As you can see from my picture, I'm no lightweight. I really want to drop 100 pounds, but I don't want to do it too fast because I want to keep the weight off, and I want to keep making milk to comfort my son with until I successfully ween him (another 2014 resolution). To achieve these goals, I'm using Lose It! -- just not in the way the designers intended. I entered my current weight, my goal weight, and selected that I wanted to loose 1/2 pound each week. The app gave me the date at which I would achieve my goal, and, seeing that it was near my birthday in 2017, I made it my goal to reach my weightless goal by my birthday in that year.
Since I hate doing a food log (How much is on my plate? How do I record this old family recipe?), whenever the app says I'll achieve my goal after my goal date, I'm supposed to fill in the in-app food log, abide by the calorie budget, and try to keep my protein above my carbs, until I move the achievement date back to where I want it. Unfortunately, the holidays were not kind, and I haven't been good about logging when I'm beyond my goal weight. It seems that what they say is true - even when you eat healthy things, if you eat too much, you'll gain weight. Anyway, while this is an excellent weight loss tool, I find that I'm only reliably using the target date feature.
So, that's what I've resolved to do for the next several years -- stay on target for an eventual weight loss win. If you've made a similar resolution, here's hoping you find a tool that works for you as well. I blew my weight budget this New Year's, but have managed to drop much of this party-weight over the past few days. Lose It! tells me that, as of this morning, I'll achieve my goal about a month beyond when I want to... so I need to drop two more pounds to get back on track. Personally, I think that 2 pounds is much more achievable than 100, and I'm optimistic that using this technological tool will keep me on target.
I guess this is the true test for any technology's adoption. Whatever the new thing is, its good when you can play with it and find the feature or features that really work for you. For some people, the food log is necessary - but for me, simply knowing if I'm on or off target is enough to inform my eating and exercise choices. While it is good to know everything that a particular piece of technology can do, so you can try things that may improve your workflow or recreational enjoyment, we should only use the tools that actually help us. Any tool that doesn't improve our lives will actually hinder them - wasting time and increasing frustration.
So... whatever your goals for 2014, be sure to evaluate the tools you're using to achieve your goals - and don't waste your time on things that don't help YOU.
