Biggest Loser contestants have always donned a gadget on their arms, tracking their every move through more than eight hours of exercise each day. This season, the device was seemingly gone. Trust that it’s still there, it’s just discreetly hiding underneath their T-shirts.

The SlimCoach is tiny enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and when clipped under your shirt to a pocket or waist band can barely be noticed. It’s practically weightless, in fact, that smartphone you lug everywhere weighs more.

The SlimCoach offers minimal data from the device, but when synced with your computer and an online dashboard you’ll get a lot of valuable information about your calorie burn and consumption and your progress toward a weight loss goal. On the face of the device is a circle that lights up red at the start of your day. As you progress through the day, whether walking or running, it shows your calorie burn by lighting up green. The goal is to get a solid green circle, which means you’ve met your goal for the day.

I spent some time wearing the SlimCoach and quickly felt I was in a competition with myself. I was going out of my way to move just to make sure that circle turned green. For instance, I stood to fold the laundry instead of sitting, and I was more inclined to hop/run down the stairs. I wasn’t obsessive, but I definitely checked in periodically. With a click to the center of the circle I could see my progress. Barely at half green by noon? Not good enough! I had to keep moving.
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UPDATE: 4/25/12: On today’s episode of The Doctors, Dr. Mike Moreno made an appearance to promote his new 17 Day Diet Cookbook. He demonstrated one of his recipes, a baked pork chop that resembled a traditional fried pork chop but had one-third the calories and significantly less saturated fat. Also in that episode, DietsInReview.com’s most popular diets of 2011 list was featured, with 17 Day Diet at the top. See a clip from the episode now:

Make room on your kitchen shelves because today a new cookbook releases. The long anticipated follow-up to The 17 Day Diet is available online and in stores today, and you can be cooking healthier, diet-friendly meals by dinner time. The 17 Day Diet Cookbook, authored by Dr. Mike Moreno, provides 80 meals that align with cycles one, two, and three of the like-named diet. It’s the low-calorie icing on an explosive publishing year that also produced a version of The 17 Day Diet in Spanish and a 17 Day Diet Workbook, as well as a reprint of the original self-published title under its new publisher, Free Press. On top of all of that, 17 Day Diet was the most popular diet of 2011 here at DietsInReview.com.

“This cookbook was meticulously done in terms of nutrition,” Dr. Mike told us in a recent interview. He seemed impressed by the number of followers who had gone out and created recipes for the weight loss plan, but says this book will keep them from “sabotaging” the nutritional principles in the book. He knows that after a while the same old rotation of recipes can be a drag, and he’s excited to share with his legions of 17 Day followers some inspired new ways to stick to the plan and eat food that’s bold, interesting, and simple.
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Earlier this month we learned that Kalso Earth Shoes was giving three $1,000 grants to three sites who aligned with their vision but ultimately who could do a whole heck of a lot of good with that money to celebrate Earth Day. The deadline was on a Thursday, we got wind of the promotion on a Tuesday. I was out sick, like at home, in bed, sick. But, I knew I wanted this for DietsInReview.com and I also knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. So I sucked it up, and against the wishes of my beloved caretaker, knocked out an article telling Kalso about DIR, about how thinking green is second nature to us, and how there was an organization that we really, really wanted to help with this money.

Working through a sick day paid off, because DietsInReview.com was chosen! This month, we’re receiving a $1,000 grant to do an Earth Day project. Just as we described in our Earth Day project application, we’ll be using the funds to build vegetable gardens at Carpenter Place, and we’re more or less stoked about it! We’re not alone, though. We already let Carpenter Place in on our little secret.

“We are so excited to have DietsInReview come help us with gardens for our campus!” Jennifer White, a Carpenter Place house mom, told us.
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This past weekend we hosted dinner with friends. It was a gorgeous spring evening, we had all of the windows open, and we’d planned a very light and fresh meal of avocado pasta with a green salad. Our guests don’t drink, but I knew I wanted something fun, flavorful, and complementary to the weather as much as the meal.

While at the grocery store, I noticed that lemons were on sale and a fresh batch of blackberries had just come in. Inspiration! I couldn’t wait to get home to find a recipe for blackberry lemonade.

I Googled around until I found something simple that matched the ingredients I had on hand. I fell for this recipe at Love and Olive Oil. I liked that it called for raw or cane sugar; while I didn’t have any in the house, I’d have definitely preferred to use that. After that, it was just water, blackberries, lemon, and ice.
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We learned last month that former Biggest Loser contestant and Olympic gold medalist Rulon Gardner was going to try to make the Olympic trials and compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. While no controversy surrounds his two medals, one gold and one bronze in Greco Roman wrestling, it does surround his time on season 11, from which he voluntarily walked out. He was the first contestant in the show’s history to do so, although, rumors and questions surround his exit and NBC has never confirmed the real reason. In that night’s episode he said, “I ask to leave Biggest Loser for personal reasons.” Whatever the real reasons were, he left the show and went back to wrestling.

Rulon appeared on Brian Williams’ Rock Center tonight in a story highlighting the hard work it’s going to take for him to make it through the Olympic trials next month. At age 40, the once retired wrestler has to make weight like everyone else, but may find the challenge to be more daunting than it is for most of his competitors. He started season 11 at 474 pounds and in 16 weeks was able to lose 173 pounds. In the interview he said he averaged about 1.5 pounds lost per day while on the ranch, and with the right dedication, he can do the same in his wrestling gym and make weight on April 20. His coach said that Rulon is “working as hard as anyone else in the room.”
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