The first thing we do at the start of a new year is set resolutions, and 2017 is about to come to a close in just three weeks. The number one resolution year in and year out is to lose weight, get in shape, get healthier or some variant of those options. If you’re one of the millions, like me, who makes it a goal to get healthier, then you need Lifesum on your Android or iOS devices.
What is Lifesum?
Lifesum is an app that anyone can use as a tool to take control of their eating habits, water consumption, and exercise tracking by logging them into the daily diary. It’s not overly complex and can be upgraded to a premium account for a nominal fee. The free account gives you the same gorgeous interface as the premium account but is limited to food and exercise tracking only. That might be good enough for many, but for those who need a little more help, the premium Gold account unlocks:
- Individually adapted diet plans
- Access to healthy recipes
- Allows users to save favorite meals and recipes
- Macro tracking
- Life Score – a Lifesum calculation of all of your cumulative activities and foods to tell you how healthy your lifestyle is
- Food ratings
- Body composition ratings
- Automatic exercise tracking
There are other apps like Lifesum, but aren’t as easy to use. Lifesum is also the best looking diet tracking app I have ever used.
A bit about me
I have been an active person my entire life. From adolescence where I played baseball, soccer, basketball to continuation into high school where I played basketball, baseball, and football. In college, I got wrapped up in bodybuilding and post-college in my late 20’s I was big on powerlifting. Now in my late 30s, I lift moderate weights in the morning on most days, with cardio after work on my spin cycle and a couple of walks per day with my dog Taro.
I’m also a big guy. I was always a little chubby growing up and no matter what I did, it was always extremely difficult to keep weight off. In college, I dropped my body fat percentage down to 8% but had a lot of extra time to dedicate to exercise and dieting. As a professional in the prime of my chemistry career, I find myself traveling and going to way too many work events where beer, wine, and hors d’oeurves flow freely. Even with daily exercise, it’s a struggle to keep the weight off. There’s extra weight I’d love to lose to improve my energy and to just look better.
Why I downloaded Lifesum
I’ve tried dozens of health apps. While I’ve liked some like MyFitnessPal, I found they didn’t offer everything I needed while offering me too much of what I didn’t want. I decided to try Lifesum since it has won several awards in the App Store and Google Play Store. I really need to control my eating and drinking habits since my metabolism isn’t getting any faster as I get closer to 40 years old (37 now).
I need help staying consistent with my diet and need to log what I eat, when I eat and how much I eat because it’s way too easy to get off track with a hectic work schedule like mine.
How did Lifesum perform for me?
The first thing I liked most about Lifesum was its user interface. It’s really clean and nice to look at but is extremely intuitive. It was so intuitive I signed up for the Gold plan within the first 10 minutes of using it, and that was a first for me because I’m always skeptical of sticking with health apps. I opted for the 3-month subscription plan at $11.97 per billing period. I figured if I didn’t like it I could cancel before three months, and I needed to give Lifesum a fair shot which was more than one month. Ultimately, the subscription also helped me commit to eating better since I invested in it and didn’t want to waste money.
As with all health apps, Lifesum asked me for my age, gender, height, weight, exercise habits and what my main goal for using the app was. I stated I wanted to lose weight, specifically 20 pounds over three months. Lifesum did some calculations in the background and set a baseline of 2014 calories per day without exercise. It also gave me a baseline amount of water I need to drink and tells me to drink more when I exercise in order to avoid dehydration. Lifesum sends notifications when to drink water as well – before meals so I don’t overeat, and right before bed to give my body fluid to cleanse itself as my body rests.
When I exercise and add it to the diary, it calculates extra calories I need to eat so I don’t become deficient and “hangry” as it once told me I was when I didn’t eat enough. Not eating enough is a common mistake many dieters make since it can actually cause your metabolism to slow down since your body thinks it is starving. As someone who goes overboard in everything I do, having Lifesum remind me to eat more has kept my energy high and my metabolism stoked.
The app calculates my weekly Life Score on a scale of 150. It factors in vegetables, water, red meat, salt, sugar, whole grains, processed food, alcohol, high-intensity exercise, unsaturated fat, fruit and berries, saturated fat, moderate exercise, strength training, fish, and protein. A score less than 50 earns an Off-Track rating, a score of 51-75 earns an Imbalanced rating, 76-110 earns a Balanced rating, 110-140 earns a Healthy rating and 140-150 gets a Perfect score. Since I have downloaded Lifesum, I also committed to living a super healthy lifestyle.
I decided to cut way back on alcohol to no more than three beers per week. I meal prep twice a week – it’s super easy with meal prep containers from Amazon (20 containers for $15 and fresh groceries using Amazon Fresh) – where I make meals that consist of veggies, a lean protein and a grain or potato with no added oil or butter. I know this diet sounds terrible, but leaving out variety helps me cut back on cravings and this diet gives me enough carbs to get through my weight lifting sessions. While Lifesum does offer customized diet plans like the wildly popular Ketogenic diet, I choose to go with a balanced diet that is easy for me to adapt to. Diets, where I cut out carbs, have never worked for me as they drain my energy and leave me mentally foggy. I do like that Lifesum offers diet plans like Ketogenic, Scandinavian, and Mediterranean as everyone reacts differently to what foods they eat.
I eat three of my prepared meals per day (at a cost of roughly $2.50 per meal with organic veggies on sale, chicken breast tenders (easier to cook than whole breasts), ground turkey and sweet potatoes, brown rice or yams), about four whole medium eggs, a cup of milk, two fruits and some other snacks thrown into the mix as well. Lifesum tells me I need to up my saturated fats some weeks and that I agree with since saturated fats help keep my hormones in balance, and it also tells me I should eat more seafood which I wholly agree with. I earn Life Scores that range from 122-138 since I don’t live a perfect lifestyle. I sometimes fail on my alcohol weekly limit, but that’s okay since I’m losing about a pound a week while getting stronger in the gym at the same time.
Lifesum doesn’t put the work in for me, but it does put the work I’ve done in context and reminds me of how good I am doing. That is solid motivation especially when I slip up and cave to happy hour chicken wings and beer. Without Lifesum, I am more likely to fall off the horse and stay off. With Lifesum, I do realize that I can’t be perfect 100% of the time and that’s okay as long as I am good the majority of the time.
By meal prepping and sticking to my daily diet, I have literally cut my food consumption cost to $10 per day. That’s a huge saving for me since I was eating out almost every meal at a cost of $30-50 per day. But more importantly, I have my waistline in check and slowly getting to my 20-pound weight-loss goal. Instead of eating 1000+ calorie meals, I’m down to 400-500 per meal and am getting for veggies and fruits in my diet than ever.
As a result of this effort, I’ve lost eight pounds in the last five weeks, am sleeping better, looking younger and have more energy than I have in the past five years.
Do I recommend Lifesum?
Absolutely. It’s easy to use and the cost is minimal if you can commit to living cleaner and better. In fact, you can look at the cost as an investment in your life since you’re more likely to get healthier and live life to the fullest.
Lifesum won’t put in the work for you, but it will help you stay on track and give you guidance when you need it. It’s not overly intrusive and can help anyone reach their health goals no matter their age.
If you’d like to learn more about Lifesum head on over to www.lifesum.com.