The App Celebrates Health Goals Beyond Weight Loss
When creating your profile and goals, you can choose from statements like “I want to feel stronger” or “I want to be healthier,” instead of simply “I want to lose weight.” The app lets you revisit those goals if you stop using it for a time and need to restart.
There’s no shaming in this app, and it celebrates you every single step of the way, which I found refreshing and encouraging. When I revisited my goals and profile, I was reminded that I wasn’t doing this only to look a certain way or reach a certain weight — I was doing this to improve my health, get stronger, and feel better.
The goals also translate into tracking options. For instance, you can choose body measurements like chest size or waist size to track measurement changes, not just pounds lost or gained. I found this helpful because even when my weight didn’t change, my body measurements did.
You Can Choose How Quickly — or Slowly — to Lose Weight
When setting up targets for weight loss, you can be aggressive — losing up to 2 pounds a week with a higher calorie deficit, which involves taking in fewer calories than you burn — or take a slower, more gradual approach that allows you more calories per day. The app gave me several warnings when I tried to set my weight loss goal too aggressively. If you try to lose more weight at a faster pace, it warns you not to eat under 1,500 calories in a day.
If intermittent fasting is part of your strategy, you can set intervals for your eating windows as well. A timer will start, and you’ll be alerted when your fasting interval is over and you can eat.
The Food Database Is Simple and Effective
By far, the food database is my favorite feature of Lose It! I love how many foods are in it, even obscure items and recipes you wouldn’t expect. It basically took all the effort out of logging my food. The app also learns your favorite foods and brings them up automatically, so you can just swipe to add your regular foods to a day. For example, if I had eggs, coffee, and creamer every day for breakfast, it’s already there and ready to be added.
As much as I love the food database, there is a downside: The food database allows user input, so if you don’t add the food yourself, you’re trusting that someone else put in the correct nutritional information. For example, if someone logged a grilled cheese sandwich as 100 calories, and you click on that entry to log your own grilled cheese, but your sandwich is actually 300 calories, you’re not counting accurately, which can throw off your progress. Fortunately, there is a workaround. You can protect yourself from this risk by setting the app to only allow verified foods on your dashboard, so you’re choosing foods the Lose It! team has vetted.
The App Offers Custom Insights Based on Your Food Choices
The premium version of the app provides push notifications when it detects a positive pattern in eating habits. For example, if you’re eating a lot of salads and sticking to your calorie count for a week or so, it validates your choices and points out that those salads are helping you meet your goals. This can help you choose foods and stick to patterns that support your goals in an effortless way.
You can also access these insights manually to see which foods are helping you reach your goals and which may be working against you. If you’re consistently hitting your protein goal, clicking the insights tab can reveal which high-protein foods you’re eating regularly so you can keep that up. If you’re going over your fat macronutrients, you can do the same and see which foods you’re eating that are high in fat and adjust your diet.
You Can Opt in to Higher-Calorie Days
Lose It! allows you to have days built into your week when you eat more and still hit your weight loss goal. You can spread those days out over the week or keep them for the weekend, when you might naturally want to have more flexibility for hanging out with friends or going out to eat. It’s a helpful feature that gives you a break mentally and physically from feeling restricted.
Catherine Gervacio, RDN, a certified exercise nutrition coach, recommends checking in with your doctor or a registered dietitian nutritionist to ensure that your calorie goal is set correctly when using an app for weight loss, because there may be variables that could impact what amount of calories is right for you. “It’s always best to consult a healthcare professional to correctly follow a certain requirement,” she explains. “This is to ensure that weight management or overall diet tracking is safe, efficient, and effective.”
The Dashboard Provides Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Calorie Views
The app’s visual tracking tools help you monitor how you’re eating and if you’re meeting your goals or going over your daily budget. You can look at your day in a glance, break it down by meal, and see weekly and monthly overall calories and deficits.
I appreciated the weekly look at my calorie budget because it helped teach me that even if I had an off day here and there, my weekly budget showed I could still achieve my goal. This was a real game changer for me and helped me avoid feelings of failure and wanting to throw in the towel after one day of not meeting my goal.
“Weight loss ultimately comes down to creating an energy deficit in the body, or an individual consuming fewer calories than they are using for energy during the day,” says Herrington. “A calorie-counting app can help someone trying to lose weight achieve a daily or weekly caloric deficit successfully.”
You Have Choices When It Comes to Exercise Tracking
The app allows you to manually enter exercise or sync it up with your smartwatch or device. There’s also an optional setting that allows you to add burned calories back into your day. For instance, if I burned 300 calories from a workout, I could opt to have those 300 calories added to my total food calorie count for the day or turn that setting off and keep fitness calories and food calories totally separate.
I kept the calorie banking feature off because working out is not something I do for weight loss. I also wanted to be sure my weight loss goal was solely coming from my diet, with exercise just a bonus for my mental and physical health.
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