Counting calories is outdated dieting advice, so Noom’s focus on calories makes it useless to me, but if you’re curious about Noom, I wrote my first impressions in How Does Noom Work? I’m doing their 7-day free trial and on Day 3, this is what else I see.

• Noom can’t sync across devices. My iPad info didn’t show up on my iPhone. When I checked Noom’s Help section, I found that you have to pick one and only one device on which to use the Noom app.
• No new ways to keep you on track. The app offers to send a text or email if you don’t log your food or or if you miss another task. The app calls this the ultimate plan for whenever you’re nearing the danger zone (the “danger zone” is when you’re in danger of ignoring the app). Then it says Simply saying you commit to something can help you feel more accountable. It’s psychology. So, there’s the psychology.
• Noom still sets up a good food-bad food dynamic, but it uses the word “calorie-dense” instead of “bad.”
• Green, yellow, orange. In my previous post on Noom, I was wrong in thinking Noom wants me to take it easy on the yellow foods (things like eggs, hummus and lean meat). Noom recommends I eat 30% green foods, 45% yellow foods and 25% orange foods. Noom says: Orange doesn’t mean “bad,” and green doesn’t mean “good” (though it does mean “better”). Mmhm. Okay, Noom.
• The mythology of calories in, calories out. On the second day a calorie total appears on your dashboard. It’s the outdated calorie story that weight loss happens when you “expend” more calories than you take in. Noom supposedly calculated my calorie needs — my Weight Loss Zone — from my weight, goal weight, and exercise habits. My number is 2,190 cal/day, but I’m ignoring it.
• Noom’s fixation on calories leads to the low-fat advice that’s been killing Americans since the late 1970s. Noom suggests you can have as much as you want of whole grain bread (all the empty carbs I want?), and suggests replacing peanut butter with jam.
• Noomcoins and Treat Days. Each day I earn one Noomcoin when I complete these steps: 1) weigh in, 2) log food and 3) do the lessons. After earning 5 Noomcoins, I earn 1 Treat Day. A Treat Day is a day I can take a day off from using the Noom app and still earn a Noomcoin. That’s the treat: a day off from listening to/reading/logging things into the app.
• Noom guides. There’s a chat function on the app that puts you in contact with your Noom guides, but no one answered my Fri June 30th question for three days. It turns out the Noom guides are only available during business hours Monday – Friday and need 24-48 hours to respond. The Noom guides should make that clear when they introduce themselves to me (initial chat message of welcome).
• The psychology is minimal. Noom insisted how and why I eat are more important than what I eat, but mainly it’s fixated on what I eat. There are 4-7 lessons a day, but only two, so far, have been on reducing stress: one was a breathing exercise and one was a lesson on techniques like imagery, finding the lesson in stressful situations, and being in the moment. There’s been no emotional support: no one has asked why I eat.
• Psychology moment about weigh-ins. To convince me to get on the scale every day, the app says Enter repeatedly into the same tough situation, and it gets increasingly less anxiety-inducing with time. It’s like building muscle: You do it not once, but over and over again. Psychologists call it exposure.
• Psychology moment about exercise. To convince me exercise can be fun, the app says When you start to broaden your definition of movement to include all movement, you’re more likely to find something you enjoy and make it a habit. It’s psychology. It’s also common exercise advice.
• Psychology moment about mindfulness. After logging in the items I had for dinner on the second day, I got this message: You’re expanding mindfulness with every meal you log. Looks like your brain’s full today! This is a complete rewriting of the definition of mindfulness and feels particularly opportunistic. It is not mindfulness to type in foods so an app can evaluate them (based on “calorie density”) and then tell me my calorie total.
• Psychology moments in general. I suspect they use psychology to create the buttons I click to advance the screens. Most of the time the click button says “Next,” but sometimes it says “I’m listening” or “I commit” or “That’s true.” It feels manipulative because I sometimes don’t agree with the message, but I’m forced to click on it to get to the next screen.
• Partnerships with major food companies? It looks to me like Noom must have partnered with some major companies because many name brands show up when you enter names of foods into the food-logging function. Either that or Noom thinks every tiny difference in calories between almost 100 types/brands of hummus is critical to your weight loss progress. Yes, there are 104 hummus options/brands programmed in to choose from when logging hummus.

You can look up Noom’s pricing on their website, but that’s just the price of the bare bones program. There are products you can add for coaching and “mood support” (is that the therapy part?), plus tax. If I cancel on or before July 6th, I won’t be charged after my trial period ends, but if I don’t cancel, on July 7th they charge me $212.55 (sales tax of $17.55 included) for a 9-month recurring Noom subscription. So if I pay for the program but don’t reach my goal by April 2024, I’ll be automatically charged for another 9 months and I can go for another round of this. Yeah.

2 July 2023

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