Lose It!

I mentioned in my weekly check in I was going to evaluate my participation in Weight Watchers.  I love the program.  It works when I work it, but I haven't been working it for the last year or so.  It's like paying money for a gym membership and not using it, so I decided to look into alternatives. 

I've been tracking my points since the beginning of the year, but I'm not taking the program seriously.  I think there may be a better use of my $50 per quarter.  As a result of that, I checked my iPhone apps and decided to give Lose It! a try (they have a good website, too).  Their basic services and apps are free.  A Premium membership is $40 a year.

I had just discovered Weight Watcher's barcode scanner, but I hadn't used it yet.  Lose It's barcode scanner is wonderful (I imagine WW's would be, too).  Instead of looking up individual food items, scan the package -- I don't think this works for fresh fruits and veggies, but maybe if you have a bag of apples...  This is where the smart phone app shines, but the site works fine with their look up lists as well.  It's simple and uncluttered. 

Also, they appear to have privacy enabled by default.  I don't remember setting up any privacy when I activated my app on the phone, but when I checked settings on the website, they were locked down pretty tightly.  I can choose to open my information up to the world, but I have to go out of my way to do it.  That's important to me.  At the moment, I don't think they even have my name.  I used my pbbs address, and that's what it's calling me.

You can have friends, and you can choose to post to Facebook and Twitter (I'm sure you've all seen some people's posts), but by default, none of that is enabled.  I mention this, because if anyone decides to use the site or is already using the site and wants to use the friends capability, I'll open it up.

As a result of this finding, I plan to deactivate my WW membership before the renewal period at the end of the month.  From my previous experience, my account remains and I can participate in the forums if I want, but I can't use the tools.  At some later date, if I want to reactivate, WW makes it very easy.  I do appreciate this about them.

I looked at Sparkpeople, but they charge for the app now, and when it was free, it didn't work very well at all.  For now, I'm checking alternatives.  One thing I'm noticing from my Lose It! tracking -- I need to get more protein in my diet.  I think if I spring for the premium membership, I can get more detailed nutrient tracking, something that's available free on the SparkPeople site.