14 Days trial
Pros
- One month free upon signup
- No home inspection required
- Covers most appliances and systems
Cons
- Service call fee is a little high
- Some limitations on coverage
Noom Review
Counting calories and changing your eating habits for a better health is exactly what a good diet does for you. It pushes you towards a healthy lifestyle, ensuring you have a balanced mental and physical health without compromising on your immunity. And this is exactly what Noom does for you. With the meal delivery market booming today and a huge number of competitors, Noom has created its own unique identity which has helped it become one of the front leaders in the food and diet industry. And in order to check their success, we decided to check their services first hand and see if they really fulfilled their promises and offered excellent services to their customers.
Every time we look at our favorite celebrities, we get greatly inspired to workout and follow a diet like them. We continue the routine for a while but only give up later to our cravings and pressure. Weight loss isn’t quite as easy as it seems. Even if you are inspired from JLo’s fit and muscular body and try to follow her diet, achieving a body like hers seems only a dream. This is where Noom comes into the spotlight.
Noom is a successful and very popular weight loss and fitness program. In fact, according to the company, it is the last weight loss program that you will ever need to lose weight and get fit.
In short, having Noom is like having your own trainer, health coach and nutritionist all together in one place, your phone. But, Noom easily sets itself apart from all other weight loss programs by also focusing on your behavioral changes apart from the diet and weight loss steps. I tried out Noom for 1 month or you can say 5 weeks and set a target for myself to reach a weight of 140lbs from 146lbs.
Based on my target, Noom set a comfortable pace for me and estimated that I could reach the target within 7 or 8 weeks. However, it is in your hands, whether you want to slow down the pace or speed up your weight loss plan. In my case, I lost a good 4 pounds in just 5 weeks’ time. I followed their plan as much as I could (frankly I could do only half of it) but it still worked for me. However, after I started with Noom and lost the first pound, my weight goal changed from 140lbs to 138.5 automatically, without my consent. After a couple of more days, the goal again changed to 135.8 and I had to ask my Goal Specialist about it and it took them a couple of more days to answer back and described how the app adjusts the goal for pre-diabetic users. But I am not pre-diabetic and the goal changed in my account because I hadn’t mentioned my initial goal weight during the sign-up process. Overall, I thought that the app should first consider taking the consent of their users before changing their weight goals.
The Noom app shows you the best food options to eat by rating them from Green à Yellow à Red colors. This greatly helps the users to understand which food items are good and beneficial for their health, while which ones are harmful and must be avoided. This further helps the users to balance their choices and understand their food better. The application also offers you, health articles that you can read to motivate yourself to follow the diet program. And to make sure that you are on the same page with them, Noom will quiz you once in a while.
The app has almost every detail to help you enjoy a healthy diet and lifestyle. Right from calorie reduction to your carbohydrate intake, from tips to increase your physical activities to tips to lose weight, Noom offers you all. It is not just an app but is a platform that provides you support and important feedback to help boost your motivation. But yes, there are many factors that we thought Noom could improve itself. Factors where I think Noom needs to improve itself are, its weak food database, their slow support response, coaching, no free trial period and absolutely no website access. Also, their meal cancellation procedure is quite tedious and not at all user-friendly. Once these features are all enhanced, there is no doubt that Noom will become a much better diet program.
Unique Features Noom
Noom is a very popular diet app that can be installed into our mobile phones in just a matter of a few minutes. The sign-up process is extremely simple and doesn’t take much time. Once you register with them, you will receive 8 to 10 tasks every day. Out of these tasks, 3 tasks will always remain the same namely, a) Weighing yourself; b) Report everything you drink or eat; c) Reaching your everyday activity goal which is tracked using your fitness tracker or your mobile’s GPS.
Easy to sign-up
The sign-up procedure with Noom is very easy and hardly takes 30 minutes to sign-in and set up your app and begin following their targets. Yes, you will need a minimum of 30 minutes to set up as you will have to answer a few questions thoughtfully. For instance, when you sign up, Noom will ask you about your ultimate goal, the reason for your goal, etc.
Interactive app
Noom is a very interactive dieting app that not just guides you to live a healthy lifestyle but also helps you get inspired from other Noom users, support group and their Goal Specialist. It also offers you health articles that are interesting and helpful for your overall health.
No or minimal Food restrictions
The food plan at Noom has no restriction. You can eat anything you wish, but make sure that you keep a track of the calories you consume and stop your food meter from over crossing the limit.
Food plan based on behavior and psychology
Noom is not like all other food plans. It has a different approach towards dieting. For instance, Noom is a psychology focused diet plan. It believes in changing your thoughts about dieting. Their main aim is to make dieting fun and enjoyable by engaging their users with other fitness enthusiasts and goal specialists.
Goal Specialist
This is one of the most interesting features offered by Noom. So, when you register with Noom, it assigns you a Goal Specialist who is like a coach and helps you achieve your health goal. You can talk to your Goal specialist through their message system one-on-one.
The specialist usually checks-in regularly and helps you to achieve your weekly goals. However, it is not very clear on what to expect from your Goal specialist or what you can ask him/her. As a result, this good feature turned out to be a very useless one.
