I have been on just about every diet there is. One thing that EVERY diet plan had in common was to write down what you put in your mouth. I suspect one of the reasons why nothing worked for me is that I just could never get in the habit of writing down what I ate. And even when I did, I just never had the time to go figure out what the calorie or other nutrition information I was counting.
One of the trainers at my gym pointed me to the iPhone app LoseIt! back in early January. I started using it for recording my daily food intake - just because it was easy. I always have my phone with me so it was easy to just record what I ate at the time.
At the time, I hadn't done any research on this type of application, so I really jumped in somewhat blind as to what was available. Since then, I have been trying several of the iPhone food diary/calorie counting/excercise tracking applications and will post my comparison findings in a future post.
I have been using LoseIt! since January 3rd. Setting up/configuring the app is very simple and straight forward. The app will make a recommendation for daily calories based on information you tell it: things like current weight, height, number of pounds you want to loose, etc. In my case, I told it I wanted to loose 2 pounds a week. LoseIt! suggested a calorie target for me and that was that. As you lose weight, LoseIt! will recaclulate the suggested calorie intake so that you can stay on the plan you have based on your weight recordings in LoseIt!
The app is free but there is an in app premium offer. I haven't bought the premium offer - so I really can't say anything about what it does for you. The free portion is pretty simple to use and has made it really easy for me to track what goes in my mouth. The app also allows you to track the calories you consume while excercising.
One of the features I like about the product is the ability to scan bar codes and get the nutritional information from the package itself. It turns out that is a necessary feature as the food database LoseIt! provides seems to be very small. You will have to bar code scan a lot of food items (or manually add the food items to the local database) because there is such a relatively small set of foods that are in the general database.
The app also has entries for a number of resturaunt chains. This is pretty helpful - but the numbers LoseIt! reports for the food items don't always agree with the nutritional information posted by the resturaunt.
Similarly, even food items that are specific to a specific brand are occasionally different from what LoseIt! will show. Fortunately, the discrepencies are not large.
Logging excercises in LoseIt! is pretty easy. Pretty much select the activity, list how much time you spent doing it, and record the intensity. It isn't clear where LoseIt! gets the "calories burned" information - there appears to be some discrepency between what LoseIt! reports and various other online databases. Again - the numbers are not wildly different so LoseIt! still works as a guide.
My biggest pet peeve about the LoseIt! app is a combination of the small food database and the search functionality. When you do add your own foods (either by scanning or manually keying them) you need to remember exactly what you called them OR be sure to switch to the "My Foods" tab when you are recording what you ate. Spelling matters (as readers of this blog will attest, I need to invest in a spell checker).
In short, the price is right (free) and in spite of my nit picks, the app does help you record what you eat.
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