News Releases

New Software is First to Guarantee Weight-Loss Goals

Turns Computer into "Personal Trainer"

DANBURY, Conn. (September 9, 1998)—A young software company in this New York City suburb has announced the world's first nutrition program that can guarantee reaching a weight goal on schedule. Called Diet Power, the new "personal trainer on a disk" is being released in a free sneak-preview version via the World Wide Web and an 800 number.

"Diet Power is based on a simple truth: If you can only see how each food and exercise will affect your progress, you will naturally make healthier choices," says Terry Dunkle, president of Diet Power, Inc.

To create the program, Dunkle's team consulted dozens of experts in fields ranging from exercise physiology to human behavior. One was Dr. Robert Epstein, founder of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Cambridge, Mass. "We've known for decades that the easiest way to change behavior is simply to become more aware of it," says Epstein. "Diet Power is a user-friendly tool that makes you exquisitely aware."

Dunkle, 49, began designing Diet Power in 1988, when he was a top editor at Reader's Digest. He is now executive producer and editor-in-chief of HealthScout, a personalized daily health-news service that he invented for the World Wide Web, and Remedy Online, a forthcoming Web site attached to the 2-million-circulation health magazine Remedy.

Dunkle's company tested a prototype of Diet Power, called Perfect Diet, for five years in 800 households. A pilot survey showed an average loss of 14 pounds per household, with 85 percent of users keeping the weight off for two years or more. Some lost over 100 pounds.

Besides weight loss, Diet Power is designed to help with weight maintenance, weight gain and nutrient balance—cutting cholesterol or raising calcium intake, for example. It works alone or in combination with other popular systems, including Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, the Zone Diet and dozens more. It also works with diet drugs.

Diet Power begins by asking the user to enter a goal weight and target date. The program responds with a daily calorie budget that—at first—assumes the user has an average metabolism. But as the user logs meals, exercise and weight changes, Diet Power "learns" the true metabolic rate and adjusts the budget accordingly. "Because the budget is based on what's actually happening in your body," says Dunkle, "you cannot fail to reach your goal on schedule if you follow the program faithfully." The program tracks most people's weight within a pound for months on end.

Diet Power also reveals each user's balance of 33 different nutrients for the past day, week, month, quarter and year. Besides the four "energy nutrients" (fat, carbohydrate, protein and alcohol), the program monitors sodium, fiber, cholesterol, calcium, iron, folate, and all the major vitamins. It also tracks selenium, potassium, zinc and other minerals important in fighting cancer, heart disease and birth defects. Each user's charts are adjusted for age, sex and special health concerns such as high blood pressure and pregnancy.

As it learns more about its user, Diet Power delivers customized "Food for Thought" each time the user logs on. Sometimes the advice is practical ("Sour cream contains only one-fourth as much fat as butter does"). Other times, it's inspiring ("One must eat to live, not live to eat") or amusing ("Never work before breakfast. If you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first").

Food for Thought is also customized to the user's goals and habits. A male smoker on a reducing diet, for instance, gets different advice than a female nonsmoker on maintenance.

Diet Power comes in three forms: 1) a personal edition that can handle up to nine users within a household, 2) a large-group edition for health clubs, corporate wellness programs and the like, and 3) a consultant's edition for doctors, nutritionists, sports trainers and other personal advisers. All three editions let users copy their records onto a "travel disk" that can be carried back and forth between home and office computers.

"Because each user's main activity is logging meals," said Dunkle, "we've put enormous effort into making that part of the process lightning-fast." Diet Power's food dictionary contains 16,000 entries ("everything from Abalone to Zabaglione"), yet a typical user can log a meal in as little as a minute.

The program also enables users to:

• See their progress on a daily weight graph
• Keep a personal diary
• Add their own foods and recipes to the dictionary for quick logging
• Look up the nutrient profile of any food or recipe—or print it for friends or clients
• Earn extra calories from 200 forms of exercise, from Aerobics to Weight Lifting.

Diet Power's 100,000-word Help system (as long as an average novel) is packed with insights on nutrition and fitness—yet as readable as the famous magazines Dunkle has edited.

Designed for any computer using Windows 95 or later, Diet Power requires a machine of the 486 class or higher with 8 megabytes of memory and 10 megabytes of disk space. Although the program normally retails at $69.99, it is being offered at $49.99* until November 1.

A free 15-day trial of the the latest version of Diet Power is available on a CD-ROM or by downloading from www.dietpower.com, where users can also order a $49.99* "unlock code" that makes the program work permanently. For further information, company contacts are at www.dietpower.com/contact_us.php.