FAQs

1. What is Diet Power?
   A health tool for your computer. Diet Power is the world's most effective and user-friendly nutrition software, designed to help you balance your diet and master any weight problem permanently. It's also the only diet program that can guarantee success.
2. How does it work?
   By helping you "Eat With Your Eyes Open"™. Diet Power shows you instantly how each food and exercise choice will affect your progress toward your goals. It also gives you daily targets—and clear advice on meeting them.
3. What's the main difference between Diet Power and other weight-management systems?
   Confidence. Other systems don't track you evenly toward your goal—they only estimate where you'll be at the end of your diet. Our Calorie Feedback™ feature ensures that you'll reach your goal on the date you select. Meanwhile, our Food Coach can show you which of your favorite foods is best to eat right now—something no other program can do.
4. What do I eat?
   Anything you want. You can use Diet Power with the same foods you enjoye eating now—or with Weight Watchers, the Zone Diet, the Atkins Diet, Slim-Fast, the South Beach Diet, or any other weight-loss system.
5. Does it work with diet pills?
   With or without drugs—whatever your doctor recommends.
6. Will I be hungry?
   Not if you don't want to be. Although Diet Power works accurately at any speed, it's especially good for losing weight slowly, by improving your nutrient balance instead of slashing your calorie intake. (For permanent weight loss, experts recommend losing no more than two pounds a week.)
7. Is it hard to learn?
   No—it's remarkably easy. The user interface was designed by a top editor of Reader's Digest, skilled at translating medical science into plain English. And our animated tutorials can make you an expert in minutes.
8. What's a typical day like?
   Just like before, but without the guesswork.

   In the morning, you open Diet Power and key in your weight. The program shows you "Food for Thought," a bit of advice and inspiration tailored to your goal. Meanwhile, the program adjusts your calorie budget by comparing your new weight with your recent meals and exercise. The adjustment is usually only a few points, but it guarantees reaching your goal weight on your target date.

   With an eye on today's budget, you log your breakfast foods. Let's say you're having Cheerios, milk, and strawberries this morning. As you drag these from the Food Dictionary into your log, their calories show up in the Scoreboard on the left side of your screen. Meanwhile, 32 other nutrients are being tallied in your Nutrient History.

   Looking at the Scoreboard, you're pleased to see that you got only 15% of your calories from fat this morning. But your Calorie Bank is in the red by 1554, meaning you've overeaten by 1554 calories since the beginning of your diet. That's almost half a pound. You decide to be careful at lunch.

   At the office, somebody orders Pizza Hut pizza—two kinds, Pepperoni Pan and Chicken Supreme. Looking these up in Diet Power, you discover that Chicken Supreme gets only 27 percent of its calories from fat, versus 42 percent for Pepperoni Pan. Wisely, you choose the former.

   Thanks to this decision and a 20-minute walk that awarded you 108 extra calories, you arrive home feeling confident that dinner will be a success. Sitting down to your computer, you import your Diet Power records from an email you sent yourself before leaving the office. Your Food Coach says that you're low in vitamin A, and that one of the A-rich foods you like is broccoli. After logging a cup of broccoli, you look up lasagna and are delighted to see that one serving will raise your Nutrition Quotient by eight points. With help like this at your fingertips, you sit down to dinner knowing exactly what is right for your goals.

   Knowledge isn't the only thing you need to make a diet successful, of course. But knowledge is better than ignorance. Because it's easy to fall off the wagon when you're riding in the dark.
9. Do I have to weigh myself every day?
   Not at all. You can log your actual weight once a week, once a month—whenever you like. On days when you don't record your weight, Diet Power simply assumes that your weight hasn't changed. When you finally do weigh in, the program immediately brings your calorie budget up to date. (If you'd rather use a constant calorie budget, you can do that instead.)
10. Won't logging my foods take a lot of time?
    No. Diet Power's Food Dictionary offers four different search methods that can find almost any item instantly. After a couple of days' experience, most people can log a meal in less than two minutes.
11. What about recipes?
    You'll love this. Besides starting you off with 100 scrumptious recipes, Diet Power lets you add as many as you want, complete with directions in case you want to print them for friends. Each printout includes a nutrient profile. Fold on the dotted line and the printout becomes a 4"-by-6" recipe card. (You can also email your recipes to anyone.)
12. Can Diet Power help me gain weight?
    Certainly. Just choose a goal higher than your current weight. Diet Power works either way.
13. How about weight maintenance?
    That's easy, too: set a goal equal to your present weight.
14. Is the program medically sound?
    You bet. Diet Power has been developed over a period of 18 years in consultation with leading experts on nutrition, weight loss, exercise physiology, and behavioral science—all of them published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The program has been carefully checked for accuracy.
15. What do the critics say?
    A few excerpts:

    "It's truly fantastic—the best thing I've seen for getting an instant picture of your nutritional status and how to fix it. As a computer klutz, I found the program amazingly easy to use. Even for a pro, it's an eye-opener." (Jean Carper, syndicated nutrition columnist and author of the bestselling book Food Pharmacy)

    "A powerful tool for self-management." (Robert Epstein, founder and director emeritus, Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies)

    "4 Stars!" (Shape magazine)

    For more reviews, click here.
16. What do users say?
    Again, a few quotes:

    "I've lost 100 pounds with your program, and I just had to phone and say, 'Thank you!' Diet Power is wonderful—and your company must be wonderful to have designed it." (Homemaker in Minnesota)

    "I used Diet Power to lose 25 pounds while preparing for heart surgery. It worked well—I actually enjoyed dieting!" (Business manager in Gaithersburg, Md.)

