There are lots of ways to lose weight. I recently dropped 30 pounds over the course of about 4 months. I started by trying Noom, but the whole model around Noom is very high-touch, and that annoyed me. I just wanted to suffer silently and alone. I switched over to LoseIt and did.

LoseIt pretty much leaves you alone to do what you need to do. At its core, it’s just calorie counter and has a very good database of food. It is easy to add your own food as well. It also has a low-key goals function that I found helpful. I set my goal weight and told the app how fast I wanted to go (1lb/week). After that it’s just a matter of tracking everything you eat.

I can get a little obsessive with details on things like this, but this time I just wanted to keep everything casual. If the food database didn’t have the exact thing I just ate, I’d throw in whatever seemed closest and I always leaned toward the database item that had more calories that I figured I’d eaten. I also tried to come in below my calories for the day, and was mostly successful with that. On the few days I came in over budget, I just accepted the day and did better the next day.

I did not intentionally change the stuff I ate. No keto, no low/slow carb, no weird fasting schedule. I did notice that by only tracking calories, I naturally adjusted the food I was eating in order to feel full longer. That means I ate more salads, not because of some plan, but because they were low calorie and made my stomach feel satisfied. I usually just have coffee with cream for breakfast, a salad from 7-Eleven, and whatever dinner the family was eating that night. Also beer.

Another thing I like about LoseIt is that it connects to other services pretty well. I use a Garmin watch which tracks my movement, and LoseIt is able to pull in that data and adjust my daily caloric goals. It also connects to my WiFi scale and pulls in my morning weigh-in to track progress against the goal. I don’t do much more than step on the scale and input my food.

I do try to move my body during the day, and I have some specific routines and gear that I use. I’ll save that detail for another post.