If you are looking for some new weight loss apps or even a new diet plan to try, read on. My experience with the Noom weight loss app is certainly worth sharing. This app is actually one of the most used diet apps on the App Store today. I decided to give it a try on my journey to weight loss.
How great would it be if you were able to achieve your weight loss goals? Would it be possible to learn the basics of losing weight and perhaps even cook some meals that are nutritious, low in fat, low in calories, and delectable? Finding foods that are low calorie, high in nutrition and taste great is sometimes easier said than done.
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People always ask, “What’s the best way to lose weight?”. The truth is that there’s no single best way; it depends on your body and what works for you. However, very few people actually like the same things and one diet doesn’t fit all although it may seem like it.
Are you on a diet? Ever met someone who is? I’ll be honest, it’s not the most fun thing to talk about. But you, like me, are probably looking for ways to lose weight. My Noom App review will point out some of the pros and cons of using the app as well as things that don’t work so well. All of these points will be backed up with real-life examples of my experiences with the app.
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“Noom delivers many health benefits beyond weight loss, including reducing blood sugar and cholesterol levels,” says Noom CEO. “That’s because it delivers a unique program for weight loss that’s based on key insights from human psychology and neuroscience. It’s a formula that has been demonstrated by countless studies to be very effective for helping people improve their eating habits.”
Any diet that you decide to go on will be difficult, and there is no one size fits all approach to losing weight. This is especially true if your goal is to lose weight and keep it off for good. As such, there is no one diet pill or diet program that will work for everyone. What works for one person might not work for another. This goes for the Noom App as well, which I will review in this post.
The Noom app is a digital coach for weight loss. It offers its users many unique features which make dieting (and losing weight) easier than ever before. I’ve used the Noom app for over 2 weeks now, and through this review will detail everything you should know before using the Noom app, how it works, and whether or not it can really help you lose weight (spoiler alert: the answer is YES).
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We all want to lose weight—and stay slim for good. In fact, a lot of us are willing to try almost anything to meet that goal. So if the secret to weight loss really does have something to do with psychology, then why not try an app that’s been designed from a behavioral science perspective? Meet Noom, a mobile app designed to help you establish a healthy lifestyle and stick with it.
When I found Noom , I was amazed at how it could combine psychology with technology to create a weight loss app that actually works. The name Noom is short for the word “No,” as it is an app designed to change your habits by saying no to less healthful choices.
What is Noom?
Noom is a psychology-based app (not a diet) that encourages healthy eating and exercise through behavioral changes. Founded in 2008, Noom launched their original app in 2011, and the Noom weight loss program was launched shortly thereafter.
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The company has since expanded its offerings to include: personalised help for members to achieve their fitness and diet goals; an option to work with a personal nutrition counsellor (and get feedback on your activity levels); access to an online community of users who are both following the plan and want to help you succeed. Access to over 300 delicious recipes, including options for allergies or intolerances, or if you’re just looking for tasty meals that are low in carbs or high in protein.
Noom is a subscription-based app available on Android and Apple devices with a membership fee. The plan includes unlimited use of the fitness, meal, and behavioral-change plans as well as access to over 240,000 dietitians, nutritionists and fitness coaches. Unlike many other diet applications, it doesn’t have a free trial component that allows users to try it out before deciding to purchase. When users begin their Noom experience, they must pay for the first month before using the plans and tools available through the app.
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Noom combines fitness tracking (running, cycling, walking), workouts (strength training, yoga, interval training), calorie counting and implementing better behaviors (eating slower, becoming more active) with email-based support groups and personal coaches.
Noom is a healthier approach to dieting because it focuses more on the behaviors that cause weight gain than on the calories or foods you’re consuming. You’ll still track your calories, but you’ll do so as part of a larger goal: living a healthy lifestyle. That way, Noom is less about losing weight and more about building healthy habits.
Noom Diet’s app utilizes a behavior-change model that describes unhealthy behaviors and habits as unhelpful thoughts, which can be changed over time with better thinking. The program focuses on changing habits — not eliminating foods and exercise, and it stresses the importance of setting and reaching health and happiness goals before you embark on your weight-loss journey.
Noom has tailored a range of meal plans for you to follow depending on what stage you’re at in your weight loss journey. You can also create your own meal plan customized for your mindset, body type, daily lifestyle and the kind of foods you like. For example, if you tend to overeat during breakfast, you can choose the “Mindful Eating” meal plan which limits the number of calories or strictly restricts carb intake during that period or even create your own custom one.
How Does Noom Work?
Noom gives you different aspects of the program (physical health, emotional health, food and activity) to make it easier to stay on track.
1. When you log in, you have to take the quiz.
Once the quiz is complete, Noom suggests a weight-loss plan based on what it’s learned about you. The plans are tailored for how active you are, what kind of foods you like to eat, your daily schedule and other factors.
Based on the results, Noom provides a personal weight loss plan based on your habits and needs that you can follow in order to achieve your goals. The program is centered around meal plans (what you’ll eat), exercise (how much) and health tracking (what your body looks like). But the principles behind the science are what’s most important in achieving long-term success in weight loss.
Alright, so Noom asks you all of these introspective questions to gauge whether or not you’re at risk for certain health issues. This is pretty much how the program works. The more information you give Noom about yourself, the better it can tailor your plan to your needs.
Once the quiz is complete, you create a daily calorie budget based on your target weight loss. You can also add other behaviors that should be addressed to reach your goals, such as drinking at least eight glasses of water a day and exercising at least three times a week.
