Lose It! – Review
By 
The new iPhone/iPod Touch app commercial really works! I have been in the market for a decent food diary application since I first received my iPod Touch. I had tried apps like Meal Diary and My Net Diary and was generally unimpressed. Then, I saw an app during one of the iPhone commercials during the Super Bowl called Lose It! It’s available for free at the App Store and is currently in the top 10 free apps list. It’s likely that prominent placement in an iPhone commercial plus being available at no cost drove it up there.
In short, this app beats all the other meal diaries hands down. Between the friendly interface and the ability to input a variety of foods and exercises (including custom ones), this is exactly what I need in order to stick to my diet.
The application begins by asking you general information about yourself (gender, age, height, weight, timeframe and goal weight). The program then determines what your daily caloric intake should be in order to achieve your goal weight within the allotted time.
Each day starting from the initial run of the application, it allows you to input food choices from a built-in list for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Each food choice adds calories to your daily allotment. If one of the foods you choose isn’t in the list, the program allows for the input of custom foods and their calorie count. If you have specific eating requirements, the application also allows you to enter nutrient information for each custom food.
Along with all this, the application also allows you to input custom recipes (a set of food and custom foods from the list combined as one). For example, if you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you would input peanut butter, jelly and bread and the program would add up the total calories). Lose It! then allows you to add it as a single unit to your daily eating log.
As well as food, the app allows for the input of exercise. This subtracts from your daily calorie count (in case you have a particularly piggy day). Even walking is in the list (which is useful to me as I’m a pretty heavy walker).
The application also keeps a chart of your weight over time. The user must input his/her weight on a given day manually and the program does the rest.
Keep in mind that all calculations (such as weight requirements and calories) listed in the program are general numbers and may vary depending per person depending on their particular situation. However, it’s still a good baseline with which one can track his/her intake and stick to the diet.
Obviously, the frequency that the application is used depends on the end user. If you are the sort who can loyally keep an eating diary every day, then this is the application for you.
The only drawback to the program is that only one person can track his/her weight at any given time. I share my iPod Touch with other people and if one person is using this particular program, then the others cannot. If Lose It! allowed for different users to log in and track themselves at different times, it may well be the perfect meal diary program.
What I like: Intuitive interface. Huge selection of foods and exercises. The ability to add custom foods and exercises.
What could use improvement: Should be able to customize it for use by more than one user.
4.5 of 5 stars
