There are now many apps available on the market that cater to weight loss, and that assist busy users in changing their diets and exercise habits. Many of these apps allow users to share information online, which can foster healthy competition. One of these apps is LoseIt. How does LoseIt work, and is it effective?
Overview
Lose It is an app that can be downloaded to a smartphone, and which relies on the principles of an active lifestyle, balanced diet, and group competition in order for people to lose weight and keep it off. Lose It is available on loseit.com and can be downloaded to both Apple and Android phones.
How It Works
Lose It first allows you to set a goal by letting you set your goal weight. It also asks about your daily budget. Lose It integrates the goal, daily budget, and your personal profile. It will then provide you with goals and tips around your sleep, exercise levels, body measurements, and the nutrients that you consume in your diet. The app will also track your progress for each goal, and allow you to compare how you and your friends are meeting your objectives. Lose It can also help you count calories, and can integrate with wireless weighing scales and other fitness devices.
By setting a tangible goal (an amount of lost weight) and setting it against a context of other goals that should follow (specific body measurements, exercises to get to the lost weight, the right diet to get nutrients that will help you lose weight and keep it off), Lose It encourages users to meet their objectives.
Standard
Standard copies of LoseIt will allow users to set their fitness goals and budget.
The app actually has a new look for 2013, and has simpler ways to log exercise and food. As with the old Lose It, the app still allows Standard users to track their progress. The new Lose It has a way to view your day’s work, and then compare your progress daily as well as weekly.
Premium
Standard users can upgrade to Premium Lose It for a fee. Premium users can plan their meals in advance, and then use their food and exercise data to see how the planned food can affect their ability to lose weight in a certain amount of time. Users can also confirm that they kept to their planned meal.
The Premium version of Lose It has more goals, can be integrated with even more devices, and enables competition amongst groups and teams. The Premium version also has private challenges to make weight loss more competitive.
Company
Lose It is made by FitNow, Inc., which is based in Boston, MA, USA. FitNow was founded in 2008. Lose It was first made available for iPhone, and quickly gained popularity amongst iPhone users. It was made available for Android phones in 2011.
Price
Lose It can be downloaded for free on the Android store and iTunes store. Users can upgrade from Standard to Premium for a fee of $15-30 a year, depending on how long they have been using the Standard program. The upgrade can be carried out within the app itself.
Reviews
So far, reviews for Lose It have been good. Users like the wide variety of food and calorie information available, as well as the exercises that are recommended. Some reviewers claim that they lost a lot of weight within months. Other reviewers, however, did not like the limited exercises, and thought that the food and calorie list could still be expanded.
Social
Lose It has its own blog which provides news on app updates. LoseIt is also on Twitter where it has over 9000 followers. It also has over 74,000 likes on its official Facebook page.
