Noom is a diet and we have extensive evidence showing dieting does not lead to long-term weight loss. For $200/year, they offer unrealistic outcomes while perpetuating the well-documented harm of the "wellness" industry.
Despite their tag line, "Stop dieting. Get lifelong results." the methods and practices in their "Noom Weight" product are absolutely a diet, and even the research studies on their website do not show long-term results.
Noom's primary claim is that it is different from traditional diets because it uses psychology to acheive weight loss. Yet, the first thing users see after joining the program is a calorie restriction. (In some cases, these calorie restrictions go as low as 1320 calories per day. This is significantly below the recommended 1700-2500 calories a 170lb 5' 4" woman burns per day based on her activity level.)
Calorie restriction is, of course, nothing new and is a common part of many diets including Weight Watchers (WW), Nutrisystem, intermittent fasting, and many "crash" diets. According to the National Academy of Sports Medicinde, some of the negative effects of calorie restriction include "suboptimal nutrient provision, long-term metabolism depression, a behavioral 'backlash' from sustaining extended food deprivation, and ssociated health risks." Furthermore, the National Eating Disorders Collaboration notes that, "disordered eating behaviours and in particular dieting are among the most common risk factors for the development of an eating disorder."
In another example of bait-and-switch, Noom attracts people with their philosophy that no foods are off limits, then turns around and cateogrizes foods into a stop-light system where green foods should "make up the bulk of your diet" and orange foods "should be eaten less frequently and in smaller portions." While true that Noom does not forbid foods in the manner some other diets do, it does clearly establish a food hierarchy. And when examining the foods in detail, it's evident Noom is nothing more than a typical low-fat diet: eats lots of vegetables, fruits, and non-fat dairy, limit meats, beans, and eggs, avoid oils and nuts.
It is well-established that diets do not work in the long-term and that nearly all people will gain their weight back within five years. If Noom's claim that it acheives lifelong results were true, it would certainly be the first diet to do so. Surely, they have evidence that their system works in the long-term to make such a bold claim?
Noom provides a list on their website of several research publications that involved Noom in some way. Roughly half address weight loss specifically, and of those, most only followed participants for a short time period. A few followed participants up to roughly a year, but critically, none of the studies that Noom touts followed participants beyond two years!
The claim: "75% of individuals maintained at least 5% weight loss after 1 year, and 49% maintained 10% weight loss."
The reality: This is true, but only for people who lost at least 10% of their initial body weight while on Noom!
Study Problems:
Notes: Participants who completed the 16-week Noom program, but did not have >= 10% initial weight loss were excluded from the study.
View StudyThe claim: "significant weight and BMI reduction at 6 months and 12 months."
The reality: Participants lost 5.6% of their weight at 6 months and that dropped to 4.7% at 12 months. No further follow-up was done, but this trend is in the opposite direction Noom intends.
Study Problems:
Notes: None
View StudyThe claim: "significant weight loss."
The reality: Participants lost 3.5% of their weight at 16 weeks and 5.7% at 12 months. No further follow-up was done.
Study Problems:
Notes: This was a master's thesis.
View StudyThe claim: "significant weight loss was sustained at one year."
The reality: Participants lost 7.5% of their weight at 15 weeks months and that dropped to 5.2% at 12 months.
Study Problems:
Notes: Only 104 participants were in the study, but the full text is behind a $51 paywall, so the recruitment methods are not clear.
View StudyThe claim: "77.9% of over 35,000 participants lost weight while using Noom."
The reality: The claim is true, but "while using Noom" is doing the work. The median duration of Noom usage was 267 days, with 50% of users using Noom for 85-449 days. No follow-up was done.
Study Problems:
Notes: The study authors divided users into four categories of success: "success", "partial success", "stationary", and "yo-yo". Only 22% of users ended up in the "success" category, and again, that is only for the time the users were in the app and would include people who lost weight quickly and stopped using the app.
View StudyThe claim: "Significant weight loss in pre-diabetic Noom users was sustained to 65 weeks"
The reality: Participants lost 7.9% of weight at 24 weeks, and there was no significant change at 65 weeks.
Study Problems:
Notes: Only 140 participants were recruited for the study, and of those only 59 used Noom enough to be included. Of those, only 47 made it to 16 weeks and 32 made it to completion of the study. All participants were diagnosed with prediabetes, so study results cannot be applied to the general population.
View StudyThe claim: "Noom Weight was shown to be feasible, acceptable, safe and highly efficacious as the program led to significantly greater body weight loss than standard clinical care."
The reality: Noom users lost a median of 5.5% of weight at 16 weeks.
Study Problems:
Notes: This study had only 15 participants complete the 16-week Noom program. It also studied patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver disease, and is not representative of the general population.
View Study