Support Group / Noom Support
Noom also offers you Support Group to feel comfortable and discuss health topics with others in the program. However, I received access to the group only at the end of the 4th week which should have started at the end of the 2nd week. Once I entered the group, I could meet and chat with 40 fitness enthusiasts or rather Noom users, online in their chat section.
Connects With other apps
Noom allows you to connect with the other apps in your mobile phone such as FitBit, Garmin Connect, Apple Health, iHealth, Omron, RunKeeper, Qardio, MisFit, Yoo, Polar, Striiv and Withings.
Food Plan Options
Noom is a lot more than a simple diet plan and counting calories. It has a good psychological approach to your weight loss process. So, when you register with Noom, you start up with a meal plan that your support group or your Health Coach suggests you with. However, sadly this doesn’t happen at least for the first few weeks.
At Noom, there is no specific diet that you must follow nor do you require to choose any meal plan like other apps such as Jillian Michaels or The MayoClinic Diet. Nor do you have to count points like people do in WeightWatchers. Well, instead of all this, Noom offers you a meal menu which has all the meals classified into 3 colors – Green, Yellow and Red. So, when you enter Noom, all you have to do is choose a color code for your daily meal intake.
Green Food – These are meals that you can devour in any amount.
Yellow Food – These are food that include more calories and should only be taken in restricted amount.
Red Food – These are food that must be eaten only in small amounts.
The app also shows you a meter for each of these colors which fills up as you eat different foods. With Noom, there is no food limit. You can eat anything your heart wishes, but only make sure that you avoid eating too much calorie dense foods. For instance, make sure that you restrict the consumption of peanut butter in your daily meals.
Noom has a database where you have to enter the name of the food that you ate. There is also a barcode scanner to help you find the packaged drinks and food items that you eat. You can also add your home-made recipes in the database. On a personal note, Noom’s database is OK! I have seen better databases and even worse ones. There were a many food items that I scanned in the database but were not in the list.
Also, there is inconsistency in their food categorization, especially the Red and Yellow foods. For instance when I checked their database for pizza, it was mentioned in the Yellow category, while its ingredients, white flour and cheese are both in the Red food category. Also, Noom doesn’t offer you the details of your macronutrient breakdown of your food such as fat, carbohydrate and protein. If you want these details, then MyFitnessPal and Lifesum are better options for you.
Noom Cost
The costing structure of Noom is very different from what I have seen with the other diet plan services. In fact, when you choose a diet plan from Noom, you may end up paying a completely different amount than what you see listed in their menu. I didn’t pay the amount I saw on their menu. For instance, their entire month’s cost is just $59 and an additional $20 fee for starters. But, for the first 6 weeks that I ordered Noom, I paid just $19. Moreover, Noom also offers a great plan renewal rate of $19 for a month if you wish to continue with their services.
So, when you checked Noom’s price list you will be absolutely shocked due to their expensive costs. However, remember that the amount you see on the list is not what you pay after you make your order. The company has a wide number of offers and discounts that greatly helps the customers to enjoy their meals without putting a hole in their pocket. For instance, the annual plan costs a total $750, but you pay only $199 due to their recurring discount offers. Noom also offers you an initial 2 week trial which is definitely not free. However, you decide how much you wish to pay for their meal, starting from a minimum amount of $1.
Noom Price List
- Noom Monthly plan – $59 (auto-recurring)
- 2 Month plan – $99 (auto-recurring)
- 4 Month plan – $129 (auto-recurring)
- 6 Month plan – $149 (auto-recurring)
- 8 Month plan – $159 (auto-recurring)
- Annual plan – $199 (auto-recurring)
During my trial period, I didn’t receive the group coach or support group. Customers are told upfront to wait until the third week starts. However, I didn’t receive a Group Coach until week 5, but I did receive a Goal Specialist right from the start, along with all the other features promised by the app.
Noom Vs Market Competitors
When compared to the other competitive weight loss apps, Noom proves to be a much more expensive application.
Noom and WeightWastchers Digital
WeightWatchers costs a total $20 per month and includes various features similar to Noom. For instance, like Noom, WeightWatchers includes an online active group, a community and also in-person coaching for you. The program however has hidden fee structures, such as a $20 initial sign-up fee and a $40 fee when you cancel your subscription almost one month prior to when actually your program ends.
Noom and Lifesum
Lifesum is one of the most successful weight loss apps available today and is designed for special diets such as intermittent fasting, keto diet, vegan diet, etc. Also, the app costs you just $7.50 a month. The only negative factor with Lifesum is that it doesn’t include any human interaction.
Noom and MayoClinic
One of the topmost diet programs, MayoClinic Diet is a comparatively much reasonable diet program. The MayoClinic program costs a total $59 for every quarter. As a result, it costs almost 1/4th the price of Noom. However, MayoClinic offers you a quarterly membership instead of a month-to-month membership. Also, unlike Noom, there is no coaching support or a community to help the users. Mayoclinic only offers you web support and is not quite a good option, especially if you are a kosher, vegetarian or a dairy-free diet follower.
