So this ought to be fun

[annathepiper]

Good Murkworks friend darthhellokitty has had amazing progress this year losing weight, and on Thursday, solarbird pointed me at a post by another local acquaintance of ours, petit_chou, who’s been working hard on losing weight as well. It seems petit_chou has been having great results using an iPhone app called LoseIt!, so I’ve decided to check this out.

The way this works is, you tell it your current weight, where you want to actually be, and it’ll work out for you how long it should take you to get there and how many calories you’re allowed to consume in a day. Then you enter in what foods you eat and it’ll tally up that up for you. You’re allowed extra calories if you get in exercise, which it also lets you record. (Courtesy of this I learned I burn roughly 300 calories a day just walking to and from work during the week.)

So yeah. Given that I’ve continued to have weight issues and that I really need to get on the stick dealing with this, given that it’ll significantly reduce my risk of a recurrence of breast cancer, I’m going to give this a shot.

I started trying it on Thursday night and so far the app is quite easy to use and kind of fun. Since I have my iPhone with me all the time anyway, it makes it very easy to just whip the thing out and track stuff as I eat it, or as I finish a bout of walking. It’s also handy for providing immediate visual data on how much I’ve done during a day and how much more I’m allowed, and for keeping track of progress as well. This seems like it’ll be a way more effective tool than what I’d tried before, which is to say, keeping a manual food log on my laptop.

Trying it last night when we went out for sushi was fun, too, since it meant I was able to go “okay, I’m down to about 120 calories left, I can either have another round of sushi or go for the mochi!” Mmm, mochi. And today, I’m feeling kind of weird and almost-hungry, like my system thinks it should have more food except it doesn’t really need it. So it should be interesting to see how far I can get with it all. Wish me luck, folks.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[mari-mac1109.livejournal.com]

If you like LoseIt!, you might also like SparkPeople's web service (http://www.sparkpeople.com) and the iPhone app that goes along with it. It's not quite as speedy as LoseIt! when it comes to loading, but the database has more foods, I think. And, it "syncs" to the webpage, so any changes you make in the app show up on your online page. I prefer it for that reason, but for another as well: it lets you track a lot more nutrients like vitamins and minerals. I'm usually crap at getting enough iron, so i really like that feature. I've learned SO much about nutrition just from logging what I eat with SP. Also, the charts and graphs make the nerd in me positively giddy!

It also lets you link up with SparkRecipes (http://www.sparkrecipes.com), a site that lets you build recipes by adding ingredients and then calculates the calories/fat/protein/carbs/&c. of the dish based on how many servings it makes. There are also a lot of great, healthy recipes on the site posted by other users--all with the nutritional breakdowns! After you've entered or selected a recipe, a few clicks and you can add it to your nutrition tracker.

SP also has teams (for certain health concerns, types of fitness, regional, age, goal, weight range, hobbies... the list is practically endless) and forums, as well as a huge database of articles on all aspects of health, not just nutrition and fitness, but stress management, etc. etc. There are a lot of really inspiring users on the site, and the forums are really warm, welcoming and helpful--though, like any online forum open to the public, there's some spam and a fair bit of ignorance ("Will I lose weight faster if I just eat cabbage and nothing else?" "Sure, but it's not healthy, and you might clear rooms and lose friends in the process as well!").

An online account is totally free, no subscription fee or any of that. Pretty sure the apps's free too. The site is supported by ads, but they're not offensive and ad-block nips 'em pretty well. The app isn't as powerful as the site, but it gets the job done rather well when you're on the go!

I encourage you to take a peak. It's a pretty awesome site. When I was counting calories with Spark, I lost something like... 35-40 pounds.

[annathepiper]

LoseIt's got a feature for tracking nutrition too, yeah, and the app is free; however, it sounds like this other app's got a leg up on it with syncing data between the site and the iPhone?

LoseIt says you can make an account on the site and back stuff up off your iPhone but I don't know if it'll sync up. I'll need to check that out.

Thanks for the data, others who read this post may benefit. :)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it works on the iPod touch as well...

[annathepiper]

I should think it would! The only difference might be that if you need to look up the calorie count on something that may require you to have a wireless connection handy--or if you make an account on loseit.com, it'll need a wireless connection to back up your data.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I found an iPhone app for the website I use:

http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/iphone-calorie-tracker/

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks! Multiple options then! :)