Diet Pro - Diet and weight management software

Upgrading to Diet Pro 2005

Starting with Diet Pro 2005 you will need a version upgrade license to upgrade to the latest version of the software. The upgrade from Diet Pro 2003 to Diet Pro 2005 is free. Free upgrade licenses will be e-mailed to Diet Pro 2003 users on Tuesday, April 5, 2005. If you did not receive your free license, please post a message on the Diet Pro Licensing Forum. We will get you your upgrade license right away.

We recommend that you obtain your Diet Pro 2005 upgrade license before installing the upgrade.

We also recommend that you backup your Diet Pro 2003 data prior to installing the upgrade.

Click here to go to the download page.

What's New in Diet Pro 2005

Calorie bank and calorie budget

Probably the most important change in the Diet Pro 2005 is the introduction of the calorie bank and the calorie budget. When you create a profile and choose your weight goal Diet Pro calculates a daily calorie budget that will enable you to meet your goal (i.e. if you eat 1437 calories per day for the next 120 days you will reach your weight goal of 135 pounds). If you don't consume all of the calories in your calorie budget for a given day, the extra calories go into your calorie bank to be consumed another day. The objective is to keep your calorie bank balance as close to zero as possible thereby ensuring that your daily calorie consumption is as close to your calorie budget as possible. Diet Pro takes into account exercise when calculating your daily deposit to your calorie bank. You can effectively raise your daily calorie budget by exercising (i.e. if you burn an extra 100 calories while exercising you can consume another 100 calories of food without affecting your calorie bank).

You will find that the calorie bank makes it easier to keep your diet on track. It gives you long term feedback to help you meet your goals while allowing you some flexibility in your eating (i.e. you can still splurge a bit on special occasions and exceed your calorie budget provided you are under budget on a few other days).

Improved profile interface

The new profile interface includes treeview and toolbar icons for calendar, meal plan, exercise plan, goal data, diary and photograph views. The calendar view is a composite view that lets you view and end all kinds of data whereas the other views are specialized.

New profile wizard with ideal weight calculator and weight goal analysis

The new profile wizard has been improved to help you choose an attainable and appropriate weight goal for yourself. Diet Pro will suggest an ideal weight for you and tell you how easy or hard your diet will be based on your planned weight loss and diet duration.

Improved profile view

Diet Pro 2005's profile view now includes a weight progress graph that displays your actual weight, your planned weight (calculated from your weight goal and diet duration) and your projected weight (based on your average daily weight loss during the last two weeks).

Move and copy profile data

All types of profile data (meals, exercise, goal data, diary entries and photographs) can be moved or copied to other dates and other profiles.

Import and export profile data

All types of profile data (meals, exercise, goal data, diary entries and photographs) can be exported, e-mailed and imported using the FDX file format.

Improved calendar month view

Many changes have been made to the calendar month view. You can choose to display summary calorie, fat, weight or carbohydrate data for the month in the calendar. The month view also includes a nutrition summary for the month, a diet summary (a summary of your diet progress to date), an exercise summary and a cost summary.

Water tracker

The water tracker monitors your water intake (from both food and beverages) and suggests an ideal water intake based on your current age, weight and exercise level.

Diet summaries

The calendar day, meal plan, exercise and goal data views include a diet summary element that summarizes your diet progress to date. It tells you how many pounds you have lost (or gained), how many calories are left in your calorie budget for the day and how many calories are in your calorie bank.

Improved cost summaries

Daily cost summaries have been improved to show graphical and tabular breakdowns of meal costs. Weekly and month cost summaries show the cost breakdown by day.

Day, week and month nutrition summaries

Diet Pro 2005 now includes nutrition summaries for days, weeks and month. The day, week and month views of the calendar calculate average daily nutrition for their respective time periods. For example, you can now see that your vitamin C intake for a given month was only 75% of the recommended daily allowance.

Nutrition evaluations

The calendar and meal plan views now include nutrition evaluations for most nutrients. A nutrition evaluation for a nutrient tells you how much of the nutrient you have consumed in the selected time period and compares this value to the recommended amount. It also suggests ingredients and recipes that will help you increase (or decrease) or consumption to match the recommended daily allowance. It even tells you exactly how much of each ingredient you would have to consume to make up the difference between your current consumption and your recommended consumption. The nutrition evaluations can be customized to control the number of ingredients and recipes that are recommended or whether they are displayed at all.

