Noom Diet

Here’s How Noom Works and What You Can Eat on the Diet

It’s rare that a new diet trend gets a positive review from the health community. Noom allows you to log exercise, weight loss over time, and blood sugar levels as well as blood pressure. The diet itself begins after you take an in-depth quiz based on a series of lifestyle questions 

You download the Noom app and click through a series of questionnaire screens with items such as your weight-loss goal, gender, age and starting weight, as well as your preferred weight-loss pace. Other screens woven into the mix include promotional messages, snippets of Noom philosophy and positive research results.

More in-depth demographic items probe your general diet, activity, lifestyle, environment and eating habits, and whether you have or are at risk for a list of diseases including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Based on your combined responses, you’re told the specific date by which you’ll reach your goal weight.

You won’t start off with an explicit meal plan. Instead, the Noom app reacts to the data that you log on which foods and how much you eat. To help shape your choices, Noom provides three color-coded food categories. Food are grouped by their caloric density and concentration of healthy nutrients.

• Green foods – like fruits, veggies and whole grains – are the healthiest choices.
• Yellow foods – like lean meats and starches – should make up a moderate proportion of your daily diet.
• Red foods – like red meats and desserts – should be eaten less frequently and in smaller portions.

Foods in the green category make up about 30% of a balanced diet, but you can always eat more green items to keep your calorie count down, Noom advises.

As you log every food and beverage with each meal or snack, the app automatically tallies the calories you’ve consumed and informs you of your remaining allotment. As you log your food entries, pithy positive comments (“Fruit: Smart choice! Good job.”) provide instant feedback. When you log your daily weight, it’s automatically graphed so you can see how it trends. Your coach checks in with you frequently with encouragement and upbeat messages.

Once you begin your support group, topics include tips on distraction-free eating, strategies for staying active, creative ways to drink water and motivation vs. momentum, among others.

If you’re looking for macronutrient counts beyond calorie density, such as sodium, potassium, protein, total cholesterol and fat breakdowns for each food, you’ll have to seek that information on your own.