I Tried a 30-Day Free Trial of Noom — Here’s My Review

Like many others, I had heard of Noom, and I was curious about it. Knowing that I’m an emotional eater, I wanted to learn how to curb my tendency to use food as a source of comfort. I’d heard that Noom works to change a person’s habits and mindset around food, so I decided to give the program a shot, using a 30-day free trial to see what the experience was like.

Noom is a wellness-focused weight loss program that teaches users about portion control and helps them get moving on a regular basis, improve their water intake, and incorporate more healthy foods into their daily meals.

While many weight loss plans teach you the foods you should and shouldn’t eat as part of a healthier lifestyle, Noom goes beyond diet by emphasizing behavioral changes and mental wellness. The company, founded in 2008, claims its psychology-based approach to weight loss helps users better understand their relationship with food. The app aims to give users the tools they need to master long-term change.

The app offers users access to “Noom guides” to answer questions about the program. Users who want one-on-one support are encouraged to ask their guide about purchasing a subscription and working with a Noom behavior change coach that way.

Getting Started

To get started with the program, I registered for Noom, downloaded the app, and took an onboarding quiz. In this quiz, I was asked about my goals, including whether I wanted to lose weight, build muscle, or adopt a healthier lifestyle. It also asked about my past experiences with losing weight. Finally, the questionnaire examined my habits and behaviors to determine approximately how long it would take me to reach my goal weight.

Based on my answers, Noom determined that I’m a “proof seeker,” a term it uses to describe someone who is best served by simple, straightforward results. Proof seekers don’t need to change who they are, but they do take and appreciate proven guidance.

Noom stresses that its app goes beyond weight loss by encouraging daily behavior changes. With that in mind, in addition to diet, Noom emphasizes sleep, movement, healthy aging and metabolism, and stress management, all of which the app found I needed extra support in. It asked if I wanted to add enhancements in these areas to my plan. Since the enhancements come at an additional cost and vary in price, I chose to wing it without the extras.

The app also asked if I wanted to name a friend or family member as an accountability buddy. It says that having a buddy helps people achieve greater motivation and accountability, resulting in 32 percent faster progress. Noom also offers the option of sharing a paid subscription with a friend or gifting them a two-week complimentary guest pass. I chose not to do this either.

At the end of the questionnaire, Noom presented me with a personalized plan. Overall, the onboarding process took about 15 minutes, slightly longer than I’d anticipated.

What Can You Eat on the Noom Diet?

After completing the onboarding quiz, Noom offered me food suggestions, with a calorie range for each day (and it pointed me to a large selection of recipes as a starting point). Noom uses a color system to group foods. It encouraged me to consume the bulk of my daily calories from the green category, followed by moderate amounts of food from the yellow category and smaller amounts of food from the orange category. Here’s a list of foods categorized according to Noom’s color-coded system.

The green category includes most vegetables, some fruits, and whole grains, as well as shrimp, egg whites, tofu, nonfat dairy, and unsweetened almond milk. These nutrient-dense selections fill you up while keeping your calorie count low.

The yellow category features lean meats and starches that have more calories and protein but fewer nutrients overall, compared with the green category foods.

The orange category includes desserts, oils, seeds, nuts, and red meats that are calorie-dense and include the most fat overall. (In earlier iterations, Noom had assigned red as the color of this category — but it changed it to orange after getting feedback that red made the foods feel off-limits.)

Daily Logs

Noom asks you to log your meals each day on its app (breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as three snacks). There is an option to scan the barcode on food packages and automatically upload portion size, calories, and the other information provided. It took me a couple of days to get in the habit of logging each meal.

Users are also asked to log their daily movement goals. Whatever your choice of exercise — be it weight training, walking, swimming, or something else entirely — you can track your progress on the app.

In addition, the Noom app allows you the option to log your daily blood pressure, blood sugar, and water intake. I used the water intake option and thought it was a good reminder to drink the recommended 2.2 liters of water each day (9 cups) for women. Noom suggests 3 liters, or 13 cups, of water a day for men.

An added bonus: Noom also offers a daily dose of laughter (in the form of a cartoon).

Noom recommends weighing yourself daily, a practice I found counterintuitive, since I know that daily weight fluctuations are completely normal. But it does allow users to choose how often they prefer to weigh themselves. Rather than obsess over a pound gained or a pound lost, I chose to weigh myself once a week.

My Preferences

I found it easier to consume more foods from Noom’s green category if I followed a Mediterranean-style diet. On its website, Noom offers several recipes and guides about how a Mediterranean diet can be used with Noom.

To save time on busy days, I also made smoothies using many of the foods on Noom’s green list. I frequently made their coffee and protein smoothie to jump-start the day.

My Results

At the end of the month, I’d lost four pounds on Noom. I felt as though I’d gained a better understanding of portion control, and I appreciated the daily lessons that offered encouragement. Still, I didn’t feel like Noom was a good long-term match for me. I gained some insight into emotional eating, but not as much as I’d anticipated. I expected more support and accountability from the app.

That said, I thought Noom provided a good starting point, and I found the daily lessons, which covered topics such as nutrition, healthy eating, and goal setting, to be thoughtful and encouraging.

Logging my meals each day made me more aware of what I was eating and how I often reached for something sweet when I became stressed. It helped me make subtle changes to my habits, such as eating fruit (like frozen grapes) instead of a piece of chocolate in those moments. Searching for recipes on Noom and logging my meals led me to make healthier food choices and think about the meals I would be eating each week.

To be honest, I’m still a work in progress. While I’ve improved some of my eating habits, I know I need to continue making smarter choices to see long-term changes. And while Noom isn’t my perfect fit, many users have found success with it. If you’re interested in trying it, signing up for one of its free trial plans could help you determine whether the app is right for you.

Although Noom stresses that it isn’t a diet, some dietitians disagree.

“Noom has co-opted anti-diet language and body-positive movements to make its program appear to be more sustainable, but at its core, it’s still a diet,” says Karen Louise Scheuner, RDN, a nutrition therapist and intuitive eating dietitian in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While Noom says on its website that there are no good or bad foods, just green, yellow, and orange categories based on calorie content, Scheuner says that categorizing foods in this way can create external judgments and noise about what to eat, which in turn fuels rigid thoughts and food policing. She recommends an intuitive eating approach to her clients, rather than a diet.

Costa also has concerns about the app, saying that despite Noom’s marketing claims of personalized support, numerous users and former coaches claim that the app often fails to adequately address individual needs — particularly those related to mental health and disordered eating. “Individuals must approach Noom cautiously and seek professional guidance if they experience any negative thoughts or behaviors related to food or body image while using the app,” she says.

Finally, while Noom has released research on its effectiveness, it appears to be predominately, if not entirely, conducted and written by authors who are employees of Noom, Inc. “This could introduce bias into the findings, as there is a vested interest in reporting positive outcomes,” Costa warns. “Seeing more independent, third-party research on the app’s effectiveness would be beneficial.”

We independently research and recommend products, services, and apps we believe will enrich the lives of our readers and support their well-being. You can trust our reviews, as we participate in the following practices:

• Engaging in ongoing independent research
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• Using and testing some of the products ourselves, such as this one
• Employing a systematic research process where we examine peer-reviewed studies for data supporting the use of recommended products

We also spoke to two credentialed subject matter experts — Kelsey Costa, RDN, and Karen Louise Scheuner, RDN — in order to share their knowledge, opinions, and advice about this product. They have expertise in the products at hand and do not have any financial conflicts of interest.