Improved calendar interface

The edit calendar interface has been improved to increase usability and performance. The window opens with the last-used tab selected (e.g. if you were last working with dinner data then the window will open with the dinner tab selected). The add calendar items interface has been changed from a wizard to a standard dialog to reduce the number of steps required to add an ingredient or recipe to the calendar. The interface now allows you to search or browse ingredients, recipes and menus. The interface also remembers the last 10 ingredients, recipes and menus you selected, making it much quicker to select frequently-used items. The interface also remembers the mode you last used. For example, if the last item you added to the calendar was an ingredient and you found that ingredient using the search mode, the next time you open the window it will open in search for ingredients mode.

Bulk move/copy of calendar data

Diet Pro 2005 lets you copy or move a range of calendar dates. You can move or copy all meals within the date range or select the meals (or meal items) you want to move or copy. This is particularly useful if you have a standard weekly menu that you want to repeat from week to week.

Purge calendar items

Delete a range of dates from the meal planning calendar.

Add range of meal dates to grocery list

Add an entire week (or any other range of dates) to the grocery list at once. You can add all meal with the date range or select the meals (or meal items) you want to shop for.

Exercise tracking

Diet Pro 2005 gives you powerful exercise tracking tools. Diet Pro includes data for over 250 different activities. This data includes the number of calories each activity burns per minute for each pound of body weight. Using this data Diet Pro can take the duration of your exercise and automatically calculate the number of calories burned performing a given exercise. You can add as many of your own activities as you like. Calories burned during exercise is taken into account in your calorie budget and calorie bank.

Improved diary

The new diary view makes it easier to view, edit and print your diary entries. Diary data can be easily moved and copied between dates and profiles.

Improved photograph management

The photograph view lets you associate any number of photographs with a day for a profile. You can name the photographs, add comments and control their order. Photographs can be easily moved and copied between dates and profiles.

Export reports as text (CSV)

Data in Diet Pro reports can now be exported as comma delimited text that can be opened by text editors or Microsoft Excel. You can configure the export to include column headings in the export file.

Compare recipes, ingredients, etc.

Diet Pro 2005 lets you view side-by-side comparisons of any two recipes, ingredients, menus, calendar days, calendar weeks, calendar months, meal plans, exercise plans, goal data views, diaries, photographs, glossary items, cooking techniques, grocery lists, inventory items or activities.

Improved recipe cost element

The cost element of the recipe view has been improved to include both cost per serving and total recipe cost for each recipe ingredient.

Improved recipe review interface

The interface to create and edit recipe reviews has been improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly.

Recipe review capture

Diet Pro 2005 lets you capture recipe reviews in a manner similar to recipe, ingredient and cooking technique capture.

Reset recipe and menu nutrition

The recipe and menu nutrition interfaces include a button to clear the nutrition values.

Improved on hand feature for recipes

The introduction of inventory items has improved the way Diet Pro determines whether you can make a recipe with the ingredients you have on hand. An inventory item (e.g. milk) can be associated with multiple ingredients (e.g. whole milk, 1%, 2% and skim) and you can specify which of the ingredients is the default (i.e. preferred) ingredient (e.g. 2% milk). In this way, if you specify that your milk inventory item is on hand, Diet Pro knows that you can make recipes that include whole, 1%, 2% or skim milk. This is particularly useful for ingredients such as ground beef which have many similar entries.

Recipe and technique media

Audio and video files can be added to recipes and cooking techniques.

Mass assign recipe types

Diet Pro 2005 lets you quickly assign a recipe type to a selection of recipes. For example, you might want to add the recipe type "Main Dish" to a selection of 100 recipes. In the same way you can remove a recipe type from a selection of recipes. This is particularly useful when you have imported a large number of recipes from another user whose recipe typing scheme doesn't match yours. For example, you might import 100 barbecue recipes and want to change the recipe type from "BBQ" to "Barbecue". This is easily accomplished by removing the "BBQ" recipe type and adding "Barbecue".

