Episode 39: Noom: A Diet in Disguise
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Upbeat Dietitians Podcast. Hello, everyone. Today we are bringing you a very fun and very controversial up to date present day. I think this is a very Noom thing topic. Today we will be discussing Noom and kind of talking about what it is, the pros of Noom, whether or not it's a diet, which it claims not to be. And of course, we always give our final thoughts at the end. So stay tuned. This is going to be a great episode. I know this is something that I think has picked up a lot more traction over the past couple of years. So it'll be good to talk about. I feel like Noom has been around for kind of a long time, but I feel like recently it's becoming more popular, which I guess is how all businesses and diets typically work is they got to start with something and then they kind of just grow from there. But yeah, I do feel like it's more popular now, for sure. I think there's just a lot more, like, commercials about it. That's probably it. Yeah. That's what I've noticed. And I think I've seen more Noom commercials than Weight Watchers commercials. Yeah. I feel like you're right. They've been around for a long time, but they just now have the money to spend on marketing. Yeah. So let's get into it. What is Noom? So Noom was founded in 2008 by two men, and it was founded with the purpose of focusing on health care instead of sick care, like, apparently how the American healthcare system actually focuses on which I do agree with that. Yeah. Healthcare system focuses much more on not really prevention, just kind of symptom management. Yeah. The fact that a lot of insurances won't cover people to see dieticians. Preventative care is a pretty big indicator of that. As someone who works in healthcare, I get real quiet about that on a regular basis. So I definitely heard that part of me. Yeah. But essentially, if you've heard of it, you've known it more so as a very popular weight loss app and it claims to be the last weight loss program you will ever need. They call themselves anti diet. And we're going to talk about if this is true. But for right now, we're going to talk a bit more about our personal experiences with Noom. And this is actually something that is a bit different than I feel like the other ones because we don't really have as much personal experience with them. As much I can't say I've tried out Keto, can't say I've tried out Herbalife. I'm blinking every single other one. I was vegan for 4 hours. You were vegan for an afterNoom. We all know how that went. Yeah. Other than that, though, I would say we tried the program, but we did sign up for it. So that is more than we normally do. But essentially something else I forgot to know about Noom is they pride themselves in focusing on the psychological and behavioral side of weight loss, which is something that is much more up to date. I feel like a lot more people are having discussions around this. This is something a lot more that dietitians are focused. This is something a lot more dieticians are focusing on. So in the grand scheme of things, it's a good idea. But we're going to kind of talk about what this exactly looks like and whatnot so can I start us off, though? Tell us about your experience with Noom, what you discovered, what were red flags, what are your final thoughts, at least about your experience? Yeah. Okay. So I signed up for Noom, but I'll get to this. I didn't end up paying for it. So you get to the end after you do like the questionnaire and all of that. But they don't actually give you a coach or a calorie goal or any of that until you actually sign up and pay for the app. And I was not about to spend my hard earned money on Noom. I would never do that. But I did do the initial part just to kind of get a gist of what it is. I do have a lot of clients that have done it or asked about it. So I thought not only for the purpose of the podcast and social media, like talking about it. It also be good just to know my client's sake, too. But yeah. Anyway, I did sign up and the first thing they had me do was choose a goal weight. And this is, I think, very funny because I am at a weight I feel very comfortable at. I've weighed the same for about five years, which is a really good indicator that I'm at a weight that I'm meant to be at. Because throughout the last five years and minor life changes, my weight has kind of just stayed the same. But Noom let me have a weight goal of really as low as you want to. But they recommended, based on my height, a weight goal of 120 to £160. And so me being my dramatic self, I was like, yeah, shoot for 120. Even though I have not weighed 120 since I was in fourth grade and I was a super tall ten year old. I'm not mentally £120. I know that. But if I had really unrealistic expectations or bad body image or an eating disorder, I might think that 120 is the way I have to be at or sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say I feel like that's what most people perspective would be like. If this is my range, I want to be at the lowest possible. Exactly. And that weight goal or that range they set out is just based on my height. It doesn't take into account, like muscle mass or activity level or genetics or my actual daily intake. And it does get more personalized as we go along. And I'll explain that, but right off the bat, it let me set a Wakeful that was not realistic for me. And so it's automatically setting me up for failure because even if I do get to that goal weight, my body is way more comfortable, like 175, and it's just not going to let me hang out at 120 for very long. Red flag number one. Yeah. Especially since that was so early on in the first, it was like right away, this is the weight you're going to aim for. Yeah. So it's going to be your measure of success. Exactly. And I could have chosen like 160, and that'd be a lot less weight for me to