When I wanted to lose a bit of weight, I struggled with which diet and exercise plan to try. I didn’t like the idea of cutting certain foods entirely out of my life, because fighting those cravings has always been a losing battle for me. I also wanted something that gave me freedom to go out and still stick to it, because eating out is a huge part of my social life (and one of the reasons I felt the need to diet). While researching different plans, I came across the Lost It! App in the App Store. It was free, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
The Lose It! plan works on the simple fact that if you eat less calories than you use, you will lose weight. You use the app to track what you eat and how much you exercise. You start by entering your height, weight, goal weight and how fast you want to lose weight. I loved the feature that tells you when you will reach your goal weight if you lose x pounds per week. It’s so easy to imagine sitting in a bikini on July 1, rather than some arbitrary point in the future.
It has tons of grocery store foods already built in, as well as food from popular chain restaurants, so you don’t do as much guessing (or cheating) on the calorie count. You can also input whole recipes and new foods. When you eat too many calories, the bar graph or number displayed that tracks your intake turns red. I will admit, I was elated whenever my bar was still green at the end of the day. This meant that I could save up those daily extra 50 calories during the week and have something decadent later.
The Lose It! App not only helped me lose 15 pounds in two months, but it made me a better eater. When you have to keep track of what you eat, you see where you could do better. When eating out, seeing how many calories that appetizer packed made me abstain, or at least have less. You also see the empty calories you gain from your “harmless” handful of potato chips when you need to measure how much you’re actually eating. You’re also encouraged to exercise more, because you can track how much you get, and any exercise is subtracted from your daily calorie total. It was definitely worth it to run around the block a few times to be able to add cream cheese to my bagel. It was easy, and actually kind of fun to count calories with this app. If you’re the kind of person who always has their phone with them, this is the perfect way to keep your diet on track. The app also gets bonus points because it’s free.
LoseIt! is available for Apple or Android. If you don’t have a Smartphone, you can also create an online account here.
