aNewDomain
— Almost everyone says it after a huge meal: “I’m going to have to exercise twice as much tomorrow to make up for this.”
If you’re serious about losing excess body weight and improving your overall health, you need a plan. One such plan is available from Lose It!, an Android app that is free to download on Google Play.
There is nothing mysterious about losing weight, of course. You just have to burn more calories than you take in. Unfortunately, that isn’t always easy. Keeping yourself motivated matters, though, and that’s where I found the Lose It! app can really help.
To get the most out of this app, you are going to have to create an account — and share some personal information. That includes your current weight, your goal weight, what you eat and how much you exercise.
Once you preset all that preliminary information, the app hands you an outline of your weight-loss plan. The numbers I used as my goals gave me a daily calorie intake limit of 1,841.
My goal was to lose one pound per week for 10 weeks. And that is where the work begins.
Every day you have to enter in data regarding what you are eating and how much you are exercising. Foodwise, there is an extensive list of foods for you to choose from, and you can enter your own food items if you want. You can even enter whole recipes.
As for exercise, you can choose dozens of activities, from aerobics to Zumba. The app also lets you adjust parameters for each exercise. Time matters. For instance, walking at a rate of three miles per hour for 30 minutes burns 110 calories.
Losing weight is more than just counting inbound and outbound calories, though. Motivation is so key. Lose It! will help link you to a social network of friends, family and peers who are also trying to lose weight, turning your phone into a support network.
The free version of the app is supported with advertisements scattered throughout. However, the ads are not intrusive and may actually be a welcome addition because they lead to additional weight loss services. You can lose the ads if you fork over for the premium version of Lose It! The cost is $3.34 per month, which purportedly includes an even more comprehensive weight loss program. I only reviewed the free version for this review.
Bottom line: Losing weight isn’t just about a goal, it’s also about the journey. Having a plan, tracking the execution of that plan and getting support from a social network of peers following their own similar journey can greatly improve your chances of success. Lose It! is a capable, well-designed app that brings all of those aspects together in one package on your smartphone. That’s why it’s my choice for today’s freeware pick.
For aNewDomain and BreakingModern, I’m Mark Kaelin.
A version of this story ran on aNewDomain’s sister site, BreakingModern.
All Screenshots: Mark Kaelin