hypothetically lose. But again, if I didn't know any better and I thought I had to be at 120 or that thinner is the best to let shoot for the lower end, then I would have chosen that and Noom would have allowed me to do that and give me a calorie goal that would lead to me getting to that weight that is like £50 less than I'm supposed to be at. It's just crazy because we actually have to do an episode on BMI. We'll get to that in the future. We want to talk about that. But there's no way that everybody at my height of like five foot 5758 is going to weigh the exact same. That's just not how bodies work. We're meant to be very diverse. And so that's why goal weights are garbage. And you can't really have a number in mind if you are trying to lose weight, because first of all, your body might not let you. And even if it's the weight you've been at before and felt comfortable at that could have been a season of life that was totally different. And that might not be your set point weight anymore, which we should do an episode on that as well. Set point weight theory. I agree. Which if you guys don't know, I'll give you a brief analysis, basically the way your body wants you to be at. And it's a theory, it's not super duper evidence based yet. But anyway, we'll explain that later, I suppose. Yeah. Okay. So the first step, they gave me a goal weight. I chose 120 because I wanted to see how dramatic I could be. Let's see, let's see. And then the next step was they have you complete like a super long questionnaire, which I think it's good that it was very extensive. They asked about chronic diseases, if I have diabetes, high blood pressure, family history of these kinds of diseases as well. They asked how many meals I eat per day. It did ask some psychological questions, too. I think it has about stressors and just like daily life in general. But a big red flag that I noticed is that they did not ask any history of disordered eating habits or an eating disorder. So since I didn't ask that and if I did, which I do, actually, I don't have an eating disorder history, but I do have a history of orthorexia and disorder eating. If I have not been healed from that and I was going to Noom to lose £50, I'll keep explaining it wouldn't be a good fit, but they don't even ask that or ask it. And then if you say yes, they say maybe you shouldn't do this, you should go see a dietitian or a therapist or something. Yeah. It's incredibly triggering. Exactly. Because we'll get to this too. But it's like all just like calorie counting and tracking your weights and those like earning your food through exercise, all things that are very triggering for someone who has any of those past behavior in the history. So that was red flags if I didn't ask anything about that. But I feel like that's the norm. I'm making a YouTube video right now on Weight Watchers, a review on Weight Watchers and exciting. Yeah. That questionnaire I don't believe either asked about any kind of I don't know if any of them do. Right. Because they just want you to do it whether you have disordered eating or not. Yeah. And some of the habits they make you do can be disordered depending on the person. I wonder if there's an agreement you sign that's. Like if I develop harmful behaviors from this, I will not sue. Essentially. I feel like so many of these structured weight loss programs have triggered people. There's no way it hasn't triggered someone. But that's hard because if you do develop like anorexia from doing Noom, you probably can't in court blame it on numb. There's no way to prove that Noom caused that eating disorder. Do you think there is like a way to prove it? I feel like there has to be. I'm not a lawyer or
Participant #1:
like it, but I don't know. I feel like you could. Yeah. Or at least I feel like there should be. I think you should be able to definitely can and will for a lot of people. But it'd just be hard to prove because it is such a multifaceted. Is that right? Where it's multifaceted disease or disorder? That would be hard, probably in courts like Planet on this app that I used, even though it probably is the main thing that triggered it for some people. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I completed the questionnaire they read flag there that they didn't ask about any history of meetings. But after I did the questionnaire, they gave me a timeline and they said that I could reach my weight goal of £50 down for my current weight, which I feel very healthy at in what did I say? Like six months or so? I don't remember. But it essentially added up to being like one to £2 a week, which we talk about this in the weight loss episode, which is our most popular episode. So go back and listen to that if you have it yet. That's generally a fine weight loss goal for most people. But again, I don't love the idea of giving a goal weight or a bold weight loss range to shoot for each week. Because then if you have a week when you're losing weight that you actually gain weight or you lose less than one or £2 and you feel like you're failing, even though it's just your body being normal and having normal fluctuations, even though that one to £2 a week might be a good recommendation for some. Again, for me that would be a terrible recommendation because I don't need to lose one or £2 a week. Do you think the time I'm wondering what would change depending on how much weight you need to lose? Like, I feel like they would just say one to £2 no matter what I think they did, they would change the duration. Exactly. If my goal weight was to get down to 160, it probably would have had me losing that in like a month or two, I guess. Yeah. But then I'm sure they would be able to reel you in after that to pay for something to maintain the weight loss or whatever. I actually don't really know what happens once you reach your weight loss goal, like with Weight Watchers, too. The reason they're so successful