Monday, August 16, 2010

Weight Loss with Technology: iPhone

You know the iPhone commercial, "There's an app for that"? I am slowly becoming that commercial. I go to my parents' house and I pull out my iPhone. I have to show my mom all the apps I've been using. Because for weight loss? Yeah, there's an app or two for that!



I am becoming more of a Nerd the longer I have this phone. All I wanted to be able to do was to make and answer phone calls. I certainly didn't expect to be using my phone for weight loss, photography, geocaching, relaxation, music playing and games too.

The commerical above actually features one of the apps I've found for weight loss. It's the Lose it! app. I use the free version. What I like about this app is that you log the food you eat for every meal. You set a goal based on your current weight and the amount of weight you would like to lose per week. It's similar to the on-line tracking of Weight Watchers, except that you are monitoring calories instead of points. You can also have the app send you a reminder to log your meals. And if you choose, you can add friends to the app so you can encourage each other in your weight loss journey. You also have the option to email a weekly report to yourself or another person as well. I don't share my information with any one (yet).

I found that I lost about 8 pounds the first week. I had set it for a 1 lb/week loss, but I made a point to eat a lot of fruit and vegetables including a salad everyday for lunch. I didn't use all of my calories every day. The second week, I was sick one day and didn't log my food and then I skipped logging for the rest of the week. For this week, I decided to go for a 2 lb/week goal. We'll see how it goes.

I also added a couple of other apps that I use with Lose it! just because I can never leave well enough alone and need to make things more complicated than they are. I'll talk about those apps next time.

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