Can you share honest Lose It app reviews and experiences

Apps
1

I’ve been thinking about using the Lose It app to track calories and lose weight, but reviews online are mixed and a bit vague. If you’ve used Lose It recently, can you explain what you liked, what frustrated you, and whether the free version is enough or the premium upgrade is actually worth paying for

2

Used Lose It for about 8 months last year, lost 22 lbs, so here’s the blunt version.

What I liked:

  1. Calorie tracking is simple
    • Barcode scanner works well for most US grocery stuff.
    • Big database. I logged 95 percent of things without custom entries.
    • Custom foods and recipes are easy once you set them up once.

  2. Weight loss tools
    • You set a goal, time frame, and it gives you a daily calorie budget.
    • Graphs of weight and calories helped me see plateaus and when I was lying to myself.
    • Weekly summary email made it obvious when I had “mystery maintenance weeks.”

  3. Free version is useable
    • Calorie tracking, weight tracking, basic goals, barcode scanner.
    • No hard paywall for essential stuff like logging food.

What annoyed me:

  1. Database accuracy
    • Tons of user added foods. Some are wrong by 20 to 30 percent.
    • Quick fix I used. Sort results by “most popular” and check calories per 100 g against package.
    • I ended up saving my own versions of common foods. Takes effort the first 2 weeks.

  2. Portion sizes
    • It pushes random serving sizes like “0.7 serving” or “1 container” instead of grams.
    • I bought a cheap food scale and used grams for almost everything.
    • Once you log “150 g chicken breast” a few times, it sits at the top of recent foods and gets faster.

  3. Ads and premium push
    • Free version throws popups for Premium.
    • Not insane, but annoying if you hate upsells.
    • I paid for Premium for 3 months. Mostly for macros by meal and more historical data. Then cancelled. Did not feel worth a full year.

  4. Exercise calories
    • If you sync steps or workouts, it adds exercise calories to your budget.
    • For weight loss, I set “Custom” exercise and logged less than the app estimated.
    • When I ate back all exercise calories, my loss slowed. When I ignored half, loss matched the prediction.

Things that helped it work:

  1. I set my goal to 0.5 lb per week, not 2 lbs. Less hunger, easier to stick to.
  2. I pre logged dinner in the morning. Then I adjusted breakfast and lunch to fit.
  3. I repeated simple meals. Example: same oatmeal breakfast 5 days a week, same chicken and rice lunch. Less logging time, fewer errors.

Stuff that sucked:

  1. Social features feel dead. I tried groups, got bored. Mostly spammy or low effort posts.
  2. UI on Android glitched a couple of times after updates. One update logged me out and did not sync one day of entries. Not tragic, but annoying.
  3. Food search is slower than MyFitnessPal for me. Not unusable, but you feel it.

Who it helps:
• Works if you want a simple calorie tracker and do not care about fancy workout plans.
• Works if you like numbers and do not mind weighing food for a few weeks.
• Less helpful if you want coaching, recipes, community, or deep habit tracking.

If you try it, my advice:

  1. Use the free version first for 2 to 4 weeks.
  2. Use a food scale and grams for at least main meals.
  3. Create “go to” meals and save them.
  4. Ignore most user entries with weird calories.
  5. Do not obsess over perfect accuracy. Aim to be consistent and honest.

For me, Lose It worked as a daily log and a reality check. The weight loss came from the boring part, hitting the same calorie target almost every day, not from any fancy feature in the app.

3

Used Lose It for ~1 year, regained some weight, then used it again, so here’s the “not a miracle, just a tool” version.

I broadly agree with @boswandelaar on most points, but my experience leaned a bit different in a few areas.

