LoseIt App

Recently, i made a deal with one of my closest friends.  She has been on a weight loss journey for quite some time related to her health issues as well as becoming a parent.  It's very impressive, and she and i struggle with a lot of the same challenges.  She has some extra ones, like a gluten intolerance, but generally speaking, we have some similar Stuff to work on.

So i'm joining her.  We have a trip planned Labor Day weekend, and my goal is to lose 25.2 lbs by then.  It's ambitious, but as of this post I'm 5 lbs down already, so i feel it's not impossible.

Food has always been a challenging issue for me, and to help me reach this goal i am using something called LoseIt.  LoseIt is an app available for iPhone and more recently Android systems.  It is incredibly simple in what it does, but that's what makes it very powerful.

At it's heart, it's a calorie counter.  It allows you to track what you eat, how much you exercise and what your basal metabolic rate is.  Using that information, you can follow the calculated limits to gain, lose or maintain your weight.

I don't know how large the database of foods is, but i've yet to have trouble logging something.  It can scan bar codes from packages and automatically knows the calories, and has a large list of restaurant and prepared foods as well as single ingredients.  Similarly, the exercise options are varied and allow you to fine tune your activity levels.

There is also a social media element, though i'm not currently using it.  You can connect with Facebook or Twitter, or just connect with friends.  You can certainly add me if you're interested in joining along!

Through some of the forums there i stumbled across The Hacker's Diet, which is a pretty simple and mathematical look at weight loss.  It ties very well with LoseIt in that it's really about energy in and energy out.    It's worth a read if you're trying to lose weight and connect to math/science. There are also some neat tools to tracking your weight change.

What geek tools are you using for weight loss?  I'd love to know!