Noom Review: How Effective is This Weight Loss App?

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What Exactly is the Noom Weight Loss Program?

Noom is a weight loss app. It is designed to be used on your smartphone and has the following features:

• Weight tracking
• Food tracking
• Weight loss mindset guidance
• Motivation
• Social media connection with fellow dieters

Noom does not offer you any radical weight loss advice or base itself on such popular diets as keto or intermittent fasting. Although there is no specific weight loss philosophy inherent in the Noom program, the advice given follows the common sense approach of The Omnivore’s Diet author Michael Pollan, who famously advised:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

When you sign up for Noom, you are directed to a quiz to determine your personality type. Each day from then onward, you will receive an email that contains eight short tasks for you to complete. These include articles on nutrition and mindfulness. You also get follow up quizzes to test your understanding of these articles. The idea here is to give you small, achievable goals that lead to sustainable weight loss success.

There are two compulsory activities every day—food logging and daily weigh-ins. If you have a  smart scale, you may be able to sync it directly to the Noom app. Otherwise, you will have to manually enter your scale weight. We’ve found the food logging process on Noom easier to use than many other diet apps. You are able to scan barcodes for easy logging. Extra foods can also be added manually.

Noom Diet Plan

The Noom diet for weight loss divides the foods you eat into three color codes on the basis of caloric density. The classifications are as follows:

• Green—fruits and vegetables that are calorie-dense and have the highest content of healthy nutrients. These should be the most frequently eaten foods. 
• Red—foods that have the least healthy nutrients and should be eaten less frequently.
• Yellow—foods that have a higher caloric count and are not as healthy as those in green foods. They should be eaten in moderation.

Fair Price

Noom comes in at a reasonable price point. For starters, you get a two-week free introductory offer. After that, you pay $150 for six months. Unfortunately, you are committed to that six months. So, if you cancel after five weeks, you will still have to pay for the entire six months. So, if you plan to cancel after the two-week free trial or even at the end of the first six months, you need to set yourself a reminder to do so.

Noom also provides you with the opportunity to get extra services for an extra fee. These include:

• Custom meal plans
• Custom workout plans
• Weight loss DNA testing

These features range from $80-$100. However, Noom offers special deals that cut the price in half.

You have to pay the $150 six month fee upfront after your two-week trial. That can make it seem quite expensive. However, when you divide it over the twenty-six weeks, it comes to just $5.77 per week. Apart from the two-week trial, Noom does not offer a free version of the app.

What’s Not So Good?

If you are a person who wants to get straight into the food logging and weight recording, then you may find the constant quizzing a little annoying. Logging your food every day is a bit of a hassle, but that is the case on every diet app. Noom provides a database of more than 200,000 foods, which is pretty impressive. However, sometimes when you scan foods you are told to also add it manually, which can be annoying. When you add custom meals, you are also unable to change them.

There is no free version of Noom, which could be off-putting to some people.

Conclusion

The Noom app is a breath of fresh air in the diet app market. It provides you with a customized weight loss experience by way of a series of questions that result in a uniquely personalized experience. The database is comprehensive with more than 200,000 foods and, though there are some annoying aspects, logging food is a relatively easy process. You get eight task prompts every day which include lots of well-constructed education on nutrition and the weight loss mindset. Finally, even though there is no free version, the weekly cost of Noom is just a few bucks, which makes it affordable to most people.

Ready to see real weight loss progress? Give Noom a try today.