Improved recipe ingredient link interface

Many changes have been made to the recipe ingredient linking module. Now, if you are trying to link a recipe ingredient to the ingredient database but are missing the required measure, Diet Pro will try to create it automatically. For example, if you are trying to link a recipe ingredient such as "1 tsp butter" but the only measure for "butter" in the ingredient database is "1 tablespoon" Diet Pro will automatically create a "1 teaspoon" measure for you and link to it. If a measure can't be created automatically then you can create one manually using the new "Add Measure" button. Another useful addition to the link interface is the "Recently Used Items" folders added to the ingredient and recipe browse modes. Diet Pro remembers the last 10 items you linked to.

Update link quantity when recipe ingredient quantity

When you change a recipe ingredient quantity (e.g. you change "1 Tbs butter" to "2 Tbs butter" Diet Pro will prorate the link quantity accordingly.

Recipe, ingredient and technique capture buttons (including case buttons)

Capture buttons (i.e. a button to capture recipe name, a button to capture recipe ingredients, etc.) have been added to the recipe, ingredient and technique capture interfaces. Also, new buttons have been added to change the case of captured text to lower case, title case and sentence case.

1/4, 1/2, 3/4 characters added to ingredient and procedure tabs of recipe window

Buttons for "¼", "½", and "¾" have been added to the ingredient and procedure tabs of the new and edit recipe windows (next to the accent symbols).

Scanned recipe images

Scanned images of entire recipes (from magazines, cookbooks or handwritten recipes) can be added to Diet Pro recipes.

Customize %DV calculations

Until Diet Pro 2005 all %DV (percent daily value) calculations were based on a 2000 calorie diet. In Diet Pro 2005 you can change the number of calories used in the calculation to more closely match your diet (e.g. 2500 calories, 1500 calories, etc.).

Improved summary nutrition

Summary nutrition views have been modified to include net carbohydrates and MyPoints.

Percent calories from fat, protein, carbs and alcohol

Diet Pro 2005 now calculates calories from fat, protein, carbs and alcohol for ingredients, recipes, menus and meals. Calories from fat are displayed in all nutrition views. Calories from protein, carbs and alcohol are only shown in the detailed nutrition view.

Added calories from alcohol to the calorie pie chart

The calorie distribution chart found in recipe, ingredient, menu and meal plan nutrition analyses now includes calories from alcohol.

Improved MyPoints calculation

The MyPoints calculation has been changed to correctly account for the "fiber credit" when calculating points values for menus and meals. Also, users can specify a coefficient for saturated fat when setting up MyPoints (only required for UK users whose points formula differs from the US formula).

Recipe display options

Diet Pro 2005 lets you display recipe ingredients in a single column or two columns. Also, you can choose to have recipe images displayed to the right of ingredients or by themselves.

Optimize cookbook chapters

Diet Pro performs best when cookbook chapters contain approximately 100 recipes (or fewer). This also makes cookbook chapters easier to read and navigate. Diet Pro 2005 includes a feature that will automatically organize a cookbook chapter into subchapters in order to optimize performance. You can choose to create subchapters with a given number of recipes each or create subchapters to organize your recipes alphabetically (i.e. one subchapter for your recipes that begin with "A", another for recipes that begin with "B", etc.).

Fractional recipe and menu servings in meals and menus

When adding recipes to menus and meals or adding menus to meals you can now specify fractional servings. For example, when adding "Meat Loaf" to a menu you can specify "1.5" or "1 1/2" as the serving quantity (Diet Pro 2003 forced you to use whole numbers).

Improved menu interface

The add menu items interface has been changed from a wizard to a standard dialog to reduce the number of steps required to add an ingredient or recipe to a menu. The interface now allows you to search or browse ingredients, and recipes. The interface also remembers the last 10 ingredients and recipes you selected, making it much quicker to select frequently-used items. The interface also remembers the mode you last used. For example, if the last item you added to a menu was an ingredient and you found that ingredient using the search mode, the next time you open the window it will open in search for ingredients mode.

Ingredient barcode data

Barcode data can be entered for ingredient measures. This data is used by the new barcode lookup and inventory scan features (described below).

Improved ingredient pricing

In Diet Pro 2005 you can specify multiple prices for an ingredient. For example, Coca Cola might cost $0.69 per liter and $0.99 for 2 liters at one store and $0.75 per liter and $1.25 for two liters at another store. Diet Pro now prices grocery lists according to the quantity you are purchasing and where you are shopping.

