Noom Review

NOOM BASICS

The Noom weight loss program is a calorie tracking weight loss app, but it is so much more than that. Read on to learn everything a Noom membership has to offer. I also include the pros and cons of the program, and how to tell if it would be a good fit for you.

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NOOM IS SCIENCE-BASED WEIGHT LOSS

Noom focuses on the science of weight loss. Everyday upon opening the app, there is about ten minutes of reading material. The information ranges from how to lose weight, building healthy habits, and how to overcome mental hurdles that have tripped you up in the past.

It’s easy to skip the reading part, however, it is EXTREMELY helpful. I highly recommend doing it everyday. Starting your day with the reading “assignments” helps get your mind in the right place for weight loss. It’s a nice boost of motivation each and every morning.

Pro-Tip: Read this book in conjunction with Noom. You can never have too many resources helping you align your mindset with your weight loss goals.

NOOM IS MORE THAN JUST SCIENCE BASED WEIGHT LOSS

NOOM OFFERS A SUPPORT SYSTEM

Support is vital when you are trying to lose weight. During the first two weeks, you are assigned a weight loss coach. Not only is your coach there for you when you reach out, but they also touch base with you about once a week. Coaches won’t respond to messages immediately, but they will get back to you as soon as they can. If you are looking for more intensive support, I recommend pairing your Noom journey with my weight loss community. Our support is readily available.

After the first two weeks of your Noom membership, they assign you a group coach and a weight loss group. This is in addition to your personal coach. The group coach and community is for sharing ideas and struggles while connecting with like-minded people with similar goals.

I don’t personally use this feature. I have such a great support system in Mom’s Kids that I don’t feel the need. However, the Noom group I was assigned to always seems to be communicating with each other. It is a nice built-in support system, at no extra cost, if you need it.

NOOM ENCOURAGES A DAILY WEIGH-IN AND HAS A COOL WEIGHT GRAPH

Noom encourages you to weigh yourself daily. I was apprehensive about this practice at first, but actually ended up enjoying it! It’s fun to watch my weight graph change (I post it daily in Mom’s Kids). Mostly, it has helped me learn how my nutrition and behavior affect my body.

Weighing daily, because Noom told me to, changed my weight-loss life. This habit helped heal my relationships with both food and the scale. I am no longer bothered or controlled by the number. Even if you cringe at the idea of weighing daily, I strongly suggest you give it a try.

NOOM COLOR-CODES FOODS BUT NO FOODS ARE OFF LIMITS

Color-coding is how Noom helps guide food choices. Foods are divided into three categories: green, yellow, and red. Like a traffic light.

Green means go! Eat as many green color-coded foods as possible. These are mainly fruits and veggies. Yellow means slow down. These foods come with suggested caloric intake limits. Yellow color-coded foods include things like eggs and chicken breasts. The caveat to the traffic light rule here, is red doesn’t mean stop. Only to be cautious and mindful moving forward. High-fat dairy and meats, as well as junk food, fall into the red category.

Noom suggests the number of calories from each eat lots of green food, moderate portions of yellow, and small amounts of red. No food is off-limits. With that being said, while you can eat any food you’d like, you can’t necessarily eat as much of it as you’d like. You don’t need to stay within your color-code limits to lose weight, but you do need to stay in your calorie limit.

I joke that I live for red foods, and that’s definitely something I’m trying to improve on. But it’s my choice to eat junk food, and I do it guilt free. I still lose weight because I don’t overeat. Noom taught me a calorie is a calorie, regardless of where it comes from. The freedom this knowledge gave me has forever changed my life.

NOOM’S CALORIE TRACKER

Noom is one of many calorie tracking apps out there. But the Noom calorie tracker is in a league of its own! It is the easiest one I have ever logged calories in, and I’ve logged food for over a decade. I much prefer it to the MyFitnessPal tracking system, hands down. I also read it is the most accurate tracker

Even if the only thing Noom offered was their tracker, I would pay for it. That’s how much I love it. When you go over in calories, it doesn’t shame you with red numbers and negative signs. Some tracking apps do, and seeing that can make you feel like you’ve failed. Noom, on the other hand, simply says “over,” and by how much. What a relief! I used to wallow and stress each time I saw a negative sign or red number, but not anymore.

The Pros of Noom

Noom’s calorie tracker is by far my favorite of any calorie tracking app out there. It is streamlined, user-friendly, and, overall, an extremely positive experience. I literally log every single thing I eat because it’s just so easy!

Noom’s weight graph has encouraged me to weigh-in daily for over a year now. That’s a year of weigh-ins from a person who used to hate stepping on the scale. The graph has actually been really fun to watch this last year – even when it has spiked from holidays. I’m human!

That’s over a year of weigh-ins. Takes a bow. P.S. Weight loss isn’t linear.

The Cons of Noom

Color-Coding Isn’t Perfect

The color-coding system is good, in theory, but some of the foods aren’t coded properly, in my opinion. For instance, garlic is coded as yellow. Garlic is notoriously super healthy, and very low in calories. Yet Noom warns us to not to eat too much of it? Meanwhile, an order of Hardee’s Biscuits and Gravy is also coded as yellow. Take the color coding with a grain of salt because it’s not perfect.

as you can see, chia seeds are red? Not true, that’s green. Cocoa nibs? I’d put that in yellow.

Reading material can be a lot

While the daily reading is beneficial, if you get behind on it there’s no way to catch up. The course doesn’t stop, it just keeps going. This can be super overwhelming. You can always message your coach a request to restart it but, as mentioned previously, they aren’t always quick to respond.

