fitness Assistant 2.2
Pros
Excellent customization options. Probably the best exercise database for software in its class. Very easy to use.
Cons
Not as good a food database as others. However, if you're willing to enter in nutrition information the first time you eat it, this is not too much of a consideration.
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"Excellent program, excellent support"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1.99
Pros
Good food data base and the ability to modify and use your recipes. Weight feature is an excellent motivational tool. METS values are also a new and important thing for me. Great support, how often do you get to communicate with the software writer.
Cons
Online context help could be a little deeper and have more detail.
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"Cool"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
No more gain weight. Everything is calcutlated. Save much time.
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"Okay, but not great"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
Overall simple, great, basic product.
Cons
Does not record vitamin, and fiber intake.
I am also not to fond of the graphics.
Overall after using this product I am going back to Balance Log
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"The BEST I've used yet. I've used several and this is by far the most accurate."
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
The program is dynamic and learns based on your average loss over a week. It properly calculates your BMR based on average weight loss vs calories eaten. Calculates your activity levels based on information you provide and has thus far been right on the money. My wife and I have been very impressed losing an average of 8-lbs a month just from exercise and eating right - basing our nutritional input on this programs recommendations. Prior to using this program we've only been able to lose 3 to 4 lbs a month by excercising and guessing how much we needed to eat.
The program is overall easy to use - it does have a learning curve of about two or three days to really understand how to input data - user defined foods, etc. Definately worth the $50 price tag. I've used others that were equally and or more expensive and not been as impressed. There's a couple of programs out there that are free and seem to be OK - but no comparison to this one. I worked in the fitness industry many years ago and still work in healthcare - this is definately a tool worth having wether you want to lose weight, gain muscle, increase your cardio-vascular fitness or all of the above.
Cons
The only improvement would be to have a heart rate and blood pressure tracker built in as a monitor for overall fitness. But the developer sent me an e-mail stating those features would be included in the 2006 release. The tutorial could be better.
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"works well"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
easy to use format
Cons
not much
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"Best weight-loss/training software money can buy!"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
I've been using this program for just shy of a month, and I've already lost 14 pounds! I've always had the hardest time losing weight, and could never understand why until I started using this software.
The theory is so simple: To lose weight, just burn more calories than you consume. However, in practice, I personally have always fallen short because I never really knew how many calories I consumed. With this program, it does all the work for me, and all I have to do is log my weight once a week, and my food daily.
Once I achieve my goal weight, which is now only 11 pounds away, I will continue to use the program to monitor my food intake so the weight doesn't come back. In a vastly overweight nation, software like this should be on everyone's computer!
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"Phenomenal product! It allowed me to accomplish diet tracking/workouts easily!"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
I have been working out for 5 months now. I have reduced my body fat and increased my lean muscle mass but have not been able to reach certain "timed" goals. I did much research and needed a simplistic way to modify and track my protein, fat, and carb percentages in conjunction with calories expended, resting metabolic rate, lean muscle mass, etc. I wanted to keep all my lean muscle mass while losing fat, and then increase my lean muscle mass. This program fit the bill perfectly! I downloaded the trial version 2 weeks ago, and lost 6 pounds of pure fat in 13 days and gained over one pound of muscle. It was EXACTLY what should have happened! I could not accomplish this in the previous 5 months. The software is just what I needed!
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"Excellent goals based fitness & weight loss product."
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Pros
Since I started using it to model my diet and exercise regimen, I have been faithful to updating all details. I completed a weigh-in this morning and compared my weight to the predicted value based on the calculations used for calorie/exercise burn. And, the application was off! Yes it was - a whole .02 pounds, yes, point zero two pounds! This was astonishing to me and more importantly, provided the kind of feedback one would like to see in this effort. More importantly, I am using calories, fat content and exercise as the key discriminators for my diet, rather than some "fad" approach. I am eating what I want within reasonable limits but always meeting the calorie intake suggested or slightly less, to meet weight goals.
Cons
None - it's just the best!
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"Excellent Support for Advanced Sportspeople"
Version: Fitness Assistant 1
Summary
All the features are easy to use. The nutrition and exercising portions are very complete. It has everything I´ve been looking for. It allows the user to create his own programs and use it as many times needed. The database has a lot of items. It´s excellent.
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