Weight Loss App: Lose It! - Helps You Lose Pounds

This weight loss app piqued my interest while looking through the iTunes app store recently because I’ve packed on a few unwanted pounds over the last few months (thanks to all the holiday eating). I also noticed that this (free) iPhone Healthcare & Fitness app, Lose It! (by FitNow) has been holding strong in the app charts and has had really good reviews overall – so I decided to check it out. The beauty of this free weight loss app is that it helps you set a weight loss goal, track your daily food and exercise intake, and keeps track of calories consumed and calories burned. This weight loss app also provides daily and weekly reports, motivates you with peer/friend support if you choose, as well as earned badges along the way.

After providing a little personal information, I was able to get down to the “nitty gritty” — figuring out how much weight to lose, how long it’s going to take me, and how hard am I willing to work. Your “My Plan” weight loss choices range from 1/2 lb. per week to 2 1/2 lbs. per week. Based on the amount you want to lose and how fast, a goal date is set along with a daily calorie consumption budget. Mine was a total of 1,623 calories a day, since I opted to lose my 8 lbs. at a rate of 1/2 lb. per week (with a May end goal date) – I don’t want to work too hard.

You’ll see your daily information set up into 3 main tracking sections: Today’s calories, This week’s calories, and Today’s nutrients. I like the “thermometer” bar graph that gives you a visual of your alloted calorie limit. As calories are counted, the bar fills up with a green color inching towards your limit, but turns red as you pass by your budget limit. The nutrients section is preset to most accurately calculate protein, carbs, and fats, but you can activate other things. The bottom navigation is how you get around effectively in this weight loss app (My Day, Log, Motivate, Goals and More).

But the most important information is entering your daily food and exercise data (Add Food and Add Exercise from main screen). You can add food by typing in what you ate for a blind database search, scan packaged food using barcode functionality, searched your previous food and meal entries — which comes in handy for quick entry when you eat the same food each day. There are additional helpful search features including Supermarket Foods database and one for Restaurants; and did you know that one (naughty but yummy) cheddar cheese biscuit from Red Lobster is 150 calories (each) – ouch!. You can add your own custom recipe information in, but there are no recipes provided in this weight loss app, although I would be nice. This is a free weight loss application so I won’t complain.

As far as exercise goes, I was surprised by the range of A-Z exercises included in this app. There is a health list of exercise types, but some odd ones to me: Archery, Broomball, Carpentry, Frisbee, Gardening, House Cleaning, Home Repair, Juggling, Lawn Mowing, Sexual Activity, etc. So you see, they’re not only appealing to the more athletic person, but to the average person in an average physical range as well. There’s a dial to set your exercise time, and depending on the time spent doing these activities will determine the calories burned (30 mins – 23hrs/55mins hours). Your privacy is protected and other app users can’t view your data, unless you choose. You can “enable friends” to share with other users and friends. To earn badges, you’ll have to log your weight loss in the Goals area.

This Healthcare & Fitness application has a well done user-friendly interface, is easy to use and has plenty of opportunities to add custom information (food, menu, exercise, etc). I suggest you take a look at the great FAQ section, which has valuable information to help get the most out of this app. Within this weight loss app, you’ll discover the Lose It! Book you can order, as well as a 1 Year Premium in app purchase of $39.99. The in app purchase is supposed to “take your weight loss to the next level with additional health & fitness goals for exercise, nutrient intake, sleep, steps, and many more.” Honestly, I’ve found this to be a very useful – especially for a free weight loss app. There’s not much not to like here. Not only is it a free app, but it has no ads — that’s a big plus there. With Lose It!, you’ll make conscious eating decisions every day — and you’ll think twice before eating that extra cookie.