What I actually liked
• Interface: It’s visually cleaner than MyFitnessPal to me. The “budget left” screen is super intuitive and kinda gamified in a low-key way. That little orange bar going down kept me honest more than I care to admit.
• Food logging speed: Once I had 2–3 weeks of entries, 80% of my logging was just tapping from “Recent” or “Favorites.” At that point, accuracy mattered less than consistency.
• Custom recipes: This was the killer feature for me. I batch cook: chili, casseroles, giant pots of curry. Being able to make one “Chili v3” recipe, log total grams, and let it auto-calc per serving made the whole thing sustainable.
• Free vs premium: I actually found Premium more useful than @boswandelaar did, but only short term. The “trends” and “insights” got me to realize I was snacking hard at night. After about 3 months, those insights stopped being new, so I cancelled too.

What annoyed me / where I disagree a bit
• Database “problem”: People complain a lot about bad entries, but to be blunt, the difference between 140 vs 155 calories for a yogurt did not matter for me. I cared way more about logging every snack than about microscopically perfect numbers. If you are the kind of person who gets stuck fixing every entry, Lose It can actually become a procrastination tool.
• Exercise calories: The auto added exercise calories are sketchy, yes, but my solution was more extreme. I turned off all syncing entirely. I treated exercise as a bonus for health and mood, not as “permission to eat more.” My weight loss became way more predictable when I just ignored them.
• Social & community: I actually unfollowed all social stuff on day one. The groups felt like a weird combo of spam, inspirational quotes, and people arguing about carbs. For me, that was a plus. I didn’t want another feed to scroll. I wanted a quiet logbook.
• Notifications: This is my petty gripe. The reminders to log were helpful the first 2 weeks, then just nagging. I turned off 90% of them and my stress dropped a notch. The app is way better when it’s not buzzing like a needy Tamagotchi.

How it actually helped me lose weight
Not gonna pretend Lose It was magic. What it did was:
• Made my “oh it’s just a snack” habits visible in cold numbers.
• Showed me how brutal restaurant meals are. A “light” lunch out could be my entire day’s calories. Once I saw that pattern over a month, I cut restaurant lunches from 3x/week to 1x and weight started dropping again.
• Gave me guardrails: On days I knew I was going out at night, I could lowball breakfast and lunch so I didn’t just blow the whole week on one dinner.

Stuff I straight up disliked
• Weekly “insights” sometimes felt passive aggressive, like “Notice you’re often over your budget on weekends.” Yeah thanks, I’m not blind.
• The “recommended” calorie targets were sometimes too aggressive when I put in my goal. I actually had to bump my goal from “lose weight faster” to “slower weight loss” to get something livable. If I followed the original recommendation I would’ve white-knuckled for 5 days and then faceplanted into a pizza.
• On iOS, after certain updates, there were random tiny UI lags that made searching food feel clunky. Not a dealbreaker, just mildly infuriating when I was hungry and cranky.

Who I think Lose It actually fits
Good fit if:
• You like clear numbers and simple graphs more than “coaching” content.
• You’re okay with “good enough” accuracy and focusing on logging everything instead of perfect entries.
• You already have a plan for what to eat, you just need accountability and awareness.

Not so great if:
• You want meal plans, recipes, and hand holding built into the app. Lose It has some of that in Premium, but it always felt kind of generic.
• You hate tracking or you tend to obsess and spiral when you see numbers. Staring at calories all day can backfire if you’re prone to that.
• You expect the app to keep you motivated. It’s a tracker, not a coach.

What I’d suggest if you’re on the fence
• Use the free version for 2–3 weeks with absolutely brutal honesty. If you binge, log it. If you drink, log it. Don’t try to “be good” the first week, just track what you actually eat. That baseline is eye opening.
• Pay attention to patterns, not single days. Is it weekends? Evenings? Work lunches? That’s where the app shines.
• If after a month you feel obsessed, stressed, or you keep quitting and restarting, calorie tracking in general (not just Lose It) might not be your thing, and that’s not a moral failure. It just means you might do better with habits-based approaches instead of numbers.

TL;DR: Lose It is a solid, mostly un-sexy tool. It will not motivate you or fix your habits for you. It will hold up a mirror. If you can handle that without going nuts over every single calorie, it’s worth trying, especially the free version first.