I signed up for a free trial of Noom six weeks ago and I wrote about my first impressions here. Since then I decided to cancel my subscription but stayed on because I was offered a $20/month deal instead of the original $159 for 5 months. Today, after four days of avoiding the app, I decided to cancel it for good. While Noom did not turn out to be right for me, I believe that it could be a great option for others.
What I Liked about Noom
After using various fitness tracking apps over the last few years, I couldn’t resist giving Noom a try. While I have successfully lost weight in the past, I always ended up gaining it back after a while. Noom specifically advertises that it helps you lose the weight and keep it off. After a few weeks of their articles, I can see why.
Articles
Although their daily articles start off super simple, they do get more complex as you go. Even during the two free weeks of my trial I did learn some valuable information. As someone who has been on the weight loss roller coaster for years, I didn’t expect to learn as much as I did. The psychological aspect and the suggested tips are helpful if you follow them.
Logging
It was really easy to log my weight and my food. I loved the different ways I could log food that wasn’t just grams. It made it easier to select a method where I could accurately estimate instead of weigh my portions. Tracking my weight was easy too and it celebrated when I lost five pounds.
Once I finished the trial, the articles got even better. I also got my group and it was nice to see other people who were in it with me. My Noom coach was also pretty helpful, although I felt like she used a lot of the same phrases for different things that I said. I work in customer service myself so I do understand using canned responses, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate here. This leads me to the next part…
What I Didn’t Like about Noom
The coach did say things that were clearly individual and said by a human, not a robot/AI auto responder. Yet, she clearly used canned responses and would say things like “it looks like you dived really deep” twice about things I said that were not that deep. The one time I shared something from the heart she also misunderstood it and this made me also respond generically in return. I don’t blame her but that’s what happened.
Complicated Articles
The articles were fun but sometimes they got a little complicated. It got a little hard to follow sometimes so it discouraged me from continuing. Maybe if I had taken more time and taken notes, as if this was a real class, I would have gotten more into it. But when they say it’s just 10 minutes a day, it’s not true for everyone. It would have taken me a little longer to actually learn these things. And I’m not a slow learner in general.
Obsessive Food Tracking
Food tracking is great and I love to do it. But I don’t like to do it every single day for every meal. During the week, I usually eat the same thing every day. It discouraged me that if I didn’t complete my meal tracking, that I wouldn’t get a check mark for the day.
It sounds silly but this was one of the things that encouraged me to stop. I still use MyFitnessPal to occasionally track calories but when you do it for a month, you know what you’re eating without obsessively tracking every bite. When you have a regular eating schedule and similar meals each day, this is overkill.
Unequal Pricing
Finally, and I hate to complain about this, but I hate that Noom doesn’t cost the same amount for everyone. The length of the program depends on your goals, yes and the original price seems standard. But it’s unfair that if you decide to cancel, you get a better offer. It’s not fair to people who go with the original price. From the reviews that I’ve read, even the original price was different for people on similar programs.
Who Would I Recommend Noom To?
There are quite a few people that I would recommend Noom to. Before I “dive deeper into that” let me tell you why I wouldn’t recommend it to myself in hindsight. I have a lot of experience with weight loss, I already use other trackers and I have a support system around me. There’s also the stubbornness and not liking people to get in my face about things. Even though Noom asks how involved you want the coaches to be, even the less involvement was a little too much for me.
Beginner Friendly
The type of person who would benefit from Noom is a beginner at weight loss. Someone who doesn’t already have a tracker for their goals and who doesn’t know where to start in terms of diet. It is also great for people who live alone or don’t have any support in their weight-loss journeys.
I did not take advantage of my group because I didn’t feel like meeting new people who were weight-loss beginners when I already had a great support system in real life. However, I know plenty of people who would love this virtual support and would be open to making new friends like this. This is just another example of how this program works for people who take advantage of it. If you’re not feeling it and don’t put in the effort, it won’t work for you.
Regrets
Do I regret paying for a month of Noom or putting the time in to see if it was right for me? Not at all. I’d been wanting to try it for months and I’m glad I did. Discovering that something is not for you is as good as finding something that is. I also did lose 5 pounds while on Noom. But I don’t give it all the credit since I lost 15 in the two months before I started using it. It did help hold me accountable though, but not enough to get the credit for the weight loss.
If Noom had existed when I first started my weight loss journey years ago, I think I would have loved it and completed five months of it no matter the cost. I guess if anything, I regret not giving it more effort and time? But it’s been crazy and busy so that in itself is proof that this wasn’t for me.
Repetitive
Adding my progress and tracking everything in Noom felt like I was repeating myself over and over again because I already use other trackers. Repeating myself is a pet peeve so you can see the problem. It also should have found a better group for me. Because I was running 5k a day while my group members were tracking a 5 minute walk with their dog. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Not Enough of a Challenge
It’s not that I think that I’m better than people who are just starting off, but I would have rather been paired with people who pushed me and inspired me to do more. This is another reason why I feel like Noom is geared more towards beginners. I’m about to attempt to run a half marathon while Noom was starting me off at a goal of walking 3,000 steps a day.
But again, I don’t regret trying it and I’m glad that I stayed past the trial. I feel like I can now recommend Noom to certain people based on their needs. Not that I would discourage others not join Noom, but I’d be honest about my personal incompatibility with it. I feel like I failed Noom more than it failed me because I should have tried harder. At the same time, I don’t feel like I should try so hard for something that isn’t right for me.
Summary
I mostly enjoyed my one and a half months of Noom. It gave me some great tips that I will use for the rest of my life. Noom challenged my brain but not my body. It both underestimated and overestimated me. I needed a bigger push, something with less education but more motivation. I do not regret trying Noom and I will recommend it to some people. Noom and I have officially parted ways but it was an amicable divorce with no feelings hurt.
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