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As a kid I could eat any amount of anything, and I'd still look and feel starved. As I've gotten older, my metabolism has slowed down, to the point that it is very easy for me to gain weight and very difficult to lose it, and hence despite intermittent efforts at watching what I eat and exercising like crazy, my weight kept creeping upward.
If I cut back on what I ate, I started feeling tired, couldn't concentrate the way I normally do, and didn't have the energy to exercise.
I couldn't bring myself to stick to an elaborate fixed diet -- that required too much planning ahead, too much discipline, Watching what I ate consisted largely of avoiding snacks and foods that obviously had lots of calories. But I couldn't get into calorie counting -- looking everything up and adding it all. It was simply too tedious.
I got a treadmill just before Christmas and got into walking while watching football games -- sometimes as much as 10 miles in a day. But even that seemed to make little difference in my weight. All that exercise gave me an appetite.
When I put on another 10 lbs. in the two months after Christmas, this was getting scary.
Then, researching an article about fitness Web sites, I chanced upon CBS Healthwatch. That's http://cbs.healthwatch.com
They have a Nutrition Calculator. You enter what you eat or what you plan to eat, and how much of it. And they quickly calculate the calories, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals etc. And they also store the information for you in your own Daily Calendar area, and let you quickly generate neat graphs.
Actually, it isn't all that quick. The first time it seems quick because it's so neat and unexpected. But when you start doing this two, three, four, and even more times a day, it starts to feel very slow. The Java applet drags, even with a DSL connection.
With this tool, it very soon became glaringly clear which of the foods that I used to eat regularly, I should stay away from. Spaghetti in particular. A typical helping of my favorite dish, cooked my special way probably amounts to about 2000 calories, all alone. Every time I eat spaghetti, I inevitably gain 1-2 pounds. (If only I had had the common sense to realize that before.)
Then there are the little surprises, like salad dressing. Lettuce and tomatoes have very few calories, but two tablespoons of my favorite Russian salad dressing comes to about 160 calories , which is more than a hot dog. Even some of the "good stuff" -- the vegetables I would add to my meal not because I liked them, but because I thought they were good for me, were costing me dearly. For instance, just a cup of peas comes to 117 calories -- more than twice as much as a cup of popcorn.
I started to think in terms of budget. I have only so many calories to spend a day, and I can spend them on things I enjoy eating or things that I don't. That salad dressing simply isn't worth a hot dog to me. I'd rather stick to the lettuce and tomato, maybe add some celery and carrot, and skip the peas, then splurge on a piece of pie. And the summary display for the day, also gives me happy faces in all the categories, like vitamins and minerals where I'm on target for my daily needs; and up and down arrows for those that I'm not, so I can make some last minute adjustments -- perhaps enjoying a late snack to nudge the numbers in the right direction.
As a result, I've cut my calorie intake significantly, while keeping my energy level high, And I've been able to be far more regular about my exercise. Over the last couple weeks, I've gradually dropped about five pounds. And now I seem to have some degree of control over my weight.
So what does this have to do with the Internet?
The calculator is the ultimate sticky application. It's now a fixed part of my regular daily routine. I go back again and again, both to calculate and to check my records -- in particular to get the gratification of seeing a graph.
It isn't a social application in the usual sense -- it doesn't put me in touch with other people. It also isn't "content" in the usual sense. But here I am, essentially, carrying on a dialogue myself at this Web site, day after day. The calculator makes useful information readily available to me, and the record acts as my conscience and helps keep me on track. The graphs are a fun extra touch.
This is an aspect of the Web that I hadn't been aware of before. And I could imagine a number of other applications, based on similar psychological principles. Provide useful conversions from real-world experiences to numerical values, and store the personal records for future reference and to track progress toward set goals.
Even looking at Health Watch, there's so much more that could be done. As it is, they let you enter your weight and how much you have exercised, but those numbers are just static -- they don't do anything with them and don't combine them in any way with the nutrition information. It's easy enough to just write your weight down, and write down how much you exercise, and that's all the site does, just provides you with a space to record that static information. But they, or someone else could provide calculations of how many calories you burn with certain amounts of certain kinds of exercise; and provide a total tally of calories taken in minus calories burned. And with enough data about your food intake, exercise, and weight, it should be possible to arrive at some metric for metabolism and some estimate of how projected changes in what you eat and how much you exercise are likely to change your weight.
Or imagine a Web site that tried to do something similar with regard to your financial budget -- so you don't have to enter each and every penny spent, like you do with a Quicken, but rather enter activities by chunks and let the calculator fill in a likely estimate (with some tweaking over time by you) -- for instance, you click that you went to a movie, or had lunch out, or drove a hundred miles. And if you shop online a lot, even have a little app that reminds you while you are shopping what your budget allows for that kind of thing this month and where you stand now.
Imagine, too, that you add to this kind of online conscience a link to a friend who has your best interest at heart. Say you find it very difficult to discipline yourself with regard to food or finances or whatever. Then you name a buddy, and once a week that buddy gets an email reminder with a URL that will show them the graph of your progress, so that buddy can cheer you on and share in the joy of your little victories or give you a kick, if necessary.
I guess the Web and the new capabilities it provides are becoming an important part of our daily lives -- not just a source of information, and not just a communication medium -- an extension of ourselves, a way for us to help ourselves become what we want to become.
