What's The Deal With Noom?

According to their LinkedIn, Noom is the world’s leading behaviour change company, disrupting the weight loss and healthcare industries by combining artificial intelligence, mobile tech, and psychology to help people adopt long-term habits.  It’s the latest it girl weight loss program and their advertisements can be found plastered across your digital universe. But what’s really the deal with this company that promises it  will be “the last weight loss program you’ll ever need”? And is it any different from the hundreds of other diets out there? Tune in to find out more.

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Credit to MonoSheep for the theme music.

Transcript

Welcome to Nutrition Bites. The no nonsense podcast where you get the truth about food so you can eat what you want, and be healthy. I’m your host Maggie and welcome to Episode 32 of this series! Traditional weight loss programs have long been associated with unhealthy behaviour and short term success. So when a new player comes on the scene that promises to be different, it piques my interest. On the menu today, the Noom app. 

I’ve been a dedicated fan of YouTube for over 15 years. And not just a fan, a round-the-clock viewer. Since 2006, when Youtube was filled with videos of fiendish cartoons and local talent show performances, this streaming service has been my main source of entertainment. But since it’s basement beginnings, Youtube has become a behemoth media hub with polished content, a paid subscription model, and of course, advertisements. Which is how I first learned about Noom. If you haven’t seen an ad from Noom yet, just you wait, because one of the most ferocious digital campaigns of the moment is from this diet app. Although losing weight has been a cultural obsession for decades, I try to keep it separate from my nutrition advice because I personally hate the intense obsession we have with a number on a scale. But that said, many people around the world, for health or vanity reasons, are actively trying to lose weight. And with such a big market of potential users, it’s no wonder that the latest it girl weight loss program, recently raised over half a billion dollars in funding. But what’s really the deal with this company that promises it  will be “the last weight loss program you’ll ever need”? And is it any different from the hundreds of other diets out there? Let’s dig in.

According to their LinkedIn, Noom is the world’s leading behaviour change company, disrupting the weight loss and healthcare industries by combining artificial intelligence, mobile tech, and psychology to help people adopt long-term habits. Seems like they adopted just enough techbro buzzwords to sound unique. But then I realised that Weight Watchers (now known as WW) describes themselves in a similar fashion - “a global wellness tech company inspiring millions of people to adopt healthy habits through behavioural science and community building.” Brilliant. How Noom tries to differentiate itself in this saturated market is in the promise of long-term results. Its tagline is simple: lose weight for good. Founded in 2008 as a fitness and calorie tracker, it eventually evolved to a paid mobile app service that includes behavioural change education, support groups, and personal coaches. Packaged together as a one-stop shop app with a sleek design, and “psychology forward” branding, it is eager to appeal to tech-obsessed generations who love to deep dive into their own psyche. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until someone invents a zodiac-based weight loss program. With over 50 million downloads since it’s debut, Noom is definitely the weight loss - excuse me, behaviour change - company of the moment. So how does it work?

To begin your Noom experience you must first complete an intake survey. Now a pre-program questionnaire is not new, but the design, interactive visuals, and quirky quotes like “no one is perfect (except maybe beyonce)” appearing between questions make the Noom quiz experience feel slightly less painful. I took the quiz myself, this is a research-based podcast after all, and I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised. The language seemed inclusive and sensitive and there were quite a few questions focused on emotional and mental health. I was also happy to see that Noom prevented me from trying to achieve an arbitrary goal weight that was unhealthy. Stating that it is not designed to help me achieve an underweight BMI. After finishing the quiz I was given an estimated timeline to achieve my new weight loss goal and was politely prompted to pay and download the app to get started. Now I was not about to drop $65USD a month on a diet plan I wasn’t going to follow, but based on those who did venture on with their Noom journey, here’s what happens next.

Based on a user's desired goal weight and timeline, Noom sets a personalised daily “calorie budget” instructing users on how to track all meals, snacks and physical activity. Right off the bat users are also encouraged to start their psychology education - completing daily mini lessons and quizzes on things like stress management and mindset shifts. Noom users are also quickly connected with an individual “goal coach” whose job is to motivate them and personally check-in on their progress. Soon after, users are also assigned a peer group, monitored by another coach, where users share tips, struggles, and words of encouragement with one another. Plenty of independent research encourages the inclusion of behaviour change education and supportive accountability partners for effective weight loss, so Noom is on the right track here. But where things get a little iffy for me is with their nutrition philosophy.

