Lose It! review

What it is like to use

Lose It! has been around since 2008 and it shows in the polish. Setup asks for your current weight, goal and pace, then gives you a daily calorie budget. The diary is organized by meal, the progress screens are encouraging rather than clinical, and the app nudges you with streaks and challenges. For someone who has never counted calories and is wary of complicated apps, that tone matters.

Logging is by search, barcode or Snap It, its photo recognition feature. The food database is large and covers most packaged products and common meals.

Setting up

Lose It! starts with the classic questions: current weight, goal weight, height, age, sex and how fast you want to lose. It then sets a daily calorie budget and shows your projected goal date. The budget is the centre of the app; every entry is shown as a deduction from it, which many beginners find motivating.

The food log

The diary is split into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, with a running total against your budget. Search covers a large catalogue of foods, brands and restaurant meals, and you can save frequent foods and meals for quicker logging. Barcode scanning brings in packaged products, and Snap It suggests entries from a photo.

Motivation features

Lose It! puts unusual effort into keeping people going. Streaks, badges and challenges reward consistency, and you can connect with friends for encouragement. For people who tend to drift after a couple of weeks, that design is a genuine strength.

Integrations

The app connects with Apple Health and a range of fitness devices and apps, so steps and workouts can adjust your budget. That is standard among the major trackers, but it is well handled.

Where it falls behind the leader

Lose It! keeps things simple, and simplicity has a cost once you want more than a calorie total. Each entry shows fewer nutrients than PlateLens’s 82+, and more of the deeper insights live behind Premium. PlateLens also adds voice logging, a verified database, an adaptive calorie target and a free fasting timer.

Lose It! compared with PlateLens

	Lose It!	PlateLens
Ways to log	Search, barcode, Snap It photo	Photo, voice, barcode, search
Nutrients per entry	Fewer	82+
Calorie target	Budget from your goal	Adaptive TDEE
Fasting timer	—	Free
Premium	$39.99/yr	$34.99/yr

A dash means we could not confirm the feature from the company’s own pages.

Price

Premium costs $39.99 a year according to its App Store listing. That is good value, and only PlateLens ($34.99) is cheaper among the major trackers.

Should you choose it?

Who it suits

• People counting calories for the first time who want a simple budget.
• People who respond well to streaks, badges and challenges.
• Anyone who wants an inexpensive Premium and does not need detailed nutrients.

Who should look elsewhere

People who want deep nutrient data, AI logging across every kind of meal, or an adaptive target will find more in the apps above it in our ranking.

If you want the gentlest possible start and a calorie budget is all you need, Lose It! is a fine choice. If you want the same simplicity with more ways to log and more detail, start with PlateLens. See also Lose It! vs MyFitnessPal.