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Of course, there are some caveats. Kristin Kirkpatrick, R.D., a registered dietitian working with Snap It!, says it won’t necessarily recognize that your tuna-avocado sushi has brown rice instead of white or whether you’re having muenster or cheddar cheese, so you’ll have to manually indicate those details. Ditto if you cook with vegetable oil vs. olive oil, and you also may need to select your serving size. But, she says, “It’s really good for mapping out the macronutrients in your meal.”
It also remembers what you’ve entered in the past, so if you cook chicken teriyaki and broccoli with sesame oil, it’ll keep that in mind for the future.
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The app can also help keep you honest, since we tend to think we’re eating less than we actually are. “When you track what you eat, you don’t underestimate your calories,” Kirkpatrick says. “That leads to weight loss.” (Kick off your weight loss with the Women’s Health Body Clock Diet.)
Lose It! conducted a study this year with the National Institutes of Health that found that nearly 73 percent of people who actively used the app achieved clinically significant weight loss. (Plus, 5 percent of people who used it occasionally lost weight while 38 percent of people who used it on a “basic” level dropped lbs.)
It’s a really cool idea, but can taking food porn pics really help you lose weight? Experts say yes.
“Using photos to track what you eat is a great way to tell how much you are eating,” says Alissa Rumsey, R.D., a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. It doesn’t just help with tracking—she points out that the accountability involved with logging your food can make you think twice about whether you really need that extra slice of pizza.
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New York-based Jessica Cording, R.D., agrees. “I love this concept,” she says. “A lot of people feel they don’t have time to write down what they eat, but even just pausing to take a photo may help them pay more attention to their choices.”
Cording notes that this also allows you to have more “mental freedom” from trying to figure out what nutrients and calories are actually in your food.
So if you’ve never had much success with food logs, and you take photos of your food for Instagram anyway, this might be something to check out.