Fitness Assistant Manual

The simplest and quickest way to set up the program with minimal steps:

1. Create a user account within the program.

2. In the "Set Bodyweight Goals" screen, set your bodyweight goals - lose, maintain or gain weight and the target date. Set a target period of at least 6-8 weeks to achieve the goal. Set a realistic goal.

3. Each day Fitness Assistant will give you a target calorie balance on the Nutrition Panel on the main screen and "Food logs" screen. Try to follow it. Don't worry if there are days where you are off the plan. The program will take it into account.

4. Log your bodyweight at least once a week. Doing so will give Fitness Assistant data to recalculate the calorie plan and your metabolism. Sometimes you will see substantial changes in the calorie plan following a weight in.Don't worry, just follow the plan as best as you can.

5. Log any workouts, sports or extra activities you do. Read: "Which sports and activities should I log?"

6. Be consistent in all your logs.

When you first create your user account, Fitness Assistant asks you about certain physical characteristics such as height, weight, age etc. including your estimated activity level. The program uses this information to assess your calorie expenditure. The activity level you set initially is just an estimate that will allow the program to start advising you.

As you start working with the program, logging your eating, training and bodyweight, Fitness Assistant will actively monitor your results and recalculate your true activity level. By tracking how your bodyweight responds to the amount of calories you are eating, Fitness Assistant will constantly recalculate the calorie plan and your activity level. In effect, the software will quickly find out your true average Activity Level by analyzing the data you put into the program.

If you become more or less active for some reasons (such as dieting), Fitness Assistant will quickly find it out from your data and redo the plan.

So to answer the question, Fitness Assistant will take care of finding your real Activity Level and will not let you manually change it. Your job is to put an initial estimate and then let the program do the rest.

Most people have consistent activity habits and burn similar amounts of calories every day. This amount of calories constitutes your average activity level and Fitness Assistant actively learns it. Do not log your usual activities. The program has already accounted them.

Log only activities that contribute to a higher than usual activity level (working out, playing basketball or going for an unusually long walk).

Both screens can be used for logging additional activities and tracking the extra calories burned through training.

The Sports and Activities Logs Screen is used mainly for calorie counting purposes (as a quick "log additional calories screen").

The Training Logs Screen provides additional tracking features such as a detailed training log (sets, reps, tempo, distance, pace). The data logged in the Training Logs screen can also generate graphs and reports.

If you are mainly interested in counting calories, use the Sports and Activities Screen for its simplicity.

If you are interested in analyzing training trends and variables, use the Training Logs Screen.

Due to their different functionality, the two screens use different exercise databases. The Sports and Activities Logs Screen is powered by the Sports and Activities Dictionary (screen). The Training Logs Screen is powered by the Exercise Dictionary (screen).

There are two major components of your daily calorie expenditure - the calories you burn at rest (Resting Metabolic Rate) and the calories you spend moving around and exercising (Physical Activity or Activity Level). Your Resting Metabolic Rate is mainly dictated by your age, sex, height, weight, body composition and the number of calories you consume, so you do not have a lot of control over it. Your Physical Activity Level is dictated by how active you are and you can burn a lot more calories by being more active.

The Activity Zones are a measure of the calories you expend moving compared to the calories you spend resting (the calories you burn just to stay alive). When you are in the Inactive Zone, it means you burn very few calories engaged in activities. In this case your appetite is likely to increase. In fact the more inactive you are, the more likely you are to be even hungrier. When you become more active and move near the Active Zone your appetite decreases although you spend more calories being active. At this point, your appetite is usually equal to your expenditure and your bodyweight remains stable. This is the key to maintain the lost weight - you have to be near or in the Active Zone. If you become super active, your appetite will most probably not be able to catch up with your activity and you will lose weight.

Being in the Active Zone is the key to maintain your weight loss. This level of activity protects you against weight gain. Studies have confirmed that the 2-3% of the dieters who kept their weight loss in the long run have become more active (got into the Active Zone by increasing their average daily calorie expenditure by 200-400 calories).

Getting in the Active Zone is not necessarily done through structured exercise. It can be done by simply spending more time being active throughout the day (spending more time standing than sitting, walking more, sitting more time instead of lying down).

During your weight loss phase, do NOT worry about being in the Active Zone. Getting in the Active Zone is important after you achieve your desired weight and want to maintain it.

If effect, dieting is the most important thing for weight loss. Exercise/being more active become very important when you want to maintain your new weight and protect yourself from gaining weight.

MET values provide a very convenient way to calculate the energy expenditure of different physical activities. A complete rest is signified by a MET value of 1. To find what is the calorie burn rate of MET=1, you need to know your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). Let's say your RMR = 1700 calories a day. One day has 1440 minutes, so you are burning RMR/1440 = 1700/1440 ~= 1.18 calories per minutes(in a state of complete rest). Today you played basketball for 30 minutes. Basketball has a MET = 8 (it means, playing basketball burns 8 times more calories than a complete rest). So while playing basketball you burned 30 (minutes) * 1.18 (calories/min at rest) * 8 (MET) = 283 calories. Did you just burn 283 additional calories?

The right answer is NO.

If you didn't play basketball you would have done something else during these 30 minutes. Almost anything you do during the day has a MET > 1.2 and even 1.5. If you browsed internet on your laptop, you would have burned calories at a rate of MET = 1.5. In effect, you didn't burn 283 additional calories. That is why Fitness Assistant subtracts 1.2 from the MET value to arrive at the number of additional calories you burned.

In order to make more precise calorie estimations:
- You absolutely have to know your Resting Metabolic Rate to calculate how many calories you burn every minute doing nothing (MET=1). Most calorie calculators assume an average calorie burn of 1 calorie per minute, but are you an average person?
- You have to subtract the MET value of what you would have done, instead of the activity you did. Resting Metabolic Rate is your MET=1 for the whole day, so you should subtract at least 1 from your MET. Because almost anything you do during the day has a MET of at least 1.2, Fitness Assistant subtracts 1.2 from the MET
- You have to log only the activities that made your daily physical activity higher than usual! Your usual activities are already calculated in the PAL(Physical Activity Level). Your PAL is constantly recalculated by Fitness Assistant when you log your bodyweight.

Sounds involved but Fitness Assistant will do all these calculations for you.

Fitness Assistant will always show you the amount of calories you burn through an activity and how many of these calories are actually *additional* compared to your usual activity level.