I will never forget sitting in my living room with my husband and he saw a Noom commercial and said: “Oh my God, Sam! This sounds amazing! This is an app that your clients could use!” The marketing was so well done and was talking about how it’s not a diet and how they’re using a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach that works with people on behavior changes. They promised that you’ll never need to diet again, and used all of the language that we use in the non-diet space.
Unfortunately, it’s very harmful that their marketing is tricking people into thinking that they’re not going to be placed on a diet and that it’s a non-diet approach, because it absolutely is! So, I think it’s important for you to know that whenever you see anything marketed, it could be a food product or a freaking home accessory, you have to be skeptical and do your homework. It literally doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t believe everything that you see and if there’s anything promising you weight change then that is most likely diet culture.
So, I actually downloaded the Noom app. I tried to get into the app as far as humanly possible before they made me pay for it. I was going to pay for it so I could really get some dirt on them. But to be honest, I’m not giving a penny to that company. No way Jose! It’s not even worth it. However, I do have some clients, of course that have been on Noom and know more about the behind the scenes as well, but so it’s funny when I went into that app. I specifically put in that I do NOT want to lose weight.
I just want to have a healthy lifestyle and they freaking geared me up for losing (x) amount of pounds by a certain date and I’m not going to go into the specifics because I don’t want this to be triggering for anybody. But I was like.. what the hell I literally put in here that I do NOT want to lose weight, like that is not my goal, and yet they were still calculating me at that. *Sigh*
So if they’re trying to say that they are not a diet and that they use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy then it’s really interesting because they actually use a stoplight approach to nutrition. A stoplight approach to nutrition is labeling food as red, yellow, or green. Noom might not say these colors represent restricted foods, but they put this big red sign that indicates that you should monitor how many of these specific foods you’re eating. In essence they’re saying that these specific foods are bad. And so whenever we see that and when we think about how the brain works when we see red, we think that I shouldn’t be having a lot of these foods and that starts to stir up thoughts that red is bad. The app is literally saying that you shouldn’t have a certain amount of red foods and if you go over the limit it will alert you. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a diet to me.
When you’ve gone over your “red food limit” and you “shouldn’t” be going over, it creates a this or that mentality and a good or bad food morality, and as a result it literally instills guilt and shame into us. This then inhibits us from making behavior changes because we have so much guilt around our food choices. They also give calorie ranges and promote weighing yourself, like tracking your food portions. All of these are things that we know are forms of disordered eating behaviors, so they’re also perpetuating that.
I’m not saying, F*ck it. Like I don’t care about my body, because I’m anti-diet. I’m not saying that I’m going to eat all the foods, every moment of the day. I think a lot of times that’s what people think Intuitive Eating is but that’s not it at all. It’s about saying that weight loss isn’t the centerpiece of my journey of health. It’s saying that I can focus on behavior changes and taking care of my body and respecting my body, but it is so hard to get there if it’s covered in guilt and shame. So, for anybody that is still wondering if Noom is a diet. It is a diet that is hidden in a glittery bow that looks like it’s non-diet, but it is absolutely dieting. It is diet culture at its finest and if anything, I think that’s even more harmful because if you’re going to be a diet just be a damn diet.
So last but not least if you’re like, okay Sammy I get it Noom’s a diet. I can’t believe I let them fool me with their marketing. I get it. I get it. But now what if I have this guilt and shame, all around my relationship with food and around my body. How do I start to make changes? Please know that credentialed professionals can help you. Our team is more than happy to help you whether it’s us or other non-diet professionals. We have so many non-diet professionals that we can refer you to that are amazing dietitians and therapists. So it doesn’t just have to be our team but I think it’s really important that you look for credentialed registered dietitians with the non-diet approach that are certified in Intuitive Eating. So you know that the bases are covered and you don’t have to wonder if they have the credibility to support you.
Before we genuinely make behavior changes, we have to remove the morality associated with food. We have to start to drop the guilt and shame and really just trust our bodies again. Now, I know that is much easier said than done if we’ve been in diet culture for a very long time, but we have a free resource that you can snag if you Click here. If you enjoyed this blog, I know you will also take great pleasure in my blog titled: Why We Don’t Support Intermittent Fasting.
