the weight-loss app Noom
 

It seems like half the ladies in my office are on this subscription app, Noom. So I'm not suffering alone :lol: I am seeing the same-old-same-old unfold. At a time when I have met my weight loss goals, I KNOW if I tried this I would get the same frustrating results I always did. Because:



Or, in words I'll never forget from Nathan Pritikin, the zero-fat evangelist: "The body doesn't care if you eat cement dust, as long as your stomach is full."

To make matters worse, all this year I have been a stellar example of what works. When they ask me, I tell them. But then they say:

"I can't do that."

So I have a ringside seat as I watch the magic not happen. 100 calorie dinners are offered when the deadline approaches. As if!

I found a recent article (April 2019) where a Registered Dietitian explains the pros and cons. Are you in suspense? (Likely not :lol: )

What you need to know about the weight-loss app Noom, according to a dietitian



I immediately thought of those tiny plates I was told to eat off of in order to trick my body into thinking these smaller portions were actually the same size. My body didn't fall for it.



Oh, okay, they are doing traffic light lists. Let's see! I also see MODERATION in the "No foods are off limits" lure. Or as a lady said today, "I eat this cookie and I'll eat 20 more." She didn't but I know she thought about cookies ALL DAY.

Though I am blown away by the RD's opinion:



Of course all those healthful fats are from PLANTS but hey, I'll take progress where I can get it. Those green foods? Here's what jumped out at me.

• whole grain everything
• non-fat cheese and yogurt
• fruit
• tofu
• potatoes
• peas

In other words, the exact opposite of what worked for me.



I lost weight on 1850 calories a day. Of course, there was less than 25 carbs in that. So really, it's just a techy way to count calories and eat fluffy stuff instead of anything satisfying.

So here's the real shocker:

I spent a few years counting calories and avoiding fat. I ended up being pre-diabetic and on statins and heavier than before. Switching to very-low-carb and high fat saved me.

Regularly see NOOM ads on tv, and I just shake my head. All that money passing hands and likely too few will experience real results.

LC is the only one that makes physiological sense.

A few weeks ago, someone asked about NOOM on another LC forum. So I did a quick google and it led me to the NOOM site. They didn't have any helpful information on the main page, other than "no foods off limits!", and the claim that you could choose your diet.

When I clicked on choose your diet, they brought up a page with a single question on it - they wanted to know my goal weight first. Since when should the type of diet you choose be tied to your goal weight? I didn't bother to answer that question, so couldn't move on to the next question, which means I don't know what else they might have asked, but that seemed like a red flag all by itself.

One of the other things in that article was that people complained about was that the "coaching" the app provided tended to be robotic and repetitive, as if it was all programmed into the system.

I had also looked up the app in Google Play, and the teaser photos made it pretty clear that it was just another calories in/calories out diet program.

I feel bad for your co-workers that they've fallen prey to these vultures that claim you can choose your diet, set everyone up with a very unrealistically low calorie diet, provide automated "coaching" by robots, and then have the nerve to charge over $30/month for this service.

I suppose it would be a smashing success with those humans possessing the digestive system of a ruminant. For the rest of us, not so much. Another quick-hit fad that will not deliver.

I heard about that just yesterday! The lady was complaining she had looked for help, and it was like talking to Eliza.



I understand. They see it as a personal trainer/health coach they can afford.

They think they need it because something must be wrong! They try and try but with this app... they will get it right.

But there's NO getting it right. I tried it too. I had giant low-calorie meals of salad, fat-free dressing, and rice cakes. And then I did it again two hours later. And before I went to bed I was faced with trying to go to sleep hungry or eating AGAIN.

The stricter I got, the less I could hang in there.

Volumetrics... okay. So you take a rodent, feed it chow, the same chow. For months on end. What's happening? A specific volume of food equals a specific level of nutrition--calories, macros, micronutrients etc. You can make a near perfect prediction just from weighing or measuring. Stomach stretch from eating this homogenous food also makes a pretty accurate prediction--it's got a more perfect correlation to the nutrient content of the food than if the animal is running around eating random bugs and vegetables. Maybe a given volume of "food" really does become a satiety signal/predictor. Change the food--make it more calorie dense or less--and calorie intake may change, especially in the short-term--because, food intake is much briefer than food assimilation, a prediction about how much nutrition is in the food to be eaten is somehow made by the system. Over time--if the relation of nutrition to volume changes, the system is "disappointed," and learns to disregard or discount the predictive value of volume--maybe there's some subtle difference in mouth-feel or flavour.

