Losing It with “Lose It”

In last week’s Diet and Exercise Monday post, I wrote about my theory that making good decisions in what amounts to a cumulative 15 minutes per day is the foundation of any diet.  Of course, this assumes that you’ve got the right food nearby to help you make that decision.  Choosing between a Snickers and a Three Musketeers isn’t going to cut it.

This week and next,  I want to introduce you to two tools that I use or have used during diets and explain why they work for me, and you can see if they work for you.  As I diet or try to stay in shape, simplicity and ease of use/understanding is important to me, and I’ve found tools that help me get there.

The first tool is an application for my iPhone called “Lose It.”  It is a free application made by a company called FitNow and has a solid 4-star rating across over 10,000 raters and over 9,000 reviews.  Lose It is a basic application that tracks your weight, exercise, calorie intake all towards a goal weight and goal date.  I won’t repeat the screen shots here, but their Web site has a good representation.

Lose It works for me because of the following features:

1. Clear indication of your recommended daily calorie intake, based on your current weight, age, goal weight, and length of time you wish to get there.
2. Easy entry of any weight entry and a graph showing your progress that automatically adjusts its scale as time goes on.
3. Extensive database of grocery store and restaurant foods.
4. Easy entry of any food from a nutritional label.
5. Easy entry of exercise, either from its database or from a custom creation.
6. Shows how many more calories you can eat per day based on what you’ve eaten and how much you’ve exercised.
7. Shows the nutritional value each day in summary, including % of calories from fat, carbs and protein, which are important to those that follow the Zone Diet.
8. It’s free.

Since I first downloaded it, Lose It has expanded to include an online community, where some of your goals and achievements are shared with others.  The web site also provides more data and more reports from what you’ve put in your iPhone.  I don’t use the site, but it does seem like a logical expansion point.

I know this sounds like an advertisement (and I wish they were paying me!).  I’m highlighting Lose It because of its simplicity.  Weight loss and exercise are challenging to begin with.  Weight loss sites and tools can be so complex.  This application isn’t complex.  It’s also mobile, meaning you don’t have to keep a written log to enter later when you don’t have access to an internet-connected computer.

The simpler weight loss and exercise can be, the more likelier it is that we’ll do it.  Lose It helps with the simplicity.

Next Monday, I’ll introduce you to a tool that helps with the psychology of weight loss by creating some interesting incentives.  See you then.

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This week was better than last week.  I hit my target and lost 1 pound.  I’m now 1.6 pounds down after two weeks, 0.4 pounds behind pace.  Perhaps if I hadn’t eated that scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and french toast IHOP combo last week, I would have made it.  Boy, did that taste good.