Slim Pickings—Pros and Cons of the Noom App Diet

I spent three months on the Noom app diet. I lost 16 pounds. Four months later, I’ve kept them off. Were the whining, deprivation and toxic overtime with my iPhone worth the trouble? Yes, they were. Here’s the real story.

I walked around the house with a smartphone tethered to my body, recording every step I took.

I slept in my lightest PJs so the scale would read a fraction of a pound lower each morning.

I pondered whether ending breakfast with a peach was good because fruit is healthy, or bad since I’d add “yellow” points to the day’s food report.

How I Started on the Noom App Diet

Imprisoned here in the house for three months at the time, I kept talking myself off the body-image coaster. “Yes you keep putting on pounds,” I lectured myself. “You’re getting old. It’s nature’s way. Buy clothes in a Large and get over it.” Then a Mark Bittman newsletter ran an ad for something called Noom. It had free two-week trial. What was Noom? Who cares? WTF else did I have to do? I wasn’t even going to the supermarket yet in those days. ALL IN.

By Day 3, I was obsessing over that fuzzy summer fruit. I stomped as I overthought, clutching my iPhone so it would count my steps. How annoying: I’m tense by default and never got a Fitbit because I knew…