It sure can be. Noom is one of the very few diets out there that focuses on accountability by giving you an online councilor and an app that you log all your daily foods into. It’s effectiveness stems from the fact that, most diets work, it’s just that people don’t follow them.
Noom has some positives, and it has some serious shortcomings as well. We will discuss both below.
However, just a couple of it’s positives are that it focusses on accountability and eating somewhat better quality foods. It’s main negatives at a glance are that it’s quite expensive, it’s not sustainable for most people in the end because of how few calories it recommends.
Then, our main problem with it is that it doesn’t focus on the health of the body first, it just focusses on the weight loss aspect. Which, if you’ve read any of our articles you know is a huge deal breaker for us.
Everything you do either helps the body become healthy or helps destroy the body there is no stasis.
There is a prominent theory, though thankfully not yet proven in event, that, if complete stasis was achieved in even the tiniest sub particle that we are or are not yet even aware of that the entire universe and all that we know would cease to exist.
All things are in flux, constant movement, there is no total complete stasis in nature.
So, this truly means that there are no truly neutral entities. All things are either beneficial or harmful to the body. They simply vary by degree.
Disclaimer: The following is for educational purposes only. We are not advocating a change in dietary, health or exercise protocols. Please seek the advice or council of your nutritionally educated health care practitioner prior to engaging in any dietary or exercise changes.
What Is The Noom Diet?
This diet is based on the idea that your weight is a psychological consideration and that to change your appearance you need to change your behavior patterns. Of course, this is true, however, do they go about it in the right way, let’s take a look.
The Noom program starts by assessing your characteristics through the use of a questionnaire that asks such questions as; where do you live, when was the last time you were at your ideal weight and more.
They then use this information to plug into an algorithm that tells you based upon your physical characteristics and this data how many calories per day you should be eating and how many calories you may have from each of the 3 food color zones that we will detail below.
They have broken down foods into 3 color codes of green, yellow and red just like a stop light.
The foods in the green category are those that can be consumed in larger amounts, the yellow in cautious amounts and the red in very small amounts.
This is a pretty easy way to get people to eat more of the foods that will be less calorically dense. However, they include all sorts of processed foods, brands and just plain ol’e junk food which we don’t agree on, that’s for sure.
We believe that the diet that you use to lose weight should also be the same one that makes and keeps you healthy.
The algorithm generally suggests that you intake a pretty low number of calories, which we find rather disturbing as we would err on the side of a few more calories and more exercise, so that you don’t get what people are now calling metabolic syndrome.
This has gotten so out of hand with so many people having it that they had to come up with a name for it.
Basically, you have consumed so few calories for so long that your metabolism actually slows down. This is the last thing you want. You really want the fastest metabolism possible, so that you can eat more calories and still lose weight.
The app does have a failsafe where it won’t let you enter totals lower than 1,200 calories per day for a woman and 1,400 calories per day for a man.
This is a saving grace. However, the app will allow you to adjust the speed at which you lose weight all the way to the minimum calorie levels, so their algorithms equation is really just a suggestion.
Is The Noom Diet Healthy?
Yes and no. Yes, because it does focus people’s attention onto foods that are lower in calories for their mainstays and continually pushes them away from more calorically dense foods.
This would sound good on the surface until you realize that it pushes you away from raw pumpkin seeds, as an example, that help increase insulin sensitivity and provide essential fatty acids, but not from rice cakes which spike insulin quite substantially if they are eaten alone (not in combination with super low glycemic foods).
Also no, because it leads you towards brands, packaged and processed foods. The app seems to have most major brands products listed.
You might on first blush say, great, they have all my favorite foods already in there, so I don’t have to enter in all their nutritional information by hand.
We hope that you already see the problem.
If you’re fat, you should not be allowed to keep eating all of your favorite foods that made you fat in the first place.
Having an app that already has them in it just enables you to keep eating them and gives you no reason to stop.
We don’t care how much you like them, little golden snack cakes with cream filling that you can buy in a gas station are not good for you, heck, they’re not even food in our opinion.
Having junk like this in the app, so that you can add them to your daily calories and keep eating them is not doing you any favors.
What you really need is for someone to really be tough on you and tell you to stop. Ok, this may not apply to you, maybe your diet is already pretty clean, but if not having and enabling app that is supposed to be the end all is not the answer, you need tough love.