    "After gaining 20 pounds during my divorce, I finally discovered Diet Power. It's turned my life around. Not only am I slim and trim for the first time in years, but I've finally found my true love. We were married in October." (Executive in Princeton, N.J.)

    See our Reviews section for more.
17. What do I need to run Diet Power?
    1. Windows 2000, ME, XP, or Vista. (We don't offer a Mac version, but this could change. To express interest, send an email to . Meanwhile, you can run Diet Power on a Mac equipped with PC-emulator software such as Virtual PC.)
    2. At least one gigabyte of free disk space.
    3. At least 256 megabytes of RAM.
18. Can I use it at the office, too?
    Yes. You can easily carry your records back and forth on a "travel disk" or email them to yourself. Updating each computer takes only a few seconds.
19. Does it handle multiple users?
    Yes. The exact number depends on which edition you buy:

    • The Personal Edition allows up to four people to use the program concurrently (provided all live in the same household).
    • The Consultant's Edition allows a doctor, nutritionist, personal trainer, or other practitioner to prescribe single-user copies to any number of patients or clients, and to read their histories from "travel bag " files that they email or bring with them to office visits.
    • The Large-Group Edition can handle dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of users. (They cannot access the program simultaneously, however, unless it is installed on more than one computer.) This version is ideal for health clubs, corporate wellness programs, and similar applications.
    • The Classroom Edition, too, can handle up to thousands of users. It's the same as the Large-Group Edition, but priced per-seat instead of per-group-member.
20. Will it do anything else for me?
    Lots. Besides dieting, you can use Diet Power to…
    

    • check the levels of 33 different nutrients in 11,000 foods—plus any foods and recipes you've added to the dictionary yourself.
    • rank all dictionary entries by their content of any nutrient.
    • earn extra calories through exercise. Diet Power knows the "burn rates" of more than 1000 activities, including aerobics, sports, martial arts, exercise machines, occupations, house and yardwork, leisure pursuits, and more. (Every burn rate is customized to your current body weight.)
    • find your Body Mass Index (BMI) and learn its relationship to hidden health risks such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
    • keep daily notes in an electronic calendar and appointment book.
    • customize the program for pregnancy, high blood pressure, and other special concerns.
    • remind you to drink more water when your consumption is too low.
    • keep daily graphs of your weight, intake of any nutrient, and up to six custom variables of your own choosing (waist size, blood glucose level, etc.)
    • print your diet plan, nutrient profile, or any other report—or output it to a disk file for use with other software.
    • get the latest nutrition news and other features from our website.
    • become an expert on nutrition by reading Diet Power's 100,000-word Help system. It covers hundreds of topics, from Alcohol to Zinc, in a style you'll find refreshingly lucid.
21. What's the price?
    That depends on what you're buying. (Prices are in U.S. dollars. To convert to another currency, click here.)

    • The Personal Edition lets up to four people in a household use the program concurrently. It costs $49.99 via download or $59.99 on a CD-ROM. (If you own a version previous to 4.4, however, you can upgrade for $26.99 via download or $36.99 on a CD.)
    • The Consultant's Edition allows a doctor, nutritionist, personal trainer, or other practitioner to keep dozens or hundreds of users' records on his or her office computer. It also lets you prescribe single-user copies to patients or clients who want to use the program at home and either email or bring their records to your office on a "travel disk." The master copy for your office machine costs $250. The copies you prescribe to clients are sold to you at wholesale; the price depends on the number you buy. Details.
    • The Large Group Edition lets you install the program on machines used by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people in a health club, a corporation, or any other institution. The price is $250 plus a per-member charge that depends on the number of members. Details.
    • The Classroom Edition lets you install the program on machines used by students in K-12 and college settings. Its price is $250 plus $50 for each computer on which the program is installed. Details.

    All prices are one-time payments, not subscription fees, and include one year of tech support. (We may institute annual support fees at some point, but have no plans to do so at this time.).
22. Is there a free demo?
    Better than that, there's a free trial of the complete program—and you can have it running on your computer just minutes from now. The free trial is exactly the same as the paid version, except that it works for 15 days instead of permanently.

    After evaluating the free trial, you can make it work permanently with a phone call or a quick visit to our online Health Shop. (The conversion won't harm your diet records.)

    To download the free trial, click here. Or, if you don't mind waiting a few days, we'll ship you the trial version on a CD-ROM. To get the the CD-ROM (there is no charge for it), click here.
23. Does it come with a warranty?
    Yes—a one-year warranty. If you are unhappy with the personal edition* of Diet Power for any reason during that period, just tell us and your money will be cheerfully refunded. (You must also erase each installation you've made and return any disks or printed matter you received.)

    The personal edition serves up to four people within a single household. Warranties for other editions differ. For information, click here.

24. How do I order?
    Diet Power is not sold in stores, but you can buy it from our online Health Shop. (To order by phone, fax, mail, or email, click here.)
25. Do I need any other equipment?
    Not much—just a good bathroom scale and a set of measuring cups and spoons. A food scale is also recommended, but not required.
26. I've already bought Diet Power. Is there an upgrade?
    Yes, if you got your copy before February 27, 2007. You can upgrade to Diet Power 4.4 within minutes. See our upgrade page.