Technology is infiltrating every aspect of our lives, so it’s no surprise that it’s making an appearance in healthcare. In some cases, you can now meet with a doctor over videoconference and the same is true for health coaches, too. In fact, as a health coach myself, I’ve been exploring how I can interact with clients through live chats and phone apps that integrate into my own practice. Noom offered me an opportunity to experience their own interactive app, which connects you with a coach to achieve your personal health and wellness goals, and write a Noom review.
Noom relies on cutting-edge technology to monitor your progress and provide expert advice and analysis to keep you on track. I spent one week using Noom. For testing purposes, I set a weight loss goal and with my coach, decided that I would first focus on healthy eating habits.
Some of the features Noom offers, include:
- Food and exercise tracking
- A dedicated coach
- Weekly lessons for healthy weight loss, which include topics like nutrition, physical activity and sleep
- Step tracker
- Recipes
- Group support
- Mood rating scale
- Weekly weigh ins
- Blood pressure recording
How Noom Works:
Call to mind a familiar meal-tracking app, like My Fitness Pal. Noom is similar but it does so much more. I started using the app to track my meals and exercise and a day or so in, it started to engage me in other ways. My personal coach introduced herself, I received my first weekly article and I got other prompts as necessary. I found that as long as I kept on top of my activity, the app was right there with me.
Not only did my coach keep me engaged, the articles ensured that I was educated on the finer aspects of weight loss. For instance, one of the first articles outlined the benefits of weight loss. It reviewed why weight loss is important for improving quality of life and set forth some of the tenets of healthy weight loss: losing 1-2 pounds per week and not dieting. To lose a healthy amount of weight each week, you need a caloric deficit of 500-1000 calories per day through diet and physical activity.
The meal-tracking app uses a color-coding system to guide you to make healthier choices and then rates how you did for the day.
What I Liked:
- The app doesn’t promote dieting, but rather weight loss through healthy lifestyle change.
- Overall, the app is thorough and multi-dimensional.
- Goals are tackled in two-week increments. You come up with one or two things to focus on first and set short-term goals around them.
- Foods are categorized based on calorie density and use a color-coding system. Green foods, like vegetables, fruit and whole grains contain the highest amount of nutrients and so on.
- A personable coach to be accountable to.
What Needs Improvement:
- The app assumes everyone is starting from the same place, which may not be the case. As someone who is already fairly healthy, I felt that a lot of the information wasn’t necessary for me
- The app lacks an element of human connection that one may get if they were able to speak with a coach live
- There’s only so much motivation an app can provide – I found it easy to fall off track.
Overall, if you want to lose some weight or make healthy lifestyle changes and feel fairly self-motivated but could use some support that goes deeper than a meal-tracking app, this is a great option to explore. If you feel your weight loss journey would benefit from one on one support or you need support with changing your relationship with food, you may wish to explore non-app based coaching programs.
Noom is offering my readers a discount on the Noom Healthy Weight Program. Click here to give it a try at the dicounted price.
I received compensation from Noom to facilitate my Noom review. All opinions are my own.
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