It can be a hindrance to your education, and the last thing you need when it comes to weight loss is another stressful obstacle. Furthermore, if you are really enjoying the reading one day, there is no option to read ahead. That’s why you should supplement the Noom daily readings with this book. You get the best of both worlds, and valuable weight loss lessons and mindset shifts.

The support group leaves something to be desired.

I gave Noom’s support group the old college try, but I just couldn’t seem to jive with my assigned group. It’s impossible to place my finger on why. I literally never checked in with my support group, despite knowing a support system is crucial to weight loss success. Nothing drew me into Noom’s support system, and I didn’t feel connected.

I decided to create my own support group. It’s for foodies with weight-loss goals who love to eat and laugh. Now I use Noom to log and track my food, but alongside my own, amazing support system. Perfect.

One-on-One Coaching Felt Distant

The individual coach does their best to connect with clients, but I get the impression that they are spread too thin. Maybe it felt in-personable because they called me by the wrong name…

Understandable, but I ended up not reaching out or responding to my coach at all. Now I give the people in my Kids support group the same amount of attention and connection – or more! – as I wanted from my Noom coach. Because weight loss is hard, and you need that kind of intensive support to succeed. If you are looking for a super hands-on, personal coaching experience, you probably won’t find it with Noom.

My Beloved Noom Tracker has its Faults

A major shortcoming of the Noom tracker is not being able to track your food a day in advance. But don’t worry, I’ve got you. I created the Live Free Planner to circumvent this issue. Now I plan my whole week in advance! My week’s workouts, food I will eat, grocery lists, and appointments are all in one convenient place. :Plus it offers daily space to reflect on your choices – a valuable habit to form when it comes to weight loss,

This system has kept me consistently on track and getting results. The planner is affordable and might be what you have been missing on your weight-loss journey. Give it a try and maybe you’ll find the weight loss success you’ve been looking for.

Tracking Calories is Easy, Macros…Not So Much

You can’t easily track macros in Noom. It’s possible, but terribly tedious and inconvenient. Click the food you want to track, hit “more” in the upper right hand corner, then click “nutrition facts.” From there you can view the macronutrient details, and write them down somewhere else. I keep this info in my planner and tally it up manually.

I’ll admit, it is an extraordinarily amount of effort to put into tracking macros. Luckily I only track calories and protein, so it’s worth the extra work. I love the Noom tracker that much that I don’t even care that it doesn’t do the macro math for me. And I hate math, so that’s saying something. I like to tally up my daily fiber intake, too. I follow the same steps and keep track in my planner for fiber just as I do for protein.

As much as I dislike MyFitnessPal, it is more convenient for macro tracking. But combining Noom and the Live Free Planner are working great for me.

It’s Not Free

Finally, the cost. At first glance Noom might seem expensive, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Noom offers a cheap – sometimes free – trial before you sign up. You might as well see if it’s a good fit before committing to a paid membership.

2. Noom offers sales on their memberships throughout the year.

3. You can’t put a price tag on your health. I believe this whole-heartedly, and have subscribed to this concept from the beginning of my weight-loss journey.

Being healthy is much cheaper than open heart surgery or daily medication for preventable health issues. Programs that support healthy, sustainable weight loss are worth every penny you’ll save in the long run on medicine, surgery, and doctor visits.

IS NOOM RIGHT FOR YOU?

NOOM IS RIGHT FOR YOU IF YOU LIKE ALL THE FOODS

Dessert makes me happy. With calorie counting it’s almost too easy to fit desserts into your diet. I eat all the foods I love, within my calorie limit, and lose weight. Since this time last year I’ve enjoyed plenty of candy, pie, and cookies, yet I’ve still managed to lose about 20 pounds. Goodbye, unnecessary restriction! Hello, life!

Before you say, “Too much dessert is unhealthy,” I read an article once that said people in a healthy weight range can eat one dessert every day and be perfectly healthy. And I’m never going to research that again and quit while I’m ahead! This isn’t the article I just mentioned, but it’s a good one to read about eating dessert.

NOOM IS RIGHT FOR YOU IF YOU WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT FOR GOOD.

By using Noom, I acquired moderation and balance like I never thought possible! Now I understand portion control and eating in moderation isn’t really that hard. I know I can do this forever. That 20 pounds I lost last year, it’s still off. That’s unlike any other weight loss experience I’ve ever had- meaning I usually regain at least half of it once it’s off.

SIMPLY PUT: I LIKE NOOM

I think Noom is a great place to start your weight loss journey. It is amazing for establishing lifelong habits and creating a healthy relationship with food. If you enhance your Noom journey with this planner, you are all but guaranteed to be successful. Join Mom’s Kids while you’re at it, and you will be unstoppable.

If you choose to Noom, you will need these things to get started:
Food Scale (forget measuring cups, you get more food with a scale)
Body Weight Scale (ya know, for that daily weigh-in)

Recommended supplemental items for success
Brain-Powered Weight Loss
Live Free Planner

Should you Noom?

I can’t tell you what program to choose for guaranteed weight loss. Weight loss has everything to do with your personality and how your brain works. Just because I have had success with Noom, that doesn’t mean it’s a right fit for you.

I no longer use WW or track macros, but that doesn’t mean one of those methods isn’t the best option for you. This goes for any diet. What works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you, and vice versa.

You know yourself best. It’s up to you to experiment, try, and choose what the most weight loss supporting method is for you. The best way to figure this out is to keep trying no matter how many times you fail. Each failed attempt simply shows you what doesn’t work for you, and is your cue to move on. Eventually you will find what does work for your personality and body. And the rest will be history!

Give Noom a try to see if it’s a good fit for you. If it’s not, quit. It’s as simple as that. Just don’t quit trying to lose weight all together. The only way to find success is to keep trying. I promise you it is worth it to keep going.

Good luck, and if you have any more questions or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out.