Diet Power Diet Software Review: A Rebuttal From Terry Dunkle, Diet Power Founder and CEO

A short while ago, I posted our "in the trenches" product tester Amie Gannt's review of the Diet Power diet software (you can read Amie's assessment of the software by clicking here!).

That review didn't sit well with Terry Dunkle, the founder of the Diet Power software. He felt Amie's review was a bit unfair -- so I offered him the opportunity to provide UltimateFatBurner.com's visitors with a rebuttal. He was, as you can imagine, keen to take me up on the offer!

So, with no further delay, here's what Terry had to say about Amie's review...

Beg to differ on several points in Ms. Gantt's review of Diet Power 4.4. Here they are, in the order in which they appear in her review.

"It then tells you that you're being an idiot."

Diet Power would never call a user an idiot. We're Not That Kind of Company(TM). We use positive reinforcement, not negative.

"The program does some magic math."

Diet Power's math is not "magic." You can read how we calculate your calorie budget at...

http://support.dietpower.com/diet/calorie_budget.htm

"There are glaring errors" in Diet Power's food database.

On the contrary, Diet Power's food database is more accurate than most, because it rests on the latest USDA laboratory analysis of leading brands.

A completely updated database is one of the two most important new features of Diet Power 4.4.

By "errors" she apparently means "omissions," since her main complaint is that we didn't add sushi to the database, despite user requests.

Most sushi is raw fish wrapped in or sitting on glutinous rice and kelp. Since all three of these are in our Food Dictionary, you can add your favorite varieties of sushi to the Dictionary by using our Recipe Box function. It takes less than a minute, and the user-added recipe will be there for logging ever after.

No software company can accommodate every request from its customers. At last count, we had several thousand suggestions -- many of them conflicting. We can't do everything our users request, unless they're willing to pay $4999 for the next version of Diet Power, instead of $49.99. (We think good nutrition is *worth* $4999, but that's another subject.)

"...a new visually chaotic food log screen."

Changes in our Food Log are the main improvement in Version 4.4, and most users who have commented on the changes seem delighted with them. The organization of the screen is not "chaotic," but completely logical and carefully designed for greater efficiency and speed in logging your meals.

The changes in Diet power 4.4 also make it easier for you to decide which foods are best to eat. Our program is now the only one on the market that shows which of your favorite foods will improve your nutrition most if eaten now. This new "Real-Time Eating Coach" is what the color-coding is all about. (Eat only green-coded foods and your nutrition will improve.) For details, just click the Food Log's help button.

"The exercise dictionary is similarly flawed."

Again, if you click the Help button in the Exercise Dictionary, you will understand why, even though we list 1000 different physical activities, we don't advise logging those that appear in gray. This feature makes our Exercise Dictionary *superior* to others, not inferior.

"...you certainly burn more calories running outside in 100 degrees than when it's only 40."

Yes, but if you understand how Diet Power calculates your calorie budget, you'll realize that this doesn't matter. The program automatically corrects for any fluctuations introduced by varying temperatures. (No competing programs do.)

"Great: let me run to the folate store."

Amie apparently hasn't read the Help. If the Food Log says you need more folate, you can simply click "Folate" in the Nutrient Summary tab to see a list of foods you've eaten in the past month that are richest in folate. You can also click the PowerFoods tab in the Food Dictionary and list all 11,000 foods in order of their richness in folate. And if you don't want to bother looking at individual nutrients at all, you can click the Recent button in your Food Log and see which of your recently eaten foods will most improve *all* your nutrients if eaten now. (That's another Real-Time Eating Coach function.)

"If I save a bajillion calories, I can eat an entire cheesecake at the end of the month, right? Somehow that logic seems a bit flawed, nutritionally."

In this statement, Gantt confuses calorie balance with nutrient balance. Yes, you *can* eat an entire cheesecake if you've undereaten by 2000 calories at the end of a month -- but Diet Power doesn't claim that the nutrients in those calories will be well balanced.

"Diet Power seems the most accurate the more obsessive you are."

Yes and no. The whole premise of Diet Power is that a) you can't lose weight at the rate you want without knowing how many calories you need, and b) you can't know how many calories you need without accurately reporting the number of calories you're eating and how your weight is changing in response to those calories.

Nevertheless, you *don't* have to be perfectly obsessive to get results from Diet Power: the program knows how to fill in data when you skip days, and even auto-corrects for errors in the portion sizes you report. See...

http://support.dietpower.com/diet/calorie_budget.htm

Most of these misunderstandings will never occur if users of our program simply click the Help button at the bottom of each dialog. We know that Help in many programs is poorly written and organized, but think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you read ours.

-- Terry Dunkle, Diet Power founder and CEO

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