SR-17 nutrition data

Diet Pro 2005 includes the latest version of the USDA nutrient database. If you are upgrading from a previous version of Diet Pro you will need to import the SR-17 data (the upgrade process does not upgrade your ingredients to SR-17 because many users have spent a lot of time customizing their ingredient database and prefer to choose how and when their ingredient data is upgraded).

Easier ingredient density estimation

Diet Pro needs to know the density of an ingredient in order to calculate the mass of a given volume of the ingredient. By entering the mass of any volume measure (normally available on product packaging) Diet Pro can determine the density and calculate the mass of all other volume measures. However, when the mass of a volume measure is not known the density can be estimated. In Diet Pro 2005 you can select a similar ingredient from the Ingredient database and its density will be used. For example, if you are creating a new ingredient entry for "Sprite" and don't know the mass of a volume measure you can select a similar ingredient such as "7-Up" or "Carbonated beverage, lemon-lime soda" to estimate the density.

Faster USDA ingredient database imports

The USDA ingredient import process has been changed to improve performance.

Easier ingredient capture

A new menu item has been added for capturing ingredients.

Simplified interface to add ingredients to menus and meals

The interface to add ingredients to menus and meals has been greatly simplified. You no longer have to enter display values for the ingredients (although you can change the display properties if you want to). You can also add new measures to ingredients without leaving the add ingredient to menu or add ingredient to calendar interfaces.

Reset grocery list

A popup menu has been added to the grocery list task to remove all grocery list items from the selected grocery list.

New grocery list features

Diet Pro 2005 includes many changes to the grocery list module. One of the most important changes is the handling of items on hand. For example, if you have one apple on hand and you add two apples to your grocery list and specify that you want items on hand to be deducted from your grocery list, only one apple will be added to your grocery list. But more importantly, if you add two more apples to the same grocery list Diet Pro remembers that the one apple you have on hand has already been accounted for in that grocery list so both apples will be added to the grocery list.

Create grocery list to restock all or part of inventory

Diet Pro makes it easy to create a grocery list to restock your inventory. For example, you could create a grocery list to restock your bar, your refrigerator or your entire inventory. The quantities on the resulting grocery list will reflect the differences between your inventory item order up to levels (the quantity on hand when your inventory is "full") and your on hand levels.

Create grocery list for a range of meal dates

Now you can create a grocery list for a range of meal date (e.g. an entire week or even a whole month). You can choose all of the meals within the date range or select which meals within the range you want to add to the grocery list.

Merge grocery list items

Diet Pro has gotten even smarter when it comes to merging items in grocery lists. When two grocery list items are linked to the same ingredients, reference the same inventory item or have the same name (either singular or plural) then they will be combined into a single item. For example, "1 onion" and "2 onions" will be combined to form a single grocery list item: "3 onions". When Diet Pro is unable to automatically combine to two grocery list items (because the software could not determine whether the two items were the same) then you can manually combine them using the new merge items interface.

Process grocery list receipt

Diet Pro 2005 enables you to update your inventory levels and ingredient pricing after you have completed a shopping trip.

Inventory management

Another important change in Diet Pro 2005 is the introduction of powerful inventory management tools. It is now much easier to specify and view what you have on hand. The new tools let you specify what you actually have on hand, how much you normally keep on hand (i.e. desired inventory level), minimum order quantities (e.g. when ordering don't order less than 1/2 lb), and much more. The inventory module is seamlessly integrated with the recipe, ingredient, grocery and store modules.

Inventory worksheet

Diet Pro can now print inventory worksheets to help you determine what you have on hand in your kitchen. The worksheet prints out the desired inventory items with columns for the old inventory values (i.e. the values in the database) and the new inventory values (i.e. the quantities actually in your kitchen).

Inventory items

The new inventory managment module required the introduction of a new concept in Diet Pro: inventory item. Inventory items correspond to things that you have in your pantry (milk, eggs, flour, etc.) and control how these things are ordered. For example, by creating an inventory item called "milk" you can control how milk is ordered and specify how much you have on hand.

Inventory updates via barcode scans

Users with barcode scanners (keyboard wedge style) can now quickly increment and decrement their inventory by scanning product barcodes. The inventory scan window can be opened and configured by scanning special barcode sequences, thus allowing completely hands-free operation.

