Noom is a new platform that aims to help you lose weight and become healthier. You can find it at Noom.com and use the mobile app to plan how you eat and exercise.
Right now, Noom is quite popular. Does it work, though? We were determined to see whether it lives up to the hype, so read our review to understand more about it.
What Is Noom?
Noom is a popular weight loss app. As soon as you start using it, you’ll have to input your age, gender, weight, height, etc. Then, tell the app your habits, including what you eat and how much exercise you usually do.
After that, you start to receive feedback from the app focused on your choices. Over time, Noom pushes you to do better, training more and eating well to reach your health goals. The “coach” system of the program works via the messaging platform of the app and helps you to overcome difficulties along the road.
It’s also possible to interact with other members of the program. This helps you to find aid in reaching your goals and having support along the way. You can also read several articles about nutrition on the app.
By the end of the training program, which lasts 16 weeks, you will hopefully have discovered how to become healthier by exercising more efficiently and feeding yourself with better foods.
While the company has initially started its services by acting solely as a weight management system, today, it has expanded into several other areas. For instance, it offers mental health programs as well as fitness ones.
Noom: How It Works
What makes Noom stand out when there are so many good apps out there? Essentially, it’s all about how it’s built. Noom is based on behavioral science, a proven method. It aims to deliver long-lasting changes for the user. According to the official website, it uses a combination of technology, psychology, and human coaching.
We talk more about these aspects here:
Technology: Noom is constantly fine-tuning the app’s technology and gathering data about how to create the most effective tools. It’s also updated over time to reflect this knowledge better.
Psychology: The company uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help the user create sustainable habits in the long-term scenario. It doesn’t use short-term strategies like many other products in the market.
Human coaching: You get a Noom coach who can help you through your journey. They will give you direct support to achieve your goals, and you can contact them via the built-in messaging feature of the app.
The Noom Quiz
When you create your account, Noom starts by providing you with a quick quiz. This helps the company to determine your profile and how to help you. These are some of the questions asked by the app:
- Age, gender, height, and weight.
- What is your current diet and whether you exercise or not (and how often you do)?
- If you have any significant events scheduled shortly (such as a birthday, traveling, or other celebrations).
- Current priorities in exercising and what do you hope to gain.
- How much do you usually drink in a week?
- The main reason you want to lose weight (whether it’s becoming more muscular, prettier, healthier, etc.).
- How busy you are generally during the week.
- Food allergies and dietary restrictions.
- Marital status.
- If you have significant health conditions that can impact your exercises (such as testosterone deficiency, back issues, high cholesterol, asthma, depression, insomnia, high blood pressure, etc.).
- Your current environment (small town vs. city).
- If you played sports when growing up.
- How much time has passed since you were at your ideal weight?
- Whether you participate in gym, have a scale, or something like that.
- What kind of other programs you have used in the past to lose weight.
- If you currently subscribe to any of these services or mental health services in general.
- Whether getting too much weight has affected your socialization skills.
- Determining how much experience you already have with behavioral therapy.
- What are the most common hours in which you feel the need to eat something, and what is the trigger for that action typically?
- How your motivation to lose weight has shifted as time passed. Are you more motivated now or before?
- If you want to lose weight very quickly or not.
- Any specific goals that you may want to achieve.
Then, the company will use its technology to build a custom profile for you that will cater to your specific needs and challenges.
The Noom Personalized Course
After the company gathers your information, Noom creates a personalized course that lasts for three months. This course will be vital in allowing you to achieve whatever health and fitness goals you currently have.
First, the company analyzes your answers, taking your habits, demographics, current nutrition, and general physical activities. Then, it creates a successful plan based on data from its existing users.
Then, over the next sixteen weeks, Noom will give you all the pointers you need to make informed choices about how to exercise and eat every day. If you have diabetes, for example, you’ll know how to feed to keep it controlled. It also helps you to discover new ways to prevent problems or manage chronic diseases.
If you have any event coming up, for instance, then you can know how many pounds you’ll be able to lose up until that date. There’s a whole chart that you can look to get these pointers, and it’s customizable.
