Noom

Has anyone tried it? I just finished my first week and it seems like it could work out well….balanced approach all around

[Jenise]

I have not. From the commercials, I haven't been able to figure out exactly what it does for you except, possibly, show you what you could figure out for yourself. Simplistically: chocolate chip cookies bad, cucumbers good. The obvious. May be things that a guy who drives trucks for a living and eats in too many truck stop diners perhaps needs to be reminded of, but perhaps more evolved minds not need. It must be better than that, you're certainly an evolved mind. How does it work?

It is a mix of two things I would say. In the nothing new under the sun but very effective…. You log your food. The app makes it super easy to do that and it maps that out against your target calorie range for weight loss. That step alone makes me behave a bit differently - I’m going to have to log this if I eat it leads into “do I really need to eat this?” … so some degree of prevention maybe.
The other thing is a barrage of “modules” on nutrition and behavior. Why do I want to eat a leftover chicken cutlet right before I go to bed? Again nothing in there that is shocking but they are really trying to shape your thinking and behavior for the long haul which many say helps the weight stay off. It also tracks exercise, water consumption etc.

To your point there is nothing about it which is fundamentally groundbreaking….. but if I had to select one word to describe it I would say it has really raised my level of awareness.

[Jenise]

So it's all about accountability. And it requires that you be honest with yourself and it or you've wasted your money. I think a lot of people would eat less if they'd simply write down everything they eat.

I'm surprised by how many people diet poorly. Once upon a time my BIL complained that his wife and daughter were on the Atkins diet "but it doesn't work". Well, stupid stupid people that they are/were (the daughter died of organ failure at age 30 and 427 pounds), they were loading up on bacon and steaks but sneaking chocolate bars, so in effect living on a high calorie high fat diet. You can't cheat on the carbs! Another friend of mine with a severe sweet tooth currently does her own version of keto/Atkins: they eat meat and salad for dinner, but breakfast is a chocolate bar of some kind and lunch is a peanut butter cookie. She's losing weight, because she's eating less than she used to but nutritionally speaking those aren't optimum choices to say the least. She and her husband both have UT, she's obese and he's diabetic: the result of years of poor food choices focussed on ultra-processed foods. And when she reaches her target weight, how's she going to go back to normal living? She would do well on Noom because it would force her to acknowledge what she doesn't want to learn or accept. But accountability is the last thing she wants; she's fairly secretive and I'm in fact surprised that she even told me about her pre-dinner foods.

Btw, it's 1:00 and so far today I've had coffee, one unsalted tomato and a lot of water.