Barcode lookup

Users with barcode scanners can quickly look up ingredient and inventory item records simply by scanning product barcodes. The barcode lookup window can be opened and configured by scanning special barcode sequences, thus allowing completely hands-free operation.

Stores

Diet Pro 2005 introduces the concept of stores to handle the fact that ingredients are sold at different prices at different stores. Now you can create your own stores and specify which ingredients are sold in which stores and at what cost. Given that Diet Pro 2005 also lets you specify where you are shopping (you can choose one or more stores for each grocery list) grocery list cost values more accurately reflect what you will actually pay at the supermarket. Also, you can specify the grocery aisles for each store and customize the order of the grocery aisles.

Customize grocery aisles for each store

Each store can have any number of grocery aisles. You can change the order of the grocery aisles for each store (i.e. the order in which the grocery aisles appear on a grocery list).

Associate stores with grocery lists

When you create a grocery list in Diet Pro 2005 you can specify where you will be shopping. This enables the software to choose the appropriate ingredient prices for the ingredients you will be purchasing.

HTML view customization

The new view options allow you to control the order of view elements in any HTML view. For example, you can now move the cooking tips element below then author notes element in the recipe view. The same applies to the ingredient, menu, calendar, grocery list, inventory item, store, glossary item, cooking technique and publication views.

List view customization

You can change the display properties (heading background color, heading text color, body background color, body text color, hyperlink text color and body text style) for any list view.

Resizable task columns

Column widths can now be changed in any list view.

Print lists

Any list view can now be printed (e.g. recipe list, ingredient list, etc.). You can choose to display all items in the list or only the selected items. You can also choose a custom heading for the printout, decide whether or not to include column headings and choose the number of columns to print.

HTML index

When exporting recipes, ingredients, grocery lists, glossary items or cooking techniques as HTML files, you can now choose to have an HTML index page generated automatically.

Recipe Processor 2000 import

Diet Pro 2005 can now import Recipe Processor 2000 recipe in addition to Meal-Master, MasterCook 4, MasterCook 5/6/7, Pocket Express and MicroKitchen Companion.

MasterCook 5/6/7 cuisine data

Diet Pro 2005 now imports cuisine data from MasterCook 5/6/7 files.

Recently used items

Many dialogs (including add calendar items, add menu items and link recipe ingredient) include a recently used item folder. This folder contains the last 10 items used in each context. This makes selecting frequently used items much quicker.

Drag and drop favorites

The drag and drop interface for favorites has been improved. Dragging an item onto a favorite folder no longer opens the favorite window.

Verify backup file

The verify backup utility allows you to verify the integrity and version of a backup file without performing a database restore.

SMTP e-mail

Diet Pro's mail protocol has changed from MAPI to SMTP. This enables Diet Pro to send recipes via e-mail using most e-mail accounts. The only requirement is that your mail provider must support mail relaying.

Enhanced FDX file format

The FDX file format has been expanded to support inventory items, stores and media (audio and video). FDX files generated by Diet Pro 2005 can be imported by Diet Pro 2003 but the new data will be ignored.

Improved license management

Radium Technologies' licensing system has been improved to support more complex licensing schemes (combinations of product upgrades and version upgrades, etc.).

Save license information to file

Diet Pro license data can now be saved to an XML file. This enables you to save your license data on a floppy disk (just in case your hard drive crashes). It also avoids having to retype all of your license information if you need to reinstall Diet Pro.

Web-based error reporting

Diet Pro's automatic error reporting system has changed from an e-mail system to a web-based system. When an error occurs you will have the option to send the details of the error via the Internet to Radium Technologies. This will help the developer diagnose the problem and fix it in the next release or service pack. You will not receive an e-mail reply (or any other reply) regarding this error information. For help diagnosing or fixing a problem, please visit the Radium Technologies support forum at www.radiumforums.com.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts have been added to the back and forward navigation buttons.

Orphaned photographs

A tool has been added to delete photographs that for one reason or another are no longer referenced by recipes, ingredients, menus, cooking techniques or profiles.

Publishing

Cookbook publishing has been removed from Diet Pro 2005. You can still export Diet Pro data to FDX, MasterCook 4, MasterCook 5/6, Meal-Master, Pocket Express and HTML files, but not Microsoft Word.