Life form 1.0

It's very easy to use and you can make it as detailed as you like, it's your choice. If all you want to do is make sure you are consuming less calories than you burn each day (and therefore losing weight) or make sure your dietary proportions are in check (sodium, cholesterol, etc.), it's a breeze. But for those who want to monitor health conditions, document hospital/doctor appointments, test results, track exercise details, heck, even compare how your golf score is effecting your anxiety level it's all there.

The interface is top notch, easy to maneuver, and the help screens are thorough and well documented. Yes, the fast food/convenience food database is a little outdated, but all the basic foods are there, and any new info needed is easily taken from a package label or fast food website, entered in, and made a permanent part of the program. Works the same with your own recipes too... How hard is that?

To sum it up, I am very pleased with this wonderful product! Life Form really helps me to keep not only my weight under control, but my health in check too. Before Life Form, I never knew just how many fat calories were "sneaking" their way into my diet! The pie graph on the food tab gives a great visual on this, it lets you "see" exactly what you are putting into your body. Great awareness tool!


A very useful and flexible program   August 5, 2000
M. Conley (Viva Las Vegas)
49 out of 49 found this review helpful

I've been a user of LifeForm since early 1997, and haven't once considered replacing it with another program. Besides tracking almost anything you can think of, it allows you to add items to monitor. For example, if you've been tracking your blood pressure and want to compare that to your mood swings, you can track your mood for a while and then create a graph to compare the two and see if there's a correlation.

Compared to other programs, it is fast and easy to track your eating habits. It will retrieve a food item based on any part of the name of the food, while some others cannot "find" the food unless you get the exact spelling and order of words.

The calorie estimates for recipes you add are also very accurate. Another program I've used--MasterCook--has sometimes been off by as much as 50 percent.

The best thing about this program is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you want. If you want to track every blood chemical, mood, or doctor's appoinment, you can. But if you're looking for something to just tell you how many calories you ate today, it will do a fast and accurate job--and not give you an annoying pop-up reminder to do something else.


Most Useful   April 13, 2000
20 out of 22 found this review helpful

This program works. Be sure you are the type of person that is around a computer all day and it will work for you too. I have been using Life Form for over a year and still feel like I want to use it.

Life Form tracks your food, weight, exercise, and much more. It has useful graphs to track your progess and organized tables that you can customize to your own needs.

Previous reviews are true in saying the program needs to be updated, but you can enter nutritional information from any food label you have.

I strongly recommend this program to anyone trying to eat healthy and lose weight.


Haven't found a Better Product   February 7, 2000
30 out of 30 found this review helpful

This is a wonderful tool. It offers an exceptional food diary, exercise journal (calculating the calories according to heartrate or level of exertion), a graphing section (compare calories burned to target calories burned), etc. A section to track stress levels, fatigue, anxiety etc almost anything you would care to track.

Its true that the food database could use an update but it is still it pretty comprehensive. If you can't find a food you can put it in (using the labeling information on the product). Or you can input your own recipes.

I have looked long and hard for a really good product to help with weight loss and this is the best I've found. It has many other uses as mentioned in another review (diabetes management etc). I can't reccommend it enough.


Needs Updating   January 21, 2000
E. Brogdon (San Diego, CA United States)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

This is a brilliantly implemented tool for tracking and analyzing the various aspects of your health. emptysee's review expains these features well. A significant consideration: the program has not been updated since it's 1995 release. Although the interface is exceptional for a Windows 3.1 program, it could be polished to take advantage of Windows 95/98 capabilities. The food database is badly out of date - so much so that I find myself regularly having to enter new foods. Life Form does all the things it claims, has an excellent and thorough manual, and is highly customizable. I just wish the authors would polish it up and bring it up to date!