Mice are cheap, so we get to see this, change their chow, for a week or two, calorie intake might indeed drop or increase if you add wood chips or some other heart-healthy fiber or fat to the mix. Appetite normalizes after that week or so--although whether the animals get fatter or not doesn't always match this normalization of appetite.

People are expensive, the studies in them are. So you do a one-meal study, feed them two different puddings, make them as indistinguishable from one another as possible. So, they eat more calories when it's more calorie dense, less when it's less calorie dense.

But it can't be a static thing, there has to be a learning process. Put a person on an all heavy cream diet, 1600 calories a cup, versus some percent fat milk that has 200 calories a cup--they don't simply eat 8 times as many calories and get that much fatter. We learn, like the mice, what we'll get from the food. Maybe appetite doesn't adjust perfectly, but it does adjust. We need room for those who get most of their calories from heavy cream but are the leanest they've been in their adult lives (at least without wanting to eat their neighbour's brains).

So back to that pudding. What if we eat low fat pizza all the time. We know we won't waste away, eating to appetite--we'll probably learn that it takes more pizza to hit a certain nutrient intake. Not talking explicit learning, more implicit--what our bodies are doing with the input. Maybe next time we eat the more standard, higher calorie/fat pizza--we're used to eating high volumes of food, because that's what volumetrics has done for us--made us feel that high amounts of stomach stretch are necessary for us to be nourished. Sometimes competitive eaters eat high amounts of cabbage to "stretch" their stomach. Stretch might be the wrong concept, our stomach capacity is generally fairly voluminous, ask a watermelon. But maybe they are learning to ignore stomach stretch as a satiety signal, by filling up with such low-grade nutrition.

From my own experience with rescued cats, I think nutrition signals far more than volume does.

I would NEVER feel satisfied before low carb. It was "full and my hunger will shut up for a while" OR "get out of my way I must unhinge the fridge door and cram things in my mouth."

Don't miss it.

rofl , been there, done that tooooo many times. Only LC quiets the internal screaming to cram in food of ANY kind, but especially high carb options. A box of triscuits, pasties or fruit, fruit, fruit.

Going to bed "hungry" will never happen because a trip to tinkle in the middle of the night will end at the refridge.

Only one way to control a carb addict, and its NOT eating anything of choice.

I just stumbled across this thread which was interesting, as for a while it seemed the only ads I got on my phone, while using various apps, were for NOOM.

I didn't expect it would be anything I would want or use but was just a little frustrated because it was nearly impossible to find out exactly what it IS. I did go to their site to see more information, just out of curiousity. Like Calianna the first question I got was asking for my goal weight. And again, what's the point in that? So I just began ignoring the ads. But it's still interesting seeing more about it, which is pretty much exactly like I thought it would be.

And now I don't seem to get NOOM ads anymore. Since buying a Nintendo Switch for my grandson to use at my house now I seem to get primarily ads to buy a Nintendo Switch - which seems counterintuitive given that my apparent triggering event was the actual purchase of one. :)

Anyway, clearly NOOM is not for me, though I never actually suspected it was. I was just curious about the seeming "secrecy" of what it actually involved.

Were, how about we start something that is 25 a month and have everyone jump to it instead. have them lose 20 pounds in 2 months eating sad, and then let them go on their own with portion and calorie control :lol: :lol: :agree:. We could be RICH :agree:

Thanks for the overview, Werebear. Like everyone else, I've been getting hundreds of pop-up ads for NOOM. And by the way, is that an acronym for something?? How do you pronounce it (as if I care)?

Dietary recommendations aside, this thing functions as an accountability scheme for people who need it. Paying for advice, however impersonal and generic, seems to support some people's resolve. I'm too thrifty to enjoy that!

Eventually (probably before a new habit has a chance to get going) even those who are successful at losing the ten or twenty pounds quit paying--and quit doing it. Guess what? Back to where they started.

My LC life has had its ups and downs, too. But for twenty years, it has been a baseline I know I can count on. The only requirement? Doing it!