DietPower Help
If you haven't logged onto Diet Power in a while and would like to start over with a clean slate, you can. But first, realize that a short lapse in your diet can be handled without starting over. Reason: Every time Diet Power notices a day when you haven't logged any foods or exercises, it automatically fills the gap with certain assumptions based on your recent history. (See "What Diet Power Assumes," below.) The assumptions may be false, of course¾you may have sat on the couch eating Slim Jims the whole time. But if the relapse lasted only a day or two (or even a week if your goals are long-term), then any error you've introduced will be small, and over time it will shrink to an insignificant fraction of your history.
Your best bet, then, may be simply to climb back on the bandwagon with your old records intact. But if you're a purist, there are three ways to begin anew. See "Starting Over," below.
What Diet Power Assumes When you Skip Days
If
you didn't log on (i.e. didn't record any weights), Diet Power
prorates your nutrient intake against part
of your weight change during the skipped period (it assumes that
only 20 percent of the change was real and the rest was water loss or
gain), then adds to each skipped day the number of calories you averaged
in exercise during the preceding 30 days. Example:
You didn't log on for a week, and you gained a pound. During the month
before that week, you averaged 223 calories per day in exercise. Diet
Power assumes that your calorie intake during the "silent" week
was greater than your metabolic rate by 100 calories per day (because
gaining a pound requires an excess of 3500 calories and 20 percent of
that is 700 calories, or 100 per day) plus the 223 calories per day you
had been averaging in exercise. It also assumes that your intake of other
nutrients was proportional to the calorie increase. That is, if your calorie
intake rose 14 percent during the hiatus, then Diet Power assumes that
your sodium, fat, vitamin E, and other nutrient intakes also rose 14 percent.
If
you logged on but left your Food Log blank, Diet Power prorates
your nutrient intakes against your weight change as described above.
If
you logged on and logged even one food,
Diet Power doesn't prorate,
but assumes that the food(s) you recorded represent all
your foods for that day. (This means that if you logged your breakfast
but never got around to logging lunch and dinner, Diet Power will think
you maintained your weight on very few calories¾and
begin lowering your calorie budget accordingly. Hence, if you don't want
to bother recording lunch and dinner, your best bet is to delete your
breakfast, too, because an empty
log tells Diet Power to do the prorating described above.)
If you logged on but left your Exercise Log blank, the program assumes that you've had no exercise¾it doesn't fill in the 30-day average described above. Hence, logging your exercise is wise even if you don't log your meals.
Effects on Your Calorie Bank
The assumptions above are used mainly to update your metabolic rate and calorie budget. But Diet Power also applies them to your Calorie Bank balance. Thus, if Diet Power imputes a budget of 1522 calories for your "silent" day and your weight change suggests that you overate by 311 calories, the program will automatically subtract 311 calories from your bank balance that day.
Starting Over
If you have a long gap in your Diet Power records¾you haven't used the program in weeks or months¾the program will think you maintained your weight all that time while eating nothing, and consequently assign you a preposterously low calorie budget, or even a negative one. You may think that the only solution is to abandon your old records and enroll as a new user under a different identity. This has one great drawback, however: you'll lose your Favorites lists in your food and exercise logs. What's more, it isn't necessary.
The correct solution is to start a new diet under your current identity and simply tell Diet Power to "forget" what it has learned (or, rather, mislearned) about your metabolism:
Open the Goal
Setter
by clicking Diet > Goal Setter or the Goal Setter button:
Click the "Assume
I'm a New User" radio button.
Either set new goals or
keep your old ones¾it doesn't matter.
Click the Adopt Diet button and approve the new diet.
Diet Power will now begin relearning your metabolism, just as it did when you first enrolled.
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Last Modified: 7/1/07