As a kid I could eat any amount of anything, and I'd still look and feel starved. As I've gotten older, my metabolism has slowed down, to the point that it is very easy for me to gain weight and very difficult to lose it, and hence despite intermittent efforts at watching what I eat and exercising like crazy, my weight kept creeping upward.
If I cut back on what I ate, I started feeling tired, couldn't concentrate the way I normally do, and didn't have the energy to exercise.
I couldn't bring myself to stick to an elaborate fixed diet -- that required too much planning ahead, too much discipline, Watching what I ate consisted largely of avoiding snacks and foods that obviously had lots of calories. But I couldn't get into calorie counting -- looking everything up and adding it all.
It was simply too tedious.
I got a treadmill just before Christmas and got into walking while watching football games -- sometimes as much as 10 miles in a day. But even that seemed to make little difference in my weight. All that exercise gave me an appetite.
When I put on another 10 lbs. in the two months after Christmas, this was getting scary.
Then, researching an article about fitness Web sites, I chanced upon CBS Healthwatch. That's cbs.healthwatch.com
They have a Nutrition Calculator. You enter what you eat or what you plan to eat, and how much of it. And they quickly calculate the calories, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals etc. And they also store the information for you in your own Daily Calendar area, and let you quickly generate neat graphs.
Actually, it isn't all that quick. The first time it seems quick because it's so neat and unexpected. But when you start doing this two, three, four, and even more times a day, it starts to feel very slow. The Java applet drags, even with a DSL connection.
With this tool, it very soon became glaringly clear which of the foods that I used to eat regularly, I should stay away from. Spaghetti in particular. A typical helping of my favorite dish, cooked my special way probably amounts to about 2000 calories, all alone. Every time I eat spaghetti, I inevitably gain 1-2 pounds. (If only I had had the common sense to realize that before.)
Then there are the little surprises, like salad dressing. Lettuce and tomatoes have very few calories, but two tablespoons of my favorite Russian salad dressing comes to about 160 calories , which is more than a hot dog. Even some of the "good stuff" -- the vegetables I would add to my meal not because I liked them, but because I thought they were good for me, were costing me dearly. For instance, just a cup of peas comes to 117 calories -- more than twice as much as a cup of popcorn.
I started to think in terms of budget. I have only so many calories to spend a day, and I can spend them on things I enjoy eating or things that I don't. That salad dressing simply isn't worth a hot dog to me. I'd rather stick to the lettuce and tomato, maybe add some celery and carrot, and skip the peas, then splurge on a piece of pie. And the summary display for the day, also gives me happy faces in all the categories, like vitamins and minerals where I'm on target for my daily needs; and up and down arrows for those that I'm not, so I can make some last minute adjustments -- perhaps enjoying a late snack to nudge the numbers in the right direction.
As a result, I've cut my calorie intake significantly, while keeping my energy level high, And I've been able to be far more regular about my exercise. Over the last couple weeks, I've gradually dropped about five pounds. And now I seem to have some degree of control over my weight.
So what does this have to do with the Internet?
The calculator is the ultimate sticky application. It's now a fixed part of my regular daily routine. I go back again and again, both to calculate and to check my records -- in particular to get the gratification of seeing a graph.
It isn't a social application in the usual sense -- it doesn't put me in touch with other people. It also isn't "content" in the usual sense. But here I am, essentially, carrying on a dialogue myself at this Web site, day after day. The calculator makes useful information readily available to me, and the record acts as my conscience and helps keep me on track. The graphs are a fun extra touch.
This is an aspect of the Web that I hadn't been aware of before. And I could imagine a number of other applications, based on similar psychological principles. Provide useful conversions from real-world experiences to numerical values, and store the personal records for future reference and to track progress toward set goals.
Even looking at Health Watch, there's so much more that could be done. As it is, they let you enter your weight and how much you have exercised, but those numbers are just static -- they don't do anything with them and don't combine them in any way with the nutrition information. It's easy enough to just write your weight down, and write down how much you exercise, and that's all the site does, just provides you with a space to record that static information. But they, or someone else could provide calculations of how many calories you burn with certain amounts of certain kinds of exercise; and provide a total tally of calories taken in minus calories burned. And with enough data about your food intake, exercise, and weight, it should be possible to arrive at some metric for metabolism and some estimate of how projected changes in what you eat and how much you exercise are likely to change your weight.
Or imagine a Web site that tried to do something similar with regard to your financial budget -- so you don't have to enter each and every penny spent, like you do with a Quicken, but rather enter activities by chunks and let the calculator fill in a likely estimate (with some tweaking over time by you) -- for instance, you click that you went to a movie, or had lunch out, or drove a hundred miles. And if you shop online a lot, even have a little app that reminds you while you are shopping what your budget allows for that kind of thing this month and where you stand now.
Imagine, too, that you add to this kind of online conscience a link to a friend who has your best interest at heart. Say you find it very difficult to discipline yourself with regard to food or finances or whatever. Then you name a buddy, and once a week that buddy gets an email reminder with a URL that will show them the graph of your progress, so that buddy can cheer you on and share in the joy of your little victories or give you a kick, if necessary.
I guess the Web and the new capabilities it provides are becoming an important part of our daily lives -- not just a source of information, and not just a communication medium -- an extension of ourselves, a way for us to help ourselves become what we want to become.
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