I haven't lost a single pound after 10 weeks.
I have tried almost every program out there - WW, Nutrisystem, FitnessPal, low carb, calorie counting, you name it. I've lost some weight with all of them, but then gained it back. But I haven't lost a single pound after 10 weeks with Noom. Why not? Good question, and one the "coaches" don't seem to want to touch or delve into either.
After a couple of weeks I "fired" my personal coach. I politely asked her to please ignore me and not check up on me. Why? She'd text me in the middle of my workouts, wouldn't get back to me for hours (so I was never actually having a conversation with her), and when I fully opened up about my frustrations and history, her advice was to keep logging and increase my workouts. I already work out 5 times a week and have a personal trainer, and any more (in my experience) will cause injuries. She was more a non-invested painful hindrance than a help.
The group coach was nice, but not really motivating, and while I think our group has about 22 people, only 2-3 ever chime in or respond. So not a real cohesive bunch. Basically, I find the coaches unmotivating and unhelpful overall, because you can tell that this is a side job for them and they'll get around to you when they get around to you. You're not their focus.
For me, the worst part was the food logging system. It is clunky like crazy, especially if you've used MyFitnessPal. I mean, it's like riding a tricycle instead of a Ferrari. They don't allow 1/3 cup measurements (everything's in multiples of 1/4, but not 1/8), they don't have a large number of foods in their database, and I found myself constantly switching to MFP to get accurate calorie counts. They have nebulous measures like "a bowl" as a serving (whose bowl? I have some really big bowls...) but nothing solid like 1/3 cup. It's pretty horrible. This also means that you can't put in recipe ingredients for any recipe that calls for 1/8 of something or 1/3 of something. Ugh.
The food rating system (green, yellow, red) is not really good because automatically you think of red foods as "bad", even though they say they're not. I found it very easy to ignore the color system.
There's a lot of reading, broken down into bits, which is nice, but after 10 weeks of reading something every day without results it turns into blahblahblah and I just no longer care.
Lastly, the app is clunky and has some questionable information, especially in the beginning. They assigned me a calorie number which seemed really low, especially how I work out, and when I asked about it, 3 days later they replied and said I could adjust it. Hmm. If left to my own devices anyway, what's the point? I found that since it gives you a portion of your workouts back as additional calories it works out ok, but for the first 2 free weeks (the trial period - huh!) they leave you in the dark about a lot of things. It also always gives me the wrong number of calories left in my day when I look at the Analysis page, but then somehow corrects itself on the front page. It gave me a heart attack in the beginning, but now I ignore it, like just about everything else about this program.
I've seen people complain about not being able to get the company to stop charging their credit cards. So I used a gift card and when that's empty, they can try to recharge it until the cows come home, but it's no longer my problem.
Bottom line: They obviously don't care, so why should you? Move on to a better system and save your money.
Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend
