Noom – a great experience and lessons learned

It all started on New Year’s Day a few years ago. A simple family call, a check in to see how everyone was doing and how the holiday season was. We did a round table to see if anyone had New Year’s resolutions. After hearing the resolutions of a few of the family members, I picked one I had heard that sounded good for me. “I think I might focus on my health this next year.”  I didn’t realize then that this would be a significant change in my life for the better. This post is my journey with Noom and how it changed my life back in 2021.

My Background pre-Noom

I’ve always been athletic. I started off in my younger years swimming.   In my late teens, I moved on to school sports – volleyball, basketball. And then triathlons while in University. Then a little bit of this a little bit of that as I started my work life.  Then in 2012, I moved on to pilates and yoga a few times each week.

I knew that it was not necessarily everything I should be doing. But because pilates built my confidence and it made me feel good and it gave me a bit more maneuverability I pushed aside that niggling doubt in the back of my head. 

As time went on, I’m not sure that I really noticed that I was gaining weight. I look back now in pictures and think ‘you didn’t notice?!’ Back then, I looked in the mirror. I saw more ‘solidness’. I thought I’m building muscle, but I’m being healthy. I’m doing a workout on a regular basis. I was doing pilates about 3 to 5 times a week.  I was doing what I thought I should need to do.

Food pre-Noom

I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with food. I could joke and say ‘I love food and hate not eating food!’. But what I mean by a love-hate relationship is a lot of the time I really enjoy the food I eat and sometimes I hate how I feel afterwards. That’s the love-hate I mean.

I have always been a strong believer and eating a good breakfast. It could be toast with peanut butter; an egg with toast; or having a bowl of fruit and yogurt. I always have something with my coffee in the morning to ensure I could get through the first couple hours of the day with the energy I need.

Dinner also was pretty straightforward. My partner likes the basic meat and potatoes along with a veggie.  Always a balance to the meal. How I presented it and the types of cuisine were really up to me. I could be creative within reason.  He’s always been willing to try anything once and will always give me an honest opinion as to whether he likes it or not . So some things are on repeat and some things are not! If I really like those things that aren’t on the list I can get them at a restaurant when we go out.

Lunch was a challenge for me. I felt hungry because I would have coffee all morning and then be hungry midday.  I would eat a full lunch – a sandwich; maybe soup; sometimes it was a burger and fries. Sometimes I would go out for a work lunch and have the works with wine!  I felt I needed to fuel my afternoon, and that I would burn it off somehow.  Or I would think that I’ll have less for dinner.  And so on.  

Noom – Why this app and not another?

With my New Year’s Day declaration I knew I had to find something to support me. But what was it going to be? Friends were on Weight Watchers, but mom‘s experience with them was so-so. I wanted something that helped me secure a better understanding of why I ate the way I did.  I wanted to learn better habits, and to challenge myself to accomplish a goal.  To be honest, I wanted to have control over this one aspect of my life.  

I had read an article in one of my many magazines that noted Noom. I looked it up and then immediately forgot about it. Back then (2020) it was relatively new.  As we all know anything we look up on our smart devices comes back in threefold on all of our social media! So Noom kept coming up in my Instagram feed. I saw the magical four letters ‘FREE’ and read the reviews. I thought – it can’t hurt, I’ll give it a shot.

In the beginning with Noom

You need to choose and commit a certain amount of time per day.  And, the level of aggressiveness you want to pursue your goal. You input your ‘goal’ weight.  The focus, however, was not about losing weight. The language was more about pursuing health and wellness. 

For me this was really helpful. It was helpful for me to turn it into a health and wellness pursuit. Weight loss has and continues to have a lot of mixed meanings in our society. Pursuing wellness means it’s something you continue to pursue, and it means it’s a change in your lifestyle and developing better and more enriching habits/behaviors for yourself. It means committing to you.

Back to the commitment at the beginning. I decided to be moderately aggressive so in the middle. And to commit 10 minutes a day to pursuing more knowledge about my health and wellness. What this meant in Noom was I received a program tailored to my available time commitment and daily motivational information to help me solidify my goals.  I was able to join an internal chat team for support (other like-minded individuals), and a coach was always available to encourage me and answer questions.  There were helpful recipes available; and in addition to all this in the app, you were given regular reminders towards your goals; encouraged to celebrate achievements; and coaching to course-correct you when you strayed.

The program

The program encourages you to learn more about why you do the things you do. The psychology behind eating and why you do what you do. Noom helps you develop an understanding for your decisions.  Develop more constructive habits to meet your goals.  Mantras to reinforce belief in yourself.  This was invaluable for me learning about how different types of food affect my system, and how they converted to energy or not, and understanding what I need to try to form better habits in my day helped me better understand what my body needs. It also encouraged me to move every day.

Movement with Noom

Noom didn’t talk about exercise a whole lot. It talked about movement and why you need to move; the benefits of moving; and, the frequency of moving and how it can make you feel.  Movement can be a variety of things: walking, taking stairs rather than escalators or elevators; any sport you can think of; housecleaning; ironing; doing the laundry; washing cars.  Stop sitting around and do stuff.

This meant a significant shift for me from couch potato daily to getting up and being a bit more involved in my life.  I now choose to have movement every day of some sort, whatever that is, and it may mean, I don’t do a quote/unquote workout, but that I walk somewhere instead.

Portion control of your food

I was not that focused on portion control until Noom. As a former athlete, I used to have to fuel my workouts with lots of carbs, and I would typically burn it all off. Once I was out of swimming, I had to be a bit more aware of portions.  That reset occurred in my early 20s. I lost that reset somewhere along the way! I didn’t think I was eating large portions. But I definitely ate more food than I needed for fuel as my weight gain showed.

With being better educated and more aware of what my body needed for my size through the new daily videos and exercises, I better understood my decisions and what I needed to do. I gave a try to adjusting my portion sizes.  To spreading out my daily food intake across the day. Finding the right balance for me took some time, but, well worth it.  It eventually balanced out to breakfast; a late morning coffee with snack; a late lunch and dinner. 

Achieving the goal

Bi-weekly weigh ins and notifications to help you celebrate wins and reset your hiccups are all part and parcel of the program.  The benefit to me of the app was doing this on my schedule and in my space. 

Having a great support system helped.  As I said earlier, I wanted control of this one thing in my life.  It paid me back in spades.

Maintenance and Summary

I stayed with Noom for approximately 1 year.  Approximately ½ of that time I paid a minimal subscription for the services after my free period expired.  

My final 2 months were teaching myself to maintain my weight.  I achieved my goal by my 9^th month – but, maintenance is the most important piece for me.  After spending so much time and focus each day on my achieving my goal, removing the app was scary.  Even though I was no longer tracking my food nor taking daily lessons, I was recording my weight on a weekly basis and reading the notifications.  Removing the support system was tough.

I’m at 2.5 years now.  I’ve maintained regular daily movement.  I have maintained my goal weight +/- 2-4 lbs.  I follow my same habits when we travel, and don’t get upset with myself if I over-indulge or lay around all day with no-movement!  The habits I developed are well-entrenched, and I periodically review if I feel I’m deviating too much.  I’m healthier now than I was when I set the resolution; but, it’s an ongoing process.  Life throws you curve balls that you learn from. And then you move on.  

Disclaimer

Noom has evolved.  When I switched to maintenance mode I was able to do so free of charge.  However, you lose a lot of your information and tracking details.  Looking at the website now, it has a lot of offerings.  There are a lot of reviews available online.  If you are interested, check them out to make an informed decision that suits you.  My experience was my experience.  Everyone differs and very rarely does one program suit everyone.  

Check out our other planning posts here!