BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : OCTOBER 16, 2000 ISSUE
BUSINESSWEEK LIFESTYLE The Skinny on Diet Dot-Coms Looking to lose? These Web sites offer a range of recipes If you have been struggling to shed some pounds, the Internet won't force you to bypass that Big Xtra! for a McSalad Shaker the next time you take the kids to McDonald's. But millions of overweight Americans have found that some weight-loss Web sites can help give them an edge in the battle of the bulge. Not surprisingly, the advantages the Internet offers dieters are the hallmarks of the online world: convenience, anonymity, a wealth of information, and a ready-made community of fellow sufferers. You can do your weekly weigh-in in the privacy of your bathroom (although you don't get a round of applause if you've dropped five pounds). You can learn about nutrition from e-mail newsletters. And in your weakest moments, you can check into a chat room and let other dieters egg you on. The key to using the Internet most successfully to pare off pounds, however, is to take full advantage of the interactive features and the professional counseling that many weight loss sites offer. A recent study at Brown University compared individuals who used the Internet only for information with those who relied on it to monitor their progress. People in the second group submitted weekly diet and exercise diaries to a clinical psychologist, who evaluated them and suggested improvements in their nutrition and workout regimen. They also received weight-loss tips in a weekly e-mail newsletter and could use online bulletin boards for social support. After three months, weight loss for the second group averaged nine pounds, triple that of the first. ''Based on our findings, you should look for more structured programs based on sound weight-loss principles and some kind of interaction with a professional,'' advises Deborah Tate, an assistant professor of psychology at Brown's School of Medicine. Diet sites vary in scope, from the American Dietetics Assn. (www.eatright.org), which offers articles on general nutrition, to the American Diabetes Assn. (www.diabetes.org), which addresses specific dietary needs. A good place to get the skinny about weight-loss sites is Tufts University's Nutrition Navigator (www.navigator.tufts.edu). It assigns numerical rankings to more than 200 sites and briefly reviews the quality of their nutrition information. My favorite: the Mayo Clinic's www.mayohealth.org. It includes a library of diet information, answers to nearly 200 commonly asked nutrition and dieting questions, a cookbook with such traditional recipes as crab cakes made healthier, and an interactive Pizza Counter that lets you build and analyze your own pies. Lisa Maystre, a 33-year-old executive secretary for New York brokerage Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, uses DietWatch.com (table). She likes it for the discipline of logging in every meal and workout in order to track her progress. The DietWatch site summarizes her daily intake, awarding smiley faces when she meets nutritional targets and flagging categories where she doesn't, such as a calcium deficit or too much saturated fat. Maystre has lost 30 pounds over the past year, going from a size 16 to a size 10. ''With my schedule, I don't have the time to drive someplace and pay them to tell me what I have to eat,'' she says. GOBBLE, GOBBLE. To evaluate the usefulness of online diet coaching, I signed up for personalized weight-loss programs at a handful of popular sites. Some were free; some charged a monthly fee. Don't immediately discount the for-pay programs: Dieting takes a commitment, and sometimes a financial one will work. Typically, these sites ask for a little information, such as age, gender, height, and weight, and develop a diet and exercise program based on your current and target body mass index, or what you should roughly weigh in relation to your height. Some, such as Asimba, ask for more, such as your neck and waist sizes, a way to better determine your percentage of body fat. At Nutrio (www.nutrio.com), you fill out an exhaustive questionnaire that probes your attitudes toward dieting and exercise. For that, you get a free, computer-generated report assessing your current health and state of mind. To get the personalized program and counseling, you're invited to upgrade to a platinum membership at $9.95 a month. I passed. By then, all the annoying pop-up advertisements for Pepcid AC were beginning to give me heartburn. Asimba, at $24 a month, is one of the more expensive programs. Its site is strongly tilted toward active sports and has lots of appealing, interactive features (not the least of which was the suggestion that I needed to lose only 3 pounds, compared with up to 27 pounds for the other sites I registered with). It sends you a daily e-mail reminder that spells out exactly what to eat and recommends a selection of aerobic and strength exercises. But I found its menu suggestions repetitious and not very appetizing. Three days in a row it proposed a turkey sandwich for lunch. Another lunch included peanut butter and crackers and 15 baby carrots--followed by 15 more baby carrots as an afternoon snack. There is a calculator that lets you substitute foods of equivalent nutritional value for items you don't like, such as green beans for broccoli, and an Asimba staffer reviews your record weekly and offers suggestions for fine-tuning the program. EDiets' menus were much more inventive, and you can choose whether you want to use prepared foods or make everything from scratch. I opted for a mix of the two and printed a week's worth of lunches from the grocer's freezer, typically a Stouffer's Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice entree, and recipes for do-it-yourself dinners at night, such as veal cutlet Parmesan with pasta and fruit for dessert. CyberDiet offers similar options, but from a grab bag of menu tools that aren't well integrated. It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to choose one program, the Express Menus, for example, or the 30-Day Diet Plan. There's also a separate Health Club area with its own menu program. All of them came up with different recommendations for my daily caloric intake, ranging from 1,400 to 1,876 calories. BUDDY SYSTEM. Beyond recording the specifics of your diet and workout, you should take advantage of the opportunity to interact with other members. All of the sites offer chat sessions and bulletin boards to share the inevitable pitfalls and little victories with others in the same boat. At DietWatch, you can find like-minded diet buddies by searching members by their interests--jogging or photography, say. EDiets runs 35 support groups, divided by age and weight goals, and including discussion boards for tall women or military wives. By and large, the free sites don't offer one-on-one counseling with a professional. They do, however, make dietitians and behavioral psychologists available for online chats. With the holidays approaching, you might want to pick a program, start learning what you can and cannot get away with, and stick with it. Lisa Maystre's downfall used to be whole pints of ice cream. These days, though, she's more likely to eat a half-cup of fat-free sorbet--and then dutifully record it in her DietWatch diary. By LARRY ARMSTRONG _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The Skinny on Diet Dot-Coms TABLE: Slim-and-Trim Sites INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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