The core principle behind Noom’s nutrition strategy is the idea of caloric density, that is, the measure of how many calories are in a given weight of food. Noom encourages its users to eat mostly low-calorie dense foods - things you can eat a large quantity of, but provide limited calories, like a bushel of arugula. To make it easier to follow, they split all foods into 3 colour-coded groups. Green foods are the low calorie dense foods like fruits and veggies, oats, whole grains, egg whites and no-fat dairy. This is what the majority of the Noom diet should consist of. Yellow foods, which include avocados and most proteins, such as chicken, fish, beans, tofu, quinoa and whole eggs, have a higher caloric density and should be eaten in moderation. Finally, the most calorie-dense foods are coded as “red foods” (the scariest of colours) and while not “restricted”, should be limited in your diet. Included in this group are olive oil, nuts, seeds, white breads, full-fat dairy, red meat, and processed foods. 

While Noom proudly encourages users to not give up their favourite treats, the way they set up individual calorie budgets doesn’t make room for many “red foods”. Each daily caloric allotment is split into colour-coded portions, so users can see how much of each category they are able to “spend” each day. Now this type of food categorization and calorie quota is nothing new. Weight Watchers notoriously launched a similar “points” system back in 1998. But Noom brands itself as more than just a calorie-tracking weight loss app, highlighting their combination of education and coaching community as a key differentiator in its success. But does it work?

On their website Noom proudly states that it has helped over 3.5 million people lose weight. But digging a little deeper you discover that the criteria for success in this statistic is a user dropping 2% of their original weight. Now I don’t want to undermine any weight loss achievement, but to put that into perspective 2% of 200 lbs is equal to 4 lbs - roughly the same amount a woman’s weight naturally fluctuates throughout her menstrual cycle. Noom also does not share how long users have maintained their new weight, an odd thing for an app designed to be “the last weight loss program you’ll ever need”. 

However, Noom doesn’t shy away from sharing specific scientific research that validates their program. At the end of my onboarding quiz I was presented with three statistics from studies which confirm their success. The first claimed that “64% of overweight and obese users lost more than 5% of their weight”, but the original research where this came from was a small, pilot study conducted on Diabetics who used Noom alongside a personal Diabetes Prevention coach. The second quote claimed that “78% of participants lost weight over 6 months”, but this was sourced from a historical examination of self-reported data in the app - not a clinical trial like how it’s phrased. Also this kind of goes against one of their key advertisements of losing weight in just 4 months. The last statement I investigated, which is less of a statistic and more of a pat on the back, quotes that “the University of Sydney’s medical centre has ranked Noom the #1 weight loss mobile app”, but the actual study doesn’t say this at all. In fact, the researchers were only investigating the quality of the most downloaded weight loss apps (including elements like tech design), not their effectiveness.

Now even though I’m critiquing the phrasing of these stats, because they are misleading, it is evident in the research that people do lose weight using Noom. And there are plenty of anecdotal stories online that confirm this. But the presentation of this science combined with their unfounded promise that these results last for life is a red flag for me. But what has me more concerned about Noom is with their Squid Games-esque traffic-light food categorization. 

Now I understand that many weight loss programs categorise foods to help simplify the education of what should and should not be eaten. And while Noom’s strategy is overall less aggressive, then let’s say keto, it’s still fundamentally flawed. By focusing on low calorie dense foods, it automatically penializes any food with fat - and remember, fat is good for you! According to Noom’s system, all fats are treated equally which means healthier fats, like omega-3s and unsaturated fatty acids, from fish, nuts, and seeds, should be limited just as much as the less healthy saturated fats found in animal products and processed foods. And if you think about it in the context of an everyday dieter, it would be hard to allocate your 200 calorie budget for “red foods” on a tablespoon of olive oil and a handful of walnuts, rather than a bowl of doritos. The bottom line is, putting all foods with fat in the “red zone” may lead users to unnecessarily restrict some really healthy things.

This subtle anti-fat element of their “red light” ''green light” dieting strategy, also impacts another  important aspect of eating - satiety aka the feeling of being full. One of the main factors that affects satiety is the combination of fibre, protein and fat found in a food. But with Noom many protein-heavy foods are “yellow” (to be eaten in moderation) and the fattier ones are in the red zone. Which means that Noom encourages meals mostly made of “green foods” that are going to look, and likely feel, very light. And if there’s one thing that affects long-term sustainability of a diet, it’s feeling hungry.

Another nutritional conflict I have with Noom is with the calorie budget concept as a whole . First of all, I despise the term calorie budget, as if eating is equivalent to spending money, but more specifically, my problem is that focusing your entire eating experience on calories is ripe for developing an unhealthy relationship with food. I understand that weight loss generally, but not always, requires a decreased caloric intake.  But if your target number is too low, which some Noom users have experienced, it can also set you up for weight regain when you eventually exit the program and go back to an intake that is more suitable for your body. 

Apart from these nutritional issues, I also found other critiques of Noom from past users. Anonymous commenters on Reddit, my favourite dusty corner of the internet, often cite how exhausting the extreme commitment required from the app is. Unless you are a type A person who loves tracking every aspect of your life, and doesn't mind frequent notifications akin to the shaming Duolingo owl , Noom can feel pretty needy. And when it comes to the actual logging of food and drinks, people have a lot of complaints. Calorie tracking apps require a food database for users to search specific items to log. Some, like My Fitness Pal, are known to be quite extensive. If you type in “Oreo” you receive over 50 oreo-related options prompting you to be more specific. Now this kind of specificity is necessary for most weight loss programs. And past Noom users have consistently complained that the app’s database lacks diverse food choices, is “horrendous” and just overall frustrating to use. Which is a pretty big flaw considering how crucial tracking food intake is to the success of this program.

Another complaint expressed by multiple users is about the lacklustre coaching experience. Many people felt that their personal coach provided infrequent and impersonal messaging - suspecting a chatbot instead of a real person. Now I have no evidence they use robots as their coaches, but sending generic messaging would make sense considering Noom has millions of accounts to serve and only a few thousand employees. Dietitians and other professionals have also pointed out that these coaches aren’t particularly trained for the sensitive job of giving dietary advice. If you are dealing with a food allergy or complex medical issue, it’s unlikely these online coaches are trained to support you in a meaningful way. 

But despite all these issues with Noom, many people have seemingly enjoyed their experience. In fact, most negative reviews rate the program as “meh” rather than a full-on Gen-Z inspired cancellation. People overwhelmingly praise the one-stop-shop of calorie tracking, education, and peer support. And after using Noom many feel like they had a new perspective on food. Highlighting that learning about why they eat a certain way, not just being told what to eat, was really empowering. 

And health professionals and users both seem to agree that the general non-restrictive nature and shame-free attitude of the diet is also really refreshing. And as someone who is personally very anti-restrictive eating (I see you keto diet), the fact that no food is off limits is encouraging. and also scientifically sound. Research points to restrictive dieting as being the least sustainable for long term weight loss. Noom also does a really good job at framing food, eating, and weight loss in a positive light. With quotes like “there are no good foods or bad foods” and “everyone falls off the wagon, it’s ok!”, Noom definitely creates a safer-feeling atmosphere in a traditionally  judgemental space. 

By and large, I’m not particularly mad about Noom. The inclusion of psychology and behaviour change education, peer support (even though it seems a bit subpar), and positive language around eating, definitely makes it one of the better programs I’ve seen. But here’s the thing, it’s still a calorie-restrictive diet. It may be dressed up in a fun digital experience with pop culture references thrown in to amuse it’s Millennial audience, but the goal is the same. Eat less calories to lose weight - same old shtick we’ve been fed for a while. And with no proof that these results last for life, it makes me wonder if this Noom boom will continue to dominate, or if we’ll soon be swept up by a shiny new virtual reality weight loss program promising the same. 

That’s been the bite for today.  Stay hungry.