I see it's been mentioned a few times in old posts, but I wanted to share a service that I really love for tracking my calories, nutrients, and weight every day - it's called Lose It! Originally it was just a free iOS (iPhone/iPod/iPad) app, but recently they have set up a corresponding website at www.loseit.com (it's free to register an account there as well).

If you are looking for a new or a better solution for your calorie counting, I highly recommend you check it out. As a web developer and design nerd I have a ton of appreciation for the little touches and features all over both the app and the website (bottom line: it's simple, straightforward, pretty, and fast!). Here are a few of the reasons why I love it...

- If you have both the iOS app and an account with the website, you can update your log from either one and the other will update automatically. But, you can still use just the site if you don't have an iPod/iPhone/iPad.
- Huge database of foods, and they accept suggestions too.
- Ability to add recipes and custom foods of your own, if your meals and snacks aren't already in the database.
- Exercise tracking options too.
- You can set up your LoseIt.com account to email you daily or weekly with a summary of your eating and physical activity, and if you need extra motivation, you can even set it up to send your weight loss updates to Twitter or Facebook (just lbs. lost only, not your actual weight).
- Very easy to update your weight every day, and it graphs your progress since you started so you can see how you're doing each day.
- Both the app and the website remember all your foods, so it's easy to just start typing the name of a food and have the one you want come up immediately.
- The app also remembers your previous meals, so if you eat the same meals often, it's easy to tell it that you ate the same lunch as yesterday, and all your individual foods will get copied over (and you can edit portions after the fact, e.g. if you loaded up your sandwich with extra avocado today).

Anyway... sorry if this sounds like a gratuitous advertisement, but Lose It! has brought me the most success in my efforts to track my calories and bring my weight down. So, I highly suggest taking a look!

what is an ios app?

iOS = the operating system on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. So if you have any of those, you can download and use their application. But you can use the website for free anyway, it doesn't matter if you have the app or not.

I went ahead signed up and had a look around, thanks for this! It is nice!!

I've been using Lose it since January, it's great! I don't have an account on the website since I pretty much always have my iphone on me...but it's really worked well. I do wish they had additional/updated restaruant and grocery info, but it's a pretty decent database. And yes, you can always "create" new foods if it's not in the database.

Seriously, though...if I didn't have this tool, I don't think I would have stuck with CC this long!

Count me in as another loseit! lover. It's such a pretty, clean interface (very important to me and the reason i can not use daily plate or sparkpeople) and I love how it accounts for calories burned. I also like how it will tell you WHEN you will achieve your goal...(theoretically, teehee).

I'll also add that as you lose weight, the calories you can have slowly goes down. It's very subtle. I like it.

Oh, this is cool! Lose it has been my main tool for calorie counting and I am glad you can use the website now!!

Thanks for the info

Apparently they've caught the social networking bug too, because it seems you can add "friends" now (app and site both) to keep up with each other - nice accountability feature!