Noom

It's no secret here that I have struggled with my weight since having Paige. I'm not going to rehash everything now, if you are so inclined you can find more about this rollercoaster I've been on here. I made a goal this year {and many other years} to lose weight, and I wanted to share what I've done to *hopefully* turn that goal into a reality!

I downloaded Noom and have been using it for 2 weeks! I'm very fortunate that my company provides us a 'well-being' allowance each year and the cost of this was covered, yay!

2 weeks in, and I'm really enjoying it and find it easy to follow and use. There are 3 main things I'm doing every day with Noom.

1) Tracking food.

2) Weighing daily.

3) Reading articles about the psychology of eating.

When I do all 3, I get a coin {y'all know I'm all about prizes} and there are things that happen as you earn coins.

1) Tracking food. I actually really like the way Noom tracks food. It feels easy and completely manageable. I have tracked macros and found it to be exhausting, but this feels really doable. 

All foods are lumped into colors - green, yellow, and orange. They purposefully didn't use red because there aren't any colors that are off-limits {which is great for someone who loves 'bad' food}. In a perfect world, you would eat 30% green, 45% yellow, and 25% orange. You can actually eat unlimited green, but I love how they talk about this being boring ha. So what can you eat? 

Your calorie/color category allocation is based up on your gender, age, starting weight, and activity level, and it can increase throughout the day based on how active you are {you get 50% of your calories from movement added back as additional calories you can eat - so if I burn 500 calories, I can eat an additional 250 calories}. You also have a range - if you eat on the low end of the range, your weight loss will be closer to 2 pounds/week, and if you eat on the high end, your weight loss will be closer to .5 pounds/week. I love having that flexibility!

2) Weighing daily. I had mixed feelings about the ask to weigh daily. I find for myself I can get too fixated on a number on the scale and I don't like weighing daily because I get upset when I don't EVERY DAY see the number getting lower {which I know in my brain is unrealistic}. However, it is also easy to bury my head in the sand and ignore the scale...which I have done numerous times and shocker, I've gained back weight with that mindset. And no one is forcing me to get on the scale, I can make the choice to not weigh - I just lose my chance to earn my coin for the day, ha.

3) Reading articles. Every day I have articles to read on the psychology of why we eat. You set the amount of minutes you want to spend each day on articles {again for earning your coins}, and I chose 5-8 minutes. This is usually 2-3 little articles. The articles are part of a broader lesson series. The lessons consist of understanding more about why we eat but also giving practical tips for putting those lessons into use.

The app also has workout plans and hundreds and hundreds of recipes! It is a really well-rounded app that seems to hit all aspects of trying to lose weight. 2 weeks in and I'm very impressed!

Here's a message I got on Saturday after I earned my coin for the day.

See the psychology at work here? Ha!

Now we'll have to see how this actually plays out as the newness wears off, but so far this seems like a great program!