Can You Really Lose Weight On The Noom Diet?
Absolutely, yes you can. One of the things we do like about this diet is that they admit that weight loss and weight gain are mostly reliant on the total number of calories you consume over time. One day may not make or break your goals, however, consistently overconsuming most definitely will.
The biggest reason for people’s success on this diet programs really comes down to the fact that the successful ones track their calories over time. Yes, they make a mistake here or there, maybe cheat a little and don’t log those calories from their Aunt Edna’s famous cobbler. But overall, they stay more on track than the others and so have more success.
When dozens of diets were compared in a meta-analysis the key component for success in all of them was adherence… Period!
So, whether you want to do zoom or some other diet, if you stick with it and it keeps you in a slight caloric deficit you should see results over time.
Sure, you could even do this eating ice cream and cookies. Our beef with that is that yes you might lose weight, but you’re on the fast track to death or at least chronic illness. Don’t do it, a healthy diet is so much better, and you CAN do that, you really CAN.
Can You Exercise On The Noom Diet?
Yes. Now, we have to tell you that you’re supposed to go get your new exercise regime cleared by your doctor, so, now that we’ve made sure you know that, yes, sure you can. In fact, in our opinion any diet that says that you should not exercise while under its protocol should be something you avoid like the plague.
Exercise is such a fundamental, key component of life, health and weight loss that not exercising (unless under doctor’s orders) is a fool’s game. Nothing burns fat and keeps it off better than adding new muscle.
Ladies, not to worry. You’re not going to look like a bodybuilder anytime soon. If you really knew just how much work they have to put in to look like that you’d know it’s never going to happen to you unless you really, really want it.
When we talk about adding new muscle, we are generally only talking 10 pounds of new muscle or so. That’s quite likely enough to make you look a little bit more toned, but definitely not big and bulky. No worries, not going to happen.
Does The Noom Diet Cause Constipation?
No, it should not. Because the diet drives people to eat more vegetables as a whole than they normally would. This should not help cause constipation, if fact quite the opposite, it should help promote regularity and increased stool size and softness.
The key is fiber. If your diet contains enough natural dietary fiber and you drink enough pure water each day, then you should very rarely if ever have a problem with constipation.
Is The Noom Diet Expensive?
They do have monthly or annual fees to be a member of Noom. It starts with a monthly fee of $49 or an annual fee of $199. Yes, there really does, at the time of writing, seem to be that large a disparity between monthly and annual subscriptions. They obviously want you on the annual plan so that you’ll stick with it and give them more opportunities to upsell you on other products.
Then, of course you have to realize there is the cost of your food. You would have eaten anyway, so we can’t say that would be extra. However, you would be changing many of the foods that you eat, so your budget would shift. We just can’t say whether that would be up or down.
Is The Noom Diet Anti Inflammatory?
In and of itself, no. That’s our biggest problem with this program, it doesn’t really promote any more or less of a healthy lifestyle than what you may have been eating before. Yes, they do push more vegetables because they want you eating foods with less calories in their green zone.
However, there are also plenty of choices in their app where you’re lowering calories, but also lowering nutritional content as well. And no, there is nothing intrinsically anti – inflammatory about the diet. Health does not seem to be its focus.
The thing is, we believe that any diet should focus on your health first and then help you towards weight loss.
Can You Do Keto On The Noom Diet?
No, this diet thank goodness would not be compatible with ketogenic diets.
Is The Noom Diet Getting Good Or Bad Reviews?
It’s getting mixed reviews with the majority of those you can find online either touting their success with it or those disparaged by the price. Of course, with everything you put online these days there are going to be armchair experts who will shoot you down no matter what you do to help them. That’s just the nature of things these days.
However, the diet seems to be getting mixed reviews when you filter out those complaining about the price. There seems does seem to be a slight edge on the side of positive.
Other than money what most people seem to be complaining about is that you actually have to think, you have to take the time to log in what you’re eating and then stop once you’ve met your daily calorie goals.
A lot of people think that sounds a bit too much like work.
Well, no matter what diet you go on. If you have no idea how many calories you’re eating it usually errs on the side of too many calories and little to no weight loss results.
Sources
1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/imj.14738
3. https://diabetes.jmir.org/2020/2/e18363/
4.https://academic.oup.com/cdn/article/5/Supplement_2/982/6292874?login=true
5. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.15.20131888v1