http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/vivonic-review.html

The software is very good, works well, and promotes success just as you described. I'm surprised it is not more well known or more widely available. I found it after reading an ad in one of the men's health magazines. There is a Palm only demo available on Handango. I found and purchased it at a local fitness store listed on the Vivonics web site.

In the month and a half I've been using it, I've 'moved' nearly two inches from my mid-section to my arms and chest. I feel better, don't get tired so quickly, sleep better, rise earlier in the morning and don't need an alarm clock to do it.

Of course, I've been learning from a lot of sources about nutrition and health, but the Vivonics software keeps the real numbers right in front of me. It's like playing a game where your strategy has real-life effects.

Thanks for the review and an opportunity to comment. I hope your own success has endured and continues.

I am glad you enjoyed my review!

Vivonic is and has been an integral part of my fitness strategy. I have coupled it with the SportBrain Fitness Tracker (Which Julie & I reviewed here, together: http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/sportbrain-review.html), and have really had noticeable success.

As I have mentioned before, it was the fact that Vivonic (and a couple other Palm favorites) were not available on the Pocket PC that caused me to carry two PDAs around for the longest! I have learned to track everything on my desktop, as I wait for Vivonic to become available for use on my iPAQ.

Good luck with the program, as you are finding out - it really works if you keep at it!

Before I answer your question, I need to state that I used DietLog exclusively and for a l-o-n-g time, before Vivonic came out. It is a very good program, and had I not tried Vivonic, I would still be using it today.

I was interested in Vivonic because here was a company that was making a handheld device, but had the forethought to realize that some people already had a PDA they were carrying around, and that they might not want an additional device. I was impressed that they made their program avaiable for people with Palms. I also liked the fact that they said they would offer different programs for different peoples needs.

Some of the first things that I noticed were that diet & excercise were joined together very strongly. That there was massive desktop support, including the internet site, to make the program all the more custom.

I like the "back" button, instead of having to restart from scratch. I also like that their food database is humongus, and includes many of the fast foods and TV dinners that I actually eat.

Their customer service is quick to respond, even if they aren't telling you what you want to hear; like when I keep bugging them about when they will have a Pocket PC version!

As with everything, it is a matter of personal preference; I just happen to prefer Vivonic.

The Vivonic program for the Palm has been a great help towards these results. Several reasons:

1) A well written, easy to use program.
2) The graphs showing your daily and monthly exercise AND nutrition results are most helpful for me. As they say, a picture is worth a 1000 words (and often, a 1000 calories!)
3) I use the Palm quite a bit for work stuff, so I've almost always got it around. I have no excuse not to enter the exercise and nutrition info
4) Helps with the discipline of maintaining a program.

Judie :0)

If it had this feature, I would buy it. I'm leaning towards DietLog which allows for additions from the handheld. Actually, by the time the DietLog demo expires, I will have invested so much time into adding my foods that I will have to buy it.

I found the information it provided very useful, esp. the nutritional breakdowns. Unfortunately, adding new/different foods is an incredibly tedious process, and is what ultimately led me to stop using it regularly (tho' I'm going to give it another go).

While I do credit Vivonic for having a fairly large database covering the foods most people eat, it's not very useful for me. I'm a fast-food chain avoiding vegetarian, so that knocks out 80% of the database for me. Of course, that's my problem, not Vivonic's, but I wish they'd produce more database updates, allow for modulized (did I just make up a word?) databases (e.g., meats, vegs, drinks, etc.), or make it easier for other to add to the databases (e.g., a group effort- where there's collective contributions to the database- I'll volunteer to do the beer!).

The only other complaint I had was the difficulty of adjusting the pre-planned workouts that they offer for download. While I *really* like many of those plans, they often need some tweaking to fit my lifestyle/schedule. And trying to do that is an exercise in frustration.

All of this said, I still think the Fitness Planner is an excellent program, and so long as folks understand the limitations I explained above (which may not be limitations at all for many people), I think it's a worthy purchase for most.

Cheers-

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Originally posted by Jason:
I'm a balancelog owner and was looking for review on it. Ran into this tread on vivonic. So I downloaded the trial to compare. So far the control over what I'm tying to do is much greater with BalanceLog than Vivonic. I can set up my whole user profile. Height, wieght, age, sex, body fat, framesize, and weight goal. Weight goal can be done one of two ways by a certain date, or pounds per week. Then you get to choose one of seveal dietes and it calculates out your caloire budget. You may also set exercise goals.
Logging is fast and easy, and when ever you enter the program you are presented with a screen that tell you where your at for the day. There are more graphing options then vivonic, and a few more features. Don't know how the food and exercise database compare, need to test out vivionic a little more. However vivonic offers a 5 day trail, BalanceLog does not. But from my use of BalanceLog I recommend it. I found that it has more features, and it's better at helping you track your diet and goals.

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Anyway, that question might be academic, since at the time of writing, the Vivonic web-site no longer seem to exist...

I'm reading these posts with great interest, as I'm looking for food and workout planners. I'm more interested in figuring out the correct nutrition for a weightlifting + aerobic regimen. To get the full gains from the weights, one needs quite a bit of nutrition. It's easy to go over and develop a stomach while doing this, or under and never get the gains one is straining <and paining> for.
Does anyone here have experience with one or a combination of Palm software to do this??
Much appreciated

Larry S
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Originally posted by Jowls:
The $49 for the program is the Palm-version only. If you want the entire package (PC and Palm) you have to shell out close to a 100 bucks. That makes the Vivonics program the most expensive piece of fitness software for Palm by far. That will be $30 more than Balancelog - the second most expensive. Is it really that good?

Anyway, that question might be academic, since at the time of writing, the Vivonic web-site no longer seem to exist...

regards,
Jowls

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