2. Download the app and buy a subscription
Once you’ve created an account, you’re ready to use the mobile app! The Noom mobile app is set up very similarly to most other fitness apps. You start with a dashboard that shows your weight, BMI, Daily Goals (steps and/or calorie count), Daily Summary (calories burned, miles walked), Daily Activity (how many minutes you spent active) and Weekly Progress (how many days you’ve reached your Daily Goals).
Let’s talk about how it works. I’ll begin by saying that the premise of the app is great, but I had some issues with its functionality. You can utilize Noom for weight loss, meal planning or both. I started off using it to track my food intake which was pretty basic. The app allows you to scan the bar codes of pre-packaged foods which are then logged into your food diary.
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Like most apps, you’ll have to create an account. The process is simple, but be sure to use the email you used to pay for the service because they are the same login credentials.
There’s a small learning curve to using the app, but not too steep. Once you have it set up, use it as often as possible to create a habit of logging your meals and activities each day. For those who don’t have the patience to count calories, Noom does it for you automatically.
3. Set your Goals and talk with Coaches
Over the course of the program, you’ll get personal check-ins from both your goal coach and your group coach. They’ll support you in reaching your weight loss goals, ask how you are progressing with healthy habits, answer any questions that you have along the way and post motivational tips.
The goal coach and group coach have a personal interest in your success, so they’ll check in on you frequently to see how you’re going. It keeps you motivated throughout the program.
A few days after the first week, you’ll likely have your first coach chat with your goal coach. These weekly chats are designed to be an accountability check-in, but also give your goal coach a chance to get to know you better. The goal coach will ask you how you’re feeling about your diet. Are you staying on plan? Are there things that are possible roadblocks for you?
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The coaches are highly-motivated individuals committed to helping their members succeed. They’ve completed more than 1,200 hours of training, which includes mastering health sciences, psychology, nutrition,, neurolinguistic programming (NLP for short), and fitness.
Noom found that 58% of people on its diabetes prevention program actually saw their prediabetes status change to normal blood glucose levels after six months. And one in 5 participants reached normal blood glucose levels on the intervention. In general, the program achieved a 9.7% weight loss and an 11.7% body fat loss, Noom reported.
The main screen shows your goals for the day, including steps, calories burned, distance gone, your virtual plus-one for logging water intake, the number of times you’ve logged over 100 steps per hour, and a graph of your weight loss since using the app. It doesn’t show any information about my diet. Sure, I could manually enter my meal information if I wanted to see that on Noom’s dashboard, but why would I? Noom provides all that it needs through inputting my goal into the app.
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The beauty of the Noom blog (and the reason it works so well for weight loss) is its focus on behavior change. It’s not about dieting but thinking about your relationship with food and how that affects your choices. This idea isn’t new; Weight Watchers has been saying this for years. If you log your food (and exercise), the program will even point out when you aren’t eating enough fiber or protein, or if you are consuming too many processed carbs.
Green Foods:
What Foods Can You Eat on the Noom Diet? If you’re curious about what to eat on the Noom diet, it’s important to know exactly what foods the program recommends. There are three main categories of foods you should eat to lose weight with Noom. The first is green foods. These are fruits, vegetables and whole grains. These are three of the best types of foods you can eat if you want to lose weight because they’re low in calories and high in fiber.
Foods which are green in color are packed with antioxidants, vitamin C, fiber and other nutrients. Green foods promote weight loss with their high volume of low calorie dense nutrient content.
On the Noom diet you can eat unlimited amounts of dark green vegetables, spinach, romaine lettuce, broccoli, bok choi, arugula, kale, collard greens and Brussel sprouts. These foods are low in calorie density because they are high water content. This means your stomach feels fuller without having to consume too many calories.
Yellow Foods:
Yellow foods are the largest Noom Diet category. These are the foods that you should make an effort to be moderate in. Lean meats, legumes and low-fat dairy foods all have more calories and less nutrients than green foods, meaning they’ll be less filling. If you ate a lot of these foods, your weight loss would suffer because there’s not much room for error when it comes to calories.
The first step of the Noom Diet is to start with a list of foods you can eat. To make this easy on you, they’ve created the above infographic. If the food products you eat on a regular basis are not green (like lean meat, legumes or low-fat dairy) then they are yellow or red foods.
Yellow foods aren’t the best food group for weight loss, but they can still be balanced in a meal plan. Eating lean meats ensures you stay full and avoid snacking on high-calorie junk food. Legumes are also great because they are low in calories so you should have no problem reaching your calorie goals.
Red Foods:
Processed foods such as canned meats should be avoided due to their sodium content. Full-fat cheeses such as cheddar and Swiss should be limited to because of their high calorie contents.
Since the Noom diet is very low in calories, you should consciously choose red foods in moderation and eat them as part of a balanced meal with other food groups.
It’s easy to find yourself eating too much of the wrong types of food when you’re trying to lose weight. Noom provides more flexibility on some days, but the overall Noom diet follows the traditional healthy foods rule that many other popular weight-loss programs have adopted over the years, including Weight Watchers.
Conclusion
Noom’s name comes from “No Hunger”, which sums up the company’s vision. It helps users make healthy habits easy to adopt and maintain because its strategies are backed by science. The app uses behavioral psychology to trick users into relying on long-term healthy action instead of short-term dieting.
It encourages users to adopt changes that are easy to keep up with over the long haul, ultimately helping users gain control of their eating habits. And since habits are built day by day, Noom takes this approach seriously.
Each day, you are assigned a color—which is linked to the three key areas of the program—which matches your food for the day along with suggested meals. The meals are generated with an algorithm generated from your weight lifestage, body type, activity level, etc., so calorie intake will differ slightly each day. The meal generator created 7 different solutions per day for me.