Lose It! app for iPhone updated to 2.0, introduces online sync service
As you prepare to feast, it's not too soon to consider the impact of all that turkey and stuffing. The free Lose It! [iTunes Link] has been out for a long while now, and it's an app that people nearly always bring up when the conversation turns to good exercise/calorie tracker apps. With good reason: at one point I managed to lose over 15 pounds, and it was at least partly thanks to Lose It! on the iPhone. Its extremely intuitive interface and vast database of foods and exercises made it incredibly easy for me to track my progress and restrict my caloric intake.
The one thing I always thought was missing from Lose It! was the ability to sync information back to the Mac. The app itself had limited ability to track trends over time, so I always wished Lose It! had some way of getting that info off my iPhone and onto my computer so I could at least make a spreadsheet out of it.
Lose It! has gone one step farther than that -- they've created their own website, loseit.com, that allows you to view all sorts of information, synced directly from the 2.0 version of Lose It! on the iPhone. Not only are there heaps of information about your own weight loss, calorie consumption, and exercise trends, Lose It's website also allows you to view your friends' information and watch each others' progress, assuming you all have the Lose It! app.
Lose It! 2.0 automatically syncs information from the app as you enter it, so when you go to the Lose It! site, any new information you've entered will already be populated.
Before I go on to tell you how awesome Lose It's new website is, I should tell you first that unless you have the app on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can't even set up an account on the site. The initial site setup is done through the Lose It! app, and as far as I can tell there's no way to enter information on the site itself. As such, the syncing between the app and the site is one-way only; the site acts more as a gathering place for all the information the iPhone app generates, a way to see information at a glance that would take a lot of digging in the app itself.
Setting up an account with Lose It! is easy - but you can only do it on an iPhone or iPod touch
The amount of data you can dig through on the Lose It! website is pretty incredible, especially considering it's all free. Some of the information presented is pretty sobering, too: after looking at my favorite foods for the past year, I discovered that I've consumed nearly 28,000 calories worth of beer since I first downloaded Lose It! in April, and just over 10,000 calories of soda. That's the kind of information that can show you the weak areas in your weight loss plan in a way that wasn't possible with just the Lose It! app alone.
So apparently I really, REALLY like carbohydrates
The bicycle is one of the most efficient machines ever created, by the way
This is what happens when you splurge on a burger and fries for lunch. Ugh
All of the reports generated by Lose It's website can easily be exported to a spreadsheet as a .csv file, which you can then view or edit in either Excel or Numbers.
The amount of polish on Lose It's website is a reflection of the amount of polish in the app itself. Both the Lose It! site and app work together seamlessly to give you as clear an idea as possible about your exercise and eating trends. Considering the amount of work that must have gone into it, it's amazing that this all comes at no charge. If you're looking for a way to help you lose weight, I'd unconditionally recommend downloading Lose It! from the app store and setting up an account with their site.
