I can see this being a good program for people who have never had to manage their weight, or maybe have never experienced any weight loss success. But it doesn’t seem like anything new at all to me, and it has not helped me achieve anything I couldn’t have done on my own. It cost a lot of money, that I frankly do not have, and I do feel it was a waste. I continue to use the app religiously hoping something will change. So far I am very disappointed.
I am a behavioral therapist, with my background in psychology. I was hoping this program would work to provide reinforcement for desired behaviors and help me lose some weight. I was hoping it would be something new that helped me achieve new goals that I had not been able to reach previously...
I’ve struggled with my weight throughout my life. When I was at my heaviest of 230 I started hiking with my dog, it became my new favorite activity and I lost 80 pounds in 9 months, and never looked back. When I started hiking, I told myself I would continue for my health even if I never lost a pound. I didn’t want to be physically limited. Along with that new habit though I did lose weight and eventually I did stay motivated to maintain a healthy weight, and did desire to have a healthy number on the BMI. I eventually started long distance running as well, and writing down my food intake. That was in 2009/2010. I fluctuated between 145-155 between then and now, and created a bunch of healthy habits throughout those years.
However, after the holidays this year I had reached 160 pounds, the highest weight I’d been at since before the weight loss. Plus, I had never actually achieved my weight goal of a healthy BMI. I am between 5’1” and 5’2” so 160 is very close to being obese according to the BMI. I chose to try Noom hoping it would be something different. It is not something different at all. I could have used MyFitnessPal to track my food for free. I could use groups that I am already a part of on FB for motivation and support. I could have gotten an online health coach for much less than what I paid for Noom. Everything Noom has are things that I’ve already done. Most of the habits they prompt me to create are habits I have already formed. There is very little new information. I try to stay positive and tell myself that it’s helpful to be reminded, and I just keep following along, I’ve just kept going because that is how I roll. But I have been frustrated, burnt out, and feeling duped out of a lot of money lately.
The group on Noom is incredibly disorganized. When the app prompts me to share with the group, the group leader should have already started a thread with that topic. That has yet to happen. The threads the group leader starts have NOTHING to do with our tasks for the day so people just post, it’s incredibly crowded and scattered, and not everyone is on the same day. To make matters worse more people were added to my original group apparently because not enough people were posting? Some of us expressed our concern under the topic when it was announced that more people would be added, but we were completely ignored. At first, I tried responding to lots of posts and posting myself. Few people commented back. It felt like a total waste of time. I got nothing out of it and typing responses/posts on my phone can take an hour or so out of my day. I stopped using the group to stop the frustration.
My goal specialist seems nice. I have a burning feeling that she’s managing a very high number of people.
At the end of the day, this program has not been worth the money for me so far. I keep going anyway. I’ve been sticking to it. I might as well use the tools, right? And for people that are completely clueless, I would think this would be something different and it might work really well. For me, not so much.
I am going to answer no to the recommendation question, but here’s the thing, I probably WOULD recommend this to someone. I’ve talked to people who tell me they can’t eat a piece of bread because they’re cutting carbs while at the same time drinking a full sugar soda. People who hear nuts are a healthy snack so they eat a huge Costco sized jar and can’t figure out why they aren’t losing weight. People who think granola bars, flavored yogurt, and trail mix with chocolate in it are health foods. Those people need programs like this. I am aware that checking calories is important, and eating foods that will fill you up i is important. I am aware that treating myself REASONABLY is also important, while sticking to my goals. Some people don’t know that. Furthermore, this app has told me that exercise doesn’t cause weight loss on multiple occasions. Okay, maybe not total causation, but correlation indeed. I ate healthy, was a vegetarian, but was sedentary and was very obese. When I began regularly exercising, I lost a ton of weight. I barely changed my diet for the first 50 pounds; my diet only changed because the exercise naturally caused me to eat fewer calories. For the first 50 pounds I didn’t track ANY of my food. I stayed on the same vegetarian diet I’d been in for years. So I think that telling people "exercise has benefits, but it won’t cause weight loss" is incredibly dangerous. I know it goes into more detail than that, but unfortunately, most people are very focused on weight alone. Even if they’re prompted to set other goals it’s easy to be fixated on weight. So telling them that exercise won’t cause weight loss will stick in their head above some of the other things and frankly it’s a bad idea to say that. Exercise is INCREDIBLY important, and I know y’all know that based on other statements that have been made in the articles.
Anyway, I’ve got to stop ranting, lol. I do think you have a good thing here, just way overpriced and heavily flawed. Good luck.
Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend
