What was my take away from following the Noom program for six months?
Noom taught the who, what, when, why and how of food and how it all related to my ideas and thinking. It helped me understand my thoughts and emotions about food and my body. The results came from healthy lifestyle choices made one day at a time. It wasn’t fast. I only lost a pound a week and some weeks I didn’t lose anything. No matter what, I stayed the course week after week.
Yes, Noom is a weight management program and that was my #1 reason for downloading the app. The app provides food recommendations, caloric guidance, tracking water intake, and exercise, etc. that are shared by other weight loss programs. But there is a bigger picture of what Noom is.
Noom is centered on principles of psychology and backed by research to help build healthy habits for the long term. The food logging and caloric guidance are tools are part of science-backed, sustainable, holistic program. It helped redirect my thinking and distortions that I had toward food and eating habits. It pretty much squashed everything I had built up in my mind of how to lose weight based on other diets I had been on in the past.
In the beginning it was difficult. It was difficult simply because it was different, but I needed different. I was making a lot of adjustments in my daily habits. However, throughout all of the changes, I never really felt like I was on a “diet”. My family also didn’t feel like I was on a “diet” as they had in the past – buying food and preparing meals that no one really cared for in my home. While going through the Noom process, I felt like I was making lifestyle changes and not focusing on short term achievements and not being tied to that number on a pesky scale.
The best part about Noom, for me, were their scientific articles. Listening, reading, and taking pop quizzes had the biggest impact on making a long term change. I learned so much from the articles. Some days I didn’t engage in the articles daily because I had to allow the new information from previous days really sink in and go about applying the principles. The articles made sense and taught me things about myself that I never realized. I still have the screenshots of information that really resonated for me, but it would have helped more if I had taken notes along the way. The articles would be my number one reason for going though the Noom program again.
My primary goal for using Noom was weight loss, but it actually turned out to be a wellness solution – a sustainable solution. Friends tell me about how they are trying to loose weight and I think oh, no how I do a kindly tell them they’re going about it the wrong way?
The 40 lbs. of weight that came off is actually is staying off. Sometimes I’ll gain a couple of pounds during the holiday season, but it came right off without hitting the gym really hard. I just continued with my healthy eating and exercise habits.
Everyday my priorites are based around my healthy eating choices. I never skip breakfast anymore. I keep water bottles everywhere to fill up. I pack a large, full bag of food for my snacks and lunches to eat throughout my day. I fix dinner that my family likes to eat and I simply eat smaller portions when we sit down as a family.
My change happened without shakes, pills, starvation, prepackaged meals, strict do’s and don’ts, eating cabbage soup, tracking points, and trying to follow recipes that contained food that’s not readily available at the local grocery store and my family hated. Noom is so much more than a weight loss program and I am no longer getting sucked into a fad diet.
Now, I truly understand what my friend meant when she said, “It’s different, just different. It’s hard to explain.” I’m so glad I learned about the “different” was because the process worked for me!
Do I still eat french fries, pizza, lasagna, and chocolate? Absolutely! I never stopped. Now, I choose to eat smaller portions and less often than I used to and I usually pass on fries and a drink when I eat out. It’s become a habit. If I do choose rather unhealthy option when I eat out or eat too much pizza on pizza night, I don’t wake up the next morning and continue the pattern of making not-so-good food choices. I return right way with the tools I was given on how to make ghe right food choices and stick with it the rest of the day, the next, the next, and so on.
Is this a sales pitch? No! It’s just a snapshot of how I made a change that actually worked. Do I still have a ways to go? Yes! I need to work on that mid section stress weight that most teachers carry during the school year. I need to choose ways to be more active. I need to do add some weight training because my body doesn’t have the elasticity that I had when I was younger. The biggest challenge I have before me to continue in the journey and not return to my “red food” eating habits.
Once again, I found that making a change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, commitment, solutons, and getting over the hurdles, which is true about many of the good things that happen in life.