lose_itOkay, so I’m starting a new little post series that I’m dedicating to my favorite little applications. Whether they’re apps for you phone or applications for your computer, I’ll share some of the new one’s I come across that I find valuable, cool or interesting. I’ll start with the one I’m using a lot right now. It’s an iPhone app called Loose It! About 6 months after getting to Austin, I set off to lose some weight. In 6 months I lost 20 pounds just by eating less and dropping the cokes. Then for a year I wasn’t very disciplined and gained about 10 of it back. Then just two weeks ago I started a biggest loser competition among my staff. There are two objectives.

  1. The person who loses 10% of their body weight first… and maintains it until the end of the competition.
  2. The person who loses the most percentage of their body weight at the end of 3 months.

The competition is fierce, but I’m setting my sites to win both objectives. I downloaded this application a year ago, but have been leaning on it heavily since starting this competition.

With Lose It!, you enter your goal weight and at one pace you hope to lose your weight. You enter your current weight every day and log in all the food you eat and your exercise. With both food and exercise, Lose It! has hundreds of pre-determined foods and exercises you can choose from as well as the ability to add your own. Lose it! has a beautiful interface that lets you know how you’re doing each day or week so you know where you have room to splurge or where you need to stay strong. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to eat something, so I’ve looked to see how much I’ll need to run to cancel the food out.

Also with Lose It! you can link it to twitter and facebook to share with others your progress (if you want that kind of accountability) and I get an email from Lose it! a few hours after every meal time to remind me to record my food.

Losing weight is hard, and this app is taking some of the labor out of the process. It’s a free app, so if you have an iPod or iPhone, download and see if it works for you.

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