Ready to achieve weight loss success with Noom? We are a husband and wife who have lost a combined 190 pounds with the help of the Noom weight loss app. In this post, we’re sharing our tips to help you reach your goals.
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1. Forget what you think you know about weight loss
It seems like everyone is an expert on weight loss. We’ve been inundated for years by fad diets and media telling us we should avoid carbs, fat, meat, and gluten or that we should only eat at certain times of day. Noom says differently. In a nutshell, if you consume fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. It’s not rocket science – just plain physics.
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Noom is based in science and psychology, so there’s a research-based reason for every lesson in the program. Some of the suggestions may match up with things you already know, and some may not. For success with Noom, trust the program. Do what it says – including when the app tells you to enjoy fat and carbs.
2. Weigh yourself daily
One key for success with Noom is to weigh daily. Yes, daily.
This sounded like an awful idea to us at first but we quickly learned there will be days your weight goes up and when your weight goes down. Don’t be discouraged when the scale shows a slight gain. It has gone up for us more times than we can count, yet somehow we’ve both reached our weight loss goals. Weighing daily took away our fear of the scale and proved to us that weight fluctuations and plateaus are completely normal.
3. Measure everything for success with Noom
Success with Noom (or any weight management) depends on measuring calories properly. Get a good food scale (like THIS ONE) and use it regularly. At first we added what we estimated was 1 oz of croutons to our salads. We’d put seven or eight croutons on and log the 70 calories. When we actually weighed an ounce of our favorite salad topping, we came to realize we were way underestimating calories. One ounce actually equalled just three croutons. Ouch. No worries, we stuck to three but cut them all in half.
Even now, almost two years into our journey, we still use the scale and measuring spoons regularly. This helps us know our portions and log accurately.
4. Find your favorite green foods and eat lots of them
We quickly learned through Noom that if you eat enough green foods each day, you typically aren’t hungry. That’s because green foods are less calorically dense and/or the most nutrient-dense foods.
Fill up on green foods like mixed berries, honeycrisp apples, grapes, romaine salad, and broccoli. And don’t forget that there are lots of delicious (and filling) carbs that are also green foods, including oatmeal, whole grain bread, brown rice, and both white and sweet potatoes. Check out THIS POST for more great food ideas.
5. Prep food just two days a week
If you have to cook three meals a day, seven days a week completely from scratch, chances are you’re going to burn out quickly. For success with Noom, we suggest focusing on food prep just two days a week to make mealtime easier.
We buy most of our meat in bulk and prep it right away after grocery shopping. For instance, we buy a large package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cut them in different ways to store in the freezer – small cubes for stir fry or curry, strips for fajitas, and halves for grilling or baking.
Likewise, we do the same with fruits and vegetables. We fill clear storage containers with diced peppers and onions or sliced English cucumbers and radishes. That way, making a dinner salad or grabbing a sensible snack is easy and doesn’t seem like such a burden. We wash grapes and apples when we unpack them from the store and have those types of things ready to eat or grab as we leave the house. We also make large batches of foods like our low-calorie chicken tortilla soup and brown rice, which both keep remarkably well in the freezer.
6. For success with Noom, log foods accurately
Some people have this belief that they don’t have to log something because they only had a little bit of it. But just because you didn’t write it down, doesn’t mean the calories don’t count; the only person you’re fooling is yourself. Success with Noom involves accurate food logging.
Think those 13 almonds don’t matter that much? Think again. While almonds do pack a lot of nutrients, 13 nuts have 85 calories (the same as a honeycrisp apple). You can still eat them, just make sure you log them, as well. And yes, you really do need to count the ketchup on your burger, those extra croutons on your salad, and even that second beer you drank.
7. Find an accountability partner
Having an accountability partner definitely helped us on our weight loss journey. As husband and wife, we encourage one another and share our successes and struggles. Steve also pushed Ann to move more and Ann helped Steve stay on track with his eating.
If you’re single, we’d encourage you to enlist the help of a friend, neighbor, or fellow Noomer online and check in with each other regularly. Noom also offers an online coach and support group for each member, so be an active participant there, as well.
8. Focus on your eating first
For our first nine months with Noom, we didn’t exercise at all. Honestly, if we got 2,000 steps in a day it was a lot. However, we each still lost almost 70 pounds in that time.
As Noom taught us, this is because about 90% of weight loss comes from a change in diet, and only about 10% comes from exercise. So for success with Noom when you start out, we suggest you focus your energy on what you’re eating and on changing your behaviors and habits around food, first.
Don’t get us wrong, exercise has a lot of great health benefits. Eventually, we made it a part of our daily routine. But focusing on one thing at a time really helped us. Eating fewer calories will likely have a much bigger impact on your weight than time at the gym.
9. Eat a cookie
Yes, you read that right. In fact, Noom encourages it. You are building a lifestyle of sustainable habits, and no one wants to live in a future without chocolate chip cookies or ice cream.
So build treats into your calorie budget, then enjoy them guilt-free. It will help you have success with Noom and not feel deprived or binge later on.
10. Stop making excuses and don’t give up
If you’ve started a journey with Noom, then you’re creating a new lifestyle. You’re changing some habits you’ve had for a long time, possibly your whole life. It takes time, and you’ll have plateaus and little slips along the way. So leave your excuses at the door, follow the plan, and give yourself a little grace. Know that even if you made a bad food choice, you can still make a better one the next time. You got this!
Note: If you are interested in trying the Noom app, you can click HERE for a discount code. While we are not an affiliate of Noom, like any other user who refers another person, we do receive a credit for each referral who continues past the free trial.
We’re Steve and Ann Teget. We spent more than two decades in corporate America and public education before Ann’s health and Steve’s aversion to middle school girl drama convinced us to try something new. Now we are making the most of midlife and telling authentic stories about extraordinary travel. And yes, we send ourselves postcards.
