Lose It

I think this might be an almost perfect iPhone app. Lose It helps you keep track of your caloric intake and the calories you’re burning with exercise. It helps you set goals and then track your progress towards your new weight. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of food it had in it’s database and the variety of exercises included.

When you first start Lose It you enter your starting weight, your goal weight, your height and your birthday. Then you choose your plan: maintain your weight, lose 1/2 lb. a week, 1 lb. a week, 1 1/2 lbs. a week or 2 lbs. a week. The app then gives you a calorie budget and calculates the date you’ll reach your weight loss goal.

Tap the "My Day" button at the bottom of the screen and you get to see how you’ve been doing for the day. (At the top you can also choose "This Week" to see how your progress has gone for the entire week.) With "Today"  you get a summary of what your calorie budget is, what you’ve eaten and how many calories you’ve burned with exercise. At the bottom you’ll see "Add Food". Touch that and you’ll get to choose whether your food goes with breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks.  After you choose your meal you can then enter in the foods. Do this by searching foods, choosing from brand name foods or creating a new food of your own.  Brand name foods lets you choose either supermarket or restaurant foods. I couldn’t believe how many different food choices were available. Yes, I searched for my weakness – Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. And yes, it allowed me to enter in my realistic serving size – the entire container. Hooray for a diet app that lets you get the sad truth right out there. Even if you can’t find exactly what you ate my guess is that you’ll find something pretty darn close. If that still doesn’t do it for you then create your own food. After that it’ll be saved under "My Foods". I loved having the ability to choose from previous meals. If you ate  the same thing on Tuesday that you’d had on Sunday you can choose the "Previous Meals" button. Choose the date you want and then choose the food you ate. This saves you the step of having to search and reenter foods over and over again.

Back on the "My Day" screen you can also add exercise. There is a huge list of exercises and if you can’t find what you want you can always tap "Create New Exercise". "My Exercises" shows you a list of everything you’ve recorded previously so it saves you from having to browse the list all over again. Lose It has exercises from lawn mowing to curling to gardening to house cleaning. According to the app 90 minutes of house cleaning burns 214 calories. That takes care of about 1/6 of the Ben & Jerry’s consumed previously. I like it!

The "Log" button shows you all the food and exercises you’ve recorded for that day. At the top you can tap an arrow to move forward or backward dates. The plus button will let you add a food or exercise. The edit button lets you edit what’s already on the list.

With the "Goals" button you get to see what your goal weight and plan are. There’s also a chart to show you how your weight loss is progressing. At the bottom tap "Record Today’s Weight" to enter in a new weight. Hopefully a lower one.

Touch "More" and you can add in custom foods, exercises and recipes. You can also turn on the nutrient tracking. This allows you to track how much fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs or protein you’re consuming. If you turn these on they’ll show up on the "My Day" section under the "Nutrients"  button at the top.

I cannot say enough good things about this app. I love how easy it is to use – a big plus to a busy mom who hates to diet anyway. Plus you get this great app for free. Lose It is staying on my phone and when I’m done with the pregnancy thing and need to loose an amount of weight equal to a kindergartner, trust me,  I will be wearing this app out.

Seller: Fit Now

Price when Reviewed: Free

Click here to see the app at the iTunes store