There are plenty of free online nutritional support solutions. Check out the ones below and see if any of these will work for you.
Sparks People
Sparks People provides several different tools to aid in eating healthier, exercise and weight loss. Sparks People works on a point system.
- Users get points for visiting the site, using the sites tools, establishing healthy habits, reporting their progress, and reading informational articles on establishing a healthy lifestyle.
- The food log tool is simple and fairly straight forward. There is a neat little feature on the top of the food log page where water consumption can be easily tracked.
- There are tutorials, and lots of quick links to help users get around this sight with ease.
- It is a great program that can be very useful but, can get a little time consuming for some people especially in the beginning.
My Pyramid
The USDA web page for the My Pyramid has several somewhat useful features.
- By entering stats like weight, height, age, and activity level the site will provide a personal eating plan based on the pyramids parameters.
- There is a section called the My Pyramid Tracker. The food tracker is a two step process. First find the foods with the search tool and add them to the daily food log, then enter the quantities. There is a fitness tracker as well.
- While the food tracker is some what useful, the two steps could make the tracker too time consuming and tedious.
The No S Diet
The No S Diet started a mini Internet sensation online when developed by a software engineer named Reinhard Engels. Reinhard Engels was looking for a simple weight loss plan that would be easy to follow. So he developed the No S Diet. The rules are very simple and straight forward.
- No snacks, no seconds and no sweets.
- Except on days that start with S.
- Thats it. On the No S Diet site there is no food log or other tracking services. There is however an FAQ where Reinhard Engels answers dieters questions and gives tips on how to do the plan. There is also a forum for dieters to lend support for each other.
- The No S Diet could be fairly easy diet to fit into daily life. The No S diet is really a brilliantly simple plan but maybe too simple for some.
Online there are tons of diet support sites that claim to be free and are really not. Here is what to look for.
- Investigate to see if the site is affiliated with a particular product. Sometimes a so called free site will be peddling shakes, or supplements.
- Make sure the site advocates a common sense truly healthy lifestyle and not a crazy fad diet.
- A free site may have you register but should not ask for credit card information.
- Some start free for a trial period or will not track your information unless the user pays for upgrades. Read the fine print.
- Before signing up for a diet site check to make sure they will not share user information by selling it to advertisers without the user's permission.
The Internet can be a great place to get free support for a healthier lifestyle. Just use common sense and do not be fooled by gimmicks.
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