Lose It!

Everyone needs lots of tools to help them succeed at this weight loss thing. (Time out: My four year old son just walked up to me in my bra. I completely lost track of what I was thinking.)

Oh yeah, tools. (Oh man, focus. Quit thinking about the bra. Back to blogging!)

Lose It has becoming one of my favorite tools! For me, it's important to track my calories. But I hate counting. Hate it. I don't want to waste half my day looking up how many calories each food is worth and figuring out all the math. It's boring and I just don't have the time.

In the past I used Spark People (add that to the list of diets I've tried). It worked. I liked it. But it was sucking up too much of my time! On Spark People there are community forums, personal web pages, articles, and more. So much stuff! I found myself online half the day. So I finally just quit.

Lose It is different. It's simple. I add my foods. I see the numbers. I make choices throughout my day based on those numbers.

Here's how I use it. Each morning I weigh myself. I record the number on Lose It. Takes five seconds. I make my breakfast. I usually eat my breakfast at my computer desk while I check my email. I take another five seconds to add my breakfast. If I have a little time, I comment on a friend's progress or read their comments on mine. It's so nice to have the encouragement and support from others who are doing the same thing!

Lose It shows me how many calories I've consumed, burned, and have left in my "budget" for the day. Awesome!

And when I'm out and about, I have the Lose It! App on my phone. It links directly to my online account so I don't have to update things twice.

Summary? Things I love about Lose It:

*it does the math for me

*support and encouragement from friends

*it's not time consuming

*it has a huge database of food, including store brands and restaurant foods

*if it doesn't have a food, I can EASILY add it myself by copying the info from a label

*I can add my recipes (only takes a minute or two)

*it calculates calories burned from exercise AND daily chores, like house cleaning

There are several tools like this out there. Spark People, Lose It, My Fitness Pal. I'm sure they all have their own list of pros and cons. Lose It is the one that works for me. Join me there!!

mckennaralls (at) hotmail (dot) com