Does the Noom Diet Work?

I think it’s pretty clear from my content that I have a big sweet tooth. Even though I’m fairly conscious of what I eat, I love baking, and carbs, and beer. Sometimes it is hard to justify the two! I had seen ads for Noom on social media and it looked promising, so I decided to try it out. So, does the Noom diet work? I’ll cut to the chase- it didn’t work for me. But I’m just one person, so I’m going to tell you why it didn’t work for me, and you can make your own decisions from there!

What is Noom?

Noom is a fitness and weight loss app that is marketed as “for millennials.” It’s a 16 week plan that includes meal tracking, psychology, fitness tips, and one-on-one chat. The whole idea behind Noom is that it will give you information, tasks, and encouragement to change the way you think about food and nutrition for a lasting lifestyle change.

How does it work?

Before you start, you take a survey on their website to help you define your goals and timeframe. Then you can start with a free trial. Every day you will weigh yourself, enter your meals and any exercise, and read through a series of short articles. They also include a “scoring” system of foods, from green to orange to red. Green is good- eat lots of these! And red is watch out- eat in moderation (ex. apple cider donuts).

You also have access to both a one-on-one coach (which you’ll set goals with and engage with weekly) and a group of other Noomers (which you can talk to as often as you want).

Pricing depends on how long you choose to be active and ranges from $60 for one month to $200 for an annual plan.

Did it work?

As a disclaimer and to be super fair, I didn’t finish my program and cancelled my subscription after a month. It’s possible that things may have turned around for me, but I didn’t see that happening. Here’s why I threw in the towel:

It was too much reading

They warn you up front that there will be reading tasks every day, but I don’t think I was prepared for how much it was. There are articles with heavy scientific words, and they give you quizzes to make sure you’re capturing things. I’m also one of those people who can’t stand the red notifications on my iPhone, so having incomplete check marks really stressed me out. For an app that claims to be for the millennial on the go, there’s a LOT of steps to take every single day.

Also, they give you an option to save articles you think are helpful and want to come back to, but you can’t save single pages within an article. So that means if you like page four in a five page article, you have to swipe through three pages to get to your saved info. And sometimes those pages contain a quiz you have to complete before you can advance. It’s not very user friendly.

The groups aren’t customized for you

As far as I could tell, the only thing the people in my group had in common was when they joined. We were from all over the country, from all works of life, and from all different backgrounds. Now I’m all for diversity, but in a setting where you’re supposed to be understanding each others struggles in order to support each other and get good advice, it was hard! I couldn’t relate to the retired lady who was low energy at her Silver Sneakers class. And that’s another, irrelevant thing- I’m not sure how many of the people in my group were millennials. I’m 30, and I think I was the youngest one by far in my group. Nothing wrong with that at all, of course, but just flagging that this weight loss app for millennials doesn’t seem to have mainly millennials using it.

It wasn’t as one-on-one as I had hoped

For such a steep price tag, I was hoping for more face time with my coach. As far as I can tell, your money pays for a ton of short articles and a meal tracking platform (both of which MyFitnessPal does for free…). My coach was great, but I only got to interact with her once a week. We would set a goal, and then she’d check in to see how my goal was coming. I wish I could have had access to her more often and been able to ask her questions during my day.

The recipes weren’t great

I didn’t explore the recipes they shared too in depth, but they didn’t seem that varied or interesting. For example, the first few pages of the dinner tab are chock full of soup recipes. I like soup, but I don’t want to eat only soup.

Lastly, I didn’t lose any weight

Not a single permanent pound. I dropped about 5 lbs during the first few weeks, but that was clearly water weight as I gained it all back.

Was there anything good?

Of course! The food entry form was super great. It was very easy to enter your food, and handy to have the nutrient analysis right there. And like I said, I loved the coach. I just wanted more of her! They do have some really helpful information, but to be honest, it got lost in the pages and pages of just… words. The text is littered with hashtags like (#NoomNerdsLoveScience and 239820 varieties of that), which made it hard for me to read and not get annoyed. I could see how saturation could be a good tactic for some people, just not me personally.

I’m glad I tried Noom, and I got some good takeaways from a few of their articles, but I don’t think it’s worth the price. I’ve gone back to logging for free on MyFitnessPal, and I’m happy with that.

Have you tried Noom? Has it worked for you?