Noom Features and Benefits
This program can bring several benefits to the table, such as:
More motivation with coaches and groups: you won’t be alone. You can either set up coaching sessions or then be part of support groups using the chat. By not facing this tough challenge alone, you’ll be more likely to succeed.
Personalized lessons: each lesson is personalized, and you can do them every day on your terms. This way, you can get more knowledge about the process of getting healthier and how to improve your lifestyle. It’s also you who decides how much time you’ll spend in each lesson. This way, you can make it fit even in a hectic schedule.
Pick your speed: Noom allows you to move at a pace that you like. It’s always easy to speed up or slow down the program whenever you need it. If you ever feel that you need a break, you don’t need to stop using Noom; customize it.
Cognitive-behavioral training techniques: this program uses a very well-known and scientifically proven method. Using CBT theory to build the course assures that you won’t be getting only short-term results. Instead, you will teach your body to act differently and build more confidence to keep at this pace even after you stop using Noom.
Emphasis on progress: instead of focusing on perfection and making you feel guilty for not being perfect, Noom focuses on improvement, even if incremental. The tools available on the app are created to empower people in determining their diets. The creators know that people don’t need to take care of themselves only once, so it’s more about learning how to feed and exercise in a way that will last.
No restrictive diet: most programs tell what you can eat or not. Noom doesn’t. Instead, the course allows you to be in charge of your diet. There are no good or bad foods; the body is yours. However, the program gives you all the tools to make informed decisions and achieve better results in the long-term scenario.
The Noom Diet
Instead of telling you what you can eat as other typical diets would, Noom doesn’t prevent you from eating anything. The goal is essentially to empower the user to make the right choice for themselves. So, the company devised a system that allows you to determine on your own whether something will be good for you on a specific day (or not).
These recommendations work using a straightforward color-based system. Foods are ranked in green, yellow, and red. The higher their nutritional value is, the more likely it is that they will be green. If they are not that healthy, they will probably appear red in the system.
Green Foods
The foods classified as green are the ones that are very nutritional and do not have many calories. Most of them also have a lot of water in them too. According to Noom, they should be the main ingredients of your regular diet, responsible for around half of your calories. Green foods can be:
- Fruits such as oranges, bananas, or grapes.
- Most whole grains, as well as whole-grain bread.
- Vegetables, including broccoli, spinach, and others.
- Tofu and other vegetable protein sources.
- Non-fat cheese, non-fat milk, etc.
Yellow Foods
When compared to their green counterparts, yellow foods are known to have fewer nutrients and more calories. However, they are far from “bad” foods. The app encourages people not to take much more than 25% of their calories ingesting this ingredient. They include:
- Fish such as salmon or tuna.
- Most proteins without a lot of fat, such as eggs, chicken, or lean beef.
- Some types of cheese and Greek yogurt.
- Heavier legumes such as beans.
Red Foods
These are foods with many calories and low nutritional value. While they are not necessarily bad, they are far from the best choices you can make. Noom makes an effort to include a few healthy red foods:
- Most seeds, including chia seeds or flaxseed.
- Oils in general, including olive oil.
- Many nuts like walnuts or almonds.
How to Get Started with Noom Step by Step
It’s effortless to start using Noom today.
Step 1: Visit the website and take the quiz: first, you need to go to the official Noom website and answer the questions. It won’t take more than 10 minutes of your time, but it’s essential to get a very personalized strategy that will help you to lose weight.
Step 2: Download the app: After you take the quiz, you can download the app. There’s a seven-day trial, which costs only $0.50.
Step 3: Create your profile: You can create your profile based on the information from the quiz. If you like the program after the test period, the total membership costs $129, and it lasts for the whole duration of the program (16 weeks).
Step 4: Start using it: Over these 16 weeks, Noom will help you to meet coaches, learn lessons about psychology, and spend a few minutes every day learning about healthy foods. The coach will check on your progress continuously, and you’ll get a customized profile that will help you achieve your goals very quickly.
Noom Pros and Cons
Noom has a few advantages for people looking to lose weight, but also a few cons.
Pros
No local foods: Noom will never tell you that you can’t eat your favorite snack. Instead, it uses a grading system for nutrition and educates the user base to make the right call by themselves.
