A column in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “Does This Pencil Skirt Have an App?” reminded me: It’s time to brag!

The author talks about her experience with Lose It!, an iPhone app that tallies your calories in and out, gives you a daily budget, and charts your progress to weight-loss goals.

I can only say good things about Lose It! As I mentioned earlier this year, I’ve been using the app myself. Well, now I can say it’s gotten me results beyond any other weight-loss program I’ve ever tried (and I have tried a few). There’s nothing earth-shattering about the concept: You count calories, and make sure you burn more than you eat. But because I always have my phone with me, I’m less inclined to cheat: I enter my foods right after I eat them and know immediately how much I have left to eat that day. I can’t pretend that my five-mile run is worth a large order of fries when in fact it’s only good for about a small; I know before I eat a Caesar salad that even though it’s a salad, it’s quite calorie-heavy; I can’t underestimate the amount I’ve had for breakfast and lunch when I sit down to dinner.

I originally started using Lose It! with the goal of losing 15 pounds to run a better marathon. (Everyone thinks my primary motivation was getting married, but I actually lost too much weight for that — my dress was way too big!) I hit my original goal in June, and decided to keep going. I began this year at 157 pounds, which on my 5′8″ frame had crossed the line from “voluptuous” to “a little chubby.” Thanks to Lose It!, I surpassed my goal and got to 135 pounds in July, and have been successfully maintaining that weight for about two months now. I’ve gone down three dress sizes, and am the smallest I’ve ever been as an adult! I’m the same weight as I was in high school, but in considerably better shape (I couldn’t run a mile then, much less the marathon).

Here’s a bit of evidence:

2008 Philadelphia Marathon. Not fat, but not looking my best.

And in the 2009 Philadelphia Distance Run, which I ran on Sunday (photo credit: Kendall Justiniano) — that’s me in the black shirt and pink hat:

So, as it turns out, losing 20+ pounds does indeed lead to faster running! My previous record for the half-marathon distance was 2:07:01, which I did back at the 2007 Philly Distance Run. I expected I could take a couple of minutes off of that, but only in my wildest fantasies did I imagine what actually happened: I broke two hours! I came in at 1:59:44, slicing more than seven minutes off my PR, and I didn’t even feel like I had raced that hard.

I can’t tell you how excited this makes me for the NYC Marathon, which I will be running for the first time in just over a month. I bet I slice several minutes off my PR for that distance, and I can’t wait to do it with two million spectators on the sidewalks.

Oh yeah, and my husband can’t keep his hands off me

Go, me — and hooray for Lose It!

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