3. Diet and Exercise Planner: Weight Loss Made Easier

We all know it. Americans are becoming more obese by the minute. With everyone getting more obsessed with computers, video games, and other electronics, not many people are willing or have the time to work out anymore. That may be the source of the problem. We all think that "working out" is the only way to burn calories, so our only options are to spend hours at the gym or order a pizza and game away. However, what we really need to do is balance exercise, restful recreation and eating. That's where Soundtell's Diet and Exercise Planner comes in.

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The idea of a "virtual personal trainer" is hardly a new one, but the problem with most of them is that they stress you out by forcing you to complete a rigorous exercise regimen. Diet and Exercise Planner is geared more towards those who just want to work out at their own pace.

After entering your weight, height, gender, age, and "activity level" you can optionally set up a weight loss goal. What's great about the goal screen is that it gives you statistics in real-time as you set your target weight loss and the number of days in which you want to achieve it. For example, if you set your goal to lose five pounds in a week, it immediately shows you how much "fast walking" you would need to do each day in order to meet that goal, based on the personal information you entered earlier.

Then, throughout the goal period, you enter how many calories you've consumed, in addition to protein, carbs, and fat. However, you don't need to scan every food label or restaurant menu, because the software is pre-programmed with a massive list of food, along with pertinent nutritional facts. So if you eat a hamburger, all you need to do is tap "meat" from the cascading food menu, choose "hamburger" from the sub-menu, and it will enter all the details for you.

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The same goes for entering your work-out routine. There are 17 different exercise activities, from bicycling to housework, and based on how long and how hard you exercised, it will automatically determine how many calories you've burned. You can then check to see if you're meeting or exceeding your daily requirements. Put all this together along with a slate of graphs that chart your long-term activity and you've got a powerful exercise monitor that's always by your side.

At a reasonable $19.99 price tag, you're sure to get much more mileage out of this handy app than you would from joining Jenny Craig, since you'd probably end up throwing (up) all of their food away anyway.