Personalized coaches: The coaches are always around, and they will make you feel accountable for your choices. With a personal coach, you can be entirely sure that you will be on track.
Long-term results: Unlike most diet programs, Noom doesn’t think only about the short-term scenario. It’s excellent to avoid diets that you can’t keep for a long time because the ultimate goal is to keep eating healthy foods forever.
Easy lessons: Anyone can follow the lessons offered by Noom. They are effortless and do not take long. Noom focuses on psychological aspects that can help you to get extraordinary results that will last.
Track everything: Another perk is that you can track essentially everything you eat and get insights into how it affects your health. This way, you’ll have complete knowledge about it and decide to stay on a balanced diet.
Backed by science: Every decision made by the company is supported by scientific studies. Not only does it use the data from many users but also behavioral studies.
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Cons
No cheap plans: There’s no way to dance around this: Noom is expensive. The program costs $129 for three weeks. It’s a highly customizable program and has coaches, so the cost is not as low as many apps out there.
Requires heavy commitment: If you can’t commit, you should not invest in this app. It keeps you fully accountable all the time, and it costs a lot, so you better be ready for it.
Doesn’t tell what to eat: Some people will want a diet ready and tested for them. If you’re going to be told what to eat, this program won’t work for you. It lets you create your plan and allows you to choose for yourself.
Some low customer ratings: Despite a lot of praise, some people rate Noom pretty severely. The most common complaints include problems with credit card charges or refunds.
Noom Price
After you take the quiz, you can start a seven-day trial. Because of the pandemic, the company has created a “pay what you like” model. So, you can pay as little as $0.50 or as much as $18.37 for the trial. Then, you need to pay for the entire membership. It costs $129, and it lasts for three months.
The company currently has a refund policy, too. If you’re unsatisfied with Noom, you can request a refund before the course is over. In this case, you’ll get your money back. However, some users have complained about this feature. To contact Noom, consumers can phone or go to the company’s chat support:
- (888) 266-5071
- web.noom.com/support/contact-support/
Scientific Evidence for Noom
Noom has tons of research that prove how its system works and to justify its efficiency. So, you won’t find the famous “lose weight quickly” scam here. You can check the science here.
You can see, for example, this 2016 study about Noom. It shows how 78% of its users were able to sustain their weight loss for more than nine months, not only when they have used the program. Over 35,000 participants were in the study. Another study shows that 64% of all the users lost over 5% of their weight using Noom.
Finally, Noom ranked first in a study made by the University of Sydney. They reviewed over 800 programs, and this was considered the best.
The company also employs several behavioral health scientists. Most of them have masters or PhDs in areas such as neuroscience, statistics, or psychology, so you’ll be in good hands.
All of this is done to prevent the famous yo-yo diet effect. In it, people lose weight during the diet, but they end up gaining that weight again. This is very dangerous for your health, but Noom can help to avoid that.
Noom Enterprise
If you are an employer, you can also use Noom. The company has Noom Enterprise, a program that serves employers looking to increase the health of their offices.
According to the app, over 84% of the employees enrolled in the program go up until the end. 64% lose over five pounds, and 73% have a diminished risk of diabetes after using it.
The program includes several solutions that can help people, such as:
- Hypertension prevention and management.
- Diabetes management.
- Healthy weight management.
About Noom
Noom was created by Saeju Jeong and Artem Petakov back in 2008, New York. They wanted to create a system that focused on helping people prevent easily avoidable diseases with the proper care.
However, nothing was being done to solve this issue in America at the time, which had an approach to only treat people when they were already sick. Since the company’s foundation, it has had millions of users around the globe and has helped most of them lose weight.
Right now, it’s available in English, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Korean.
Conclusion
Noom is an excellent app for people who want to lose weight and care about the long-term scenario. It has coaches, health tips, and it uses behavioral sciences to empower its users to maintain their healthiness even after they use the program.
It’s a very different method from most of what you’ll find online, such as supplements that boost the metabolism, and its efficiency is proved by science. If you want to follow this approach, Noom can be a beneficial program.
You can try it for only $0.50 and see if you like it.
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