LoseIt.com and Lose It! App

Dear Reader-

I am so excited to share with you my latest find on the interwebs… (well actually Michael Hyatt mentioned it at Blissdom).

Now, if you already know about it, please think back to when you first discovered it and humor me…mmm kay?

LoseIt.com

It is a free site that helps you track your meals and your exercise to help you reach a weight loss goal that you set yourself.

But that is such an understatement…

Here are the other things I L-O-V-E about this thing…

• There is an app for both Android and iPhone users in addition to the site.
• Lose It! has a built in database for restaurants, grocery stores, brands and general food items that make tracking so easy!
• It tells me how many calories I can eat each day based off of the goals I set.
• It allows my phone to scan food item bar codes to log them in.
• If a food isn’t in the database, I google it… find the caloric intake and can easily add it to my own food database.
• Same goes for exercise… it figures calories “earned” from its immense database that gives me credit for everything from house cleaning to sit-ups and nightly walks to painting! Again, allowing for manual entry for anything outside of their database.

But there are two things I HAVE to elaborate on here…

Recipe Builder

First, the recipe builder is AMAZING! It allows me to enter ingredients, set serving size and ta-dah, it computes individual serving info that is easily added to my daily log.

AND, since Puddie and I are both users, we can share recipes with each other, so it only has to be entered once!

I am enjoying taking my tried and true favorite recipes and tweaking little things to see if I can get the calories and saturated fats down. I have even done some comparison recipes in the recipe builder that allow me to see what kind of “savings” my tweaks are giving me.

I love this feature and will be using it in the future to add calorie content when I can to the recipes I share on this site.

Ignorance isn’t Bliss, It is Just Ignorant

Secondly, the site gives me control of my day and helps me stay on track. It forces me to be knowledgeable about what I am putting into my body and frees me of the guilt of the unknown…

For example I found out that my favorite milkshake is a whopping 1100 calories!

It tastes good, but not THAT good. But, I also found out that my favorite pizza is only 180 calories a slice…

As I read through Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, I am learning that labeling foods (even my shake) as completely off-limits sets me up for failure. That is why I love the flexibility of this tool (and app).

LoseIt.com gives me the ability to adjust my diet on a day like today where I had an unexpected lunch with friends.

In the old days I would just feel defeated after eating out while “making a lifestyle change” (dieting) or deprived if I only ate rabbit food while my friends had something amazing. But now I know that one of my favorite lightened dinner recipes will get me right back on track without skipping a beat after enjoying my lunch and that my walk tonight will actually leave me with calories to spare.

Did I mention this was all completely FREE?!

There are a few more features I didn’t mention that you will have to check out for yourself, but I highly recommend this app and site to anyone who wants to lose weight and/or needs to track calories to maintain their weight.

7.5lbs down so far… 😉

 Amazon links are affiliates as always.