I guarantee that I would not have been remotely successful in losing weight if I didn’t have access to one thing. My calorie tracking app, Lose It!.

I log everything that I eat into this app. It keeps track of every food item or product that I enter. I can even enter in all the ingredients to a recipe and store those as well. It will calculate all the calories on it’s own as long as I enter accurate amounts and serving sizes.

Every day I try to plan out my meals and keep track of all my calories. Without this planning process, and putting in the effort to document everything, there is no way that I could ever have been successful in losing weight. From the first moment that I started using this app, it was incredibly helpful to see just how many calories I was consuming. In the days before apps, people used to have a physical food journal that everything got written in, and calorie calculations had to be done manually. I have incredible respect for anyone who actually went through with that and was able to have success in that way, but I am not sure I could have ever done that.

I have gotten used to entering in every detail of my food consumption on my app, and to others who have never done it, it can seem like a huge pain in the butt. But I guarantee that it is a million times easier than having an actual journal and trying to physically write everything down and do all the math required for every little thing. With a calorie tracking app, all I have to do is enter in the nutritional information on the label, and then just enter in how much I have eaten, either by serving size, measurement, or weight, and it does all the calculations for me. It’s so wonderful. With most products, you can even just scan the barcode of the product and it will look up all the information immediately.

You certainly can’t do that with this antique calorie counter that I found on display at the Ontario Science Centre last week:

There are many tracking apps out there, and I know that one of the biggest is MyFitnessPal, but personally I much prefer Lose It! due to it’s user interface. It looks nicer to me, and feels a little easier to use. I also pay for the premium version, at $30 per year. It allows access to many other features that I use daily to measure long term statistics and charts of all sorts of body measurements, I can do lots of meal planning, etc.

Now I know that some other apps allow you to do a little more for free, but I love this app so much, and I quite happily pay the $30 a year. It is the single most important app on my phone. I use it more than absolutely everything and I rely on it being there, working flawlessly, to help me lose weight. Honestly, think about all those weight loss programs out there that charge astronomical subscription fees and charges. Many people shell out money towards these programs and never end up getting that value back out of the program. I can sincerely say that I get my $30 worth.

I love that I can also participate in challenges with other users on Lose It! I have been involved in quite a few over the past year especially, and I am proud to say that there are many challenges that I have either won, or come in the top 5. It always makes me feel proud to see those successes, and helps keep me motivated towards my end goal.

I think the most important feature of the app that I use, is the ability to select a meal from the past in full, and add it to my current day. People are all creatures of habit, and I guarantee that none of us eat a completely different meal every day of our lives. At some point, there’s either leftovers, or we have one night a week that’s always designated as “spaghetti night” or “taco tuesday” or something like that. Even for people who frequent restaurants, I know there’s always something on a menu that’s going to be very similar to what you’ve eaten before. I type in a food item and suddenly I can tell you every day that I have eaten that item in the past year. It’s awesome.

For those times, all you have to do is go to add something to your meal, and there’s a little search box right there on top that lets you type in say “pasta” and every time you’ve eaten pasta, the complete meals show up right there for you to choose from. So I can add everything with one or two taps and be done with my logging. I just have to make sure that I put that amount on my plate, and if not, I can just easily adjust the amount in the app.

Technology is a wonderful thing and I owe a lot to this app in particular. Lose It! has made every day easier for me and has kept track of everything I have entered for years. I love it so much, and like I said, I don’t think I would be successful without it. It is one of the biggest factors in me having lost 220 pounds so far. When I get to my ultimate goal, I know that I will keep using it, because it has just become a way of life for me.

If you find yourself struggling to keep your weight in check, I highly recommend checking out Lose It! or one of the many other calorie tracking apps out there today.