and the reason that they've been in business since like the 60s is because, yes, you lose the weight in your, quote, successful on their program, but who can keep track of points of foods or count their calories forever or be a deficit 24/7? So that's why I'm wondering what happens when you do reach your weight loss goal, do they have a program after that? Or you just be set free and take a look. I can see it going either way, like Weight Watchers, where they let you go and then you have to come back. Then you come back and you get it all back. Either way, they're getting me back in business somehow. Yup, Yup, Yup, Yup. So that is kind of where it ended at this point. They said, they said, here's your weight loss timeline, how long it would take you. But if you want to get your calorie goal and your exercise recommendations and your coach, then you have to pay for it. So from there, I just said no, because I don't even want to lose weight. I was just doing it for the purpose of social media. Yeah. So that was my experience. Yeah. Not great already. I didn't even get into having a coach. I was reading a blog by a dietitian who actually paid for it, and she had a coach, and she said she had a good experience in general with the coach because she was confronting her about the calorie goal being too low for her and all that. And the coach did say, okay, yeah, maybe it isn't a good fit for you then, but I think that really depends on the coach you get. I'm sure there are some coaches who are like, no, 200 calories, you're out of here. Yeah. And also you're like, comfortability confronting your coach, rather. Or being like, oh, they know. I know so many people probably would go and be like, they know everything that I need to know to be successful, and they just put that trust into them. And that's not on the clients. It's on the coaches and on Noom forgetting coaches that I can almost guarantee or not dietitians or any kind of like, actual healthcare professional. Most case scenarios, if they are dieticians programs, will be very upfront about calling them dietitians. We want you to know. Yeah, I think I looked it up. It said virtual health coach. Yeah. The phrase health coach triggers me. Don't like it. There's a time and place, like where I work. For example, a health coach could do the job of getting someone's blood pressure reading and giving it to the dietitian or the NP. Or they could help run a health fair and hand out things on, I don't know, a low sodium diet. I don't know. But health coach shouldn't be someone you're, like, checking in with constantly for nutrition extra device, generally out of their scoop legally. But that changes state to state. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, Emily, what was your experience like? I did the other route. There are two routes you can go with Noom. I will say Zoom. This is not in Zoom. No, we love Zoom. Noom. Yeah, we like Zoom. There's the weight loss route, and then there's the stress and anxiety relief portion of you, which I had never heard about before until I signed up. I was like, I know everyone knows about the weight loss one. I'm going to try out this other one, and it talks a lot about how they talk about those psychological influences and understanding that they talked about cognitive behavioral theory and how that backs up the majority of us they do and how they utilize mental health resources. And I was just very surprised because I thought this was a weight loss app. And I was like, what is this doing with stress and anxiety? Almost to me, it should have been a different app. If this is going to be mental health related, this should be something else. Maybe like Noom for mental health. What did you say? Moon, like the rock in the sky, like Noom backwards. No, I was going to say M for mental health. Moon. Moon, not moon, moon, Noom for nutrition, moon for mental health. I should trademark that. So if they take it, I need to buy that domain right now. Yeah, watch Out.com. I'm going to Google that while we're talking about it. But essentially it asked me a lot of different questions. Is this real? Boom is a hair removal business. Okay, well, sorry, trademark then. Shoot, I don't have a trademark. You might be able to steal it, but definitely they have a domain, at least. Anyway, cool. Essentially asked me a lot of feelings, ask me a lot of questions. I can't talk today. Apparently had me answer a lot of questions about anxious spots and triggering stressful situations, stuff like that the weirdest thing that stuck out to me just because I am so passionate about mental health. And also I educate myself a lot around that. And a lot of the triggers that asked me about weren't things that actually stressed me out. It was like asking about family related stress or relationship stress or school related stress for my stresses are like the political climate, being biracial, things like that. And I was like, I feel like these are a bit heavier from what helped me. We're tapping out on the race cars. They're like, go elsewhere. We're not helping you. But they gave me a timeline, too. They said in four months. I'd see, like, the majority of my approvement. I don't even know what that's measured by. How do I know that? I don't know. Apparently within. I think I might misquote this. I was going a bit quickly through the questionnaire. It kept telling me random facts, and I, like, kind of flying through. But I think within the first week, 64% of the clients that utilize the stress relief portion of it had gone up eleven points. Like, seen eleven points in improvement. I don't know what that's measured by or what kind of points. No, it's just an eleven points. And I was like, what? Okay, maybe based off my questionnaire, my levels were at different numbers and somehow you probably do like every week at least this is how I'm feeling. But I was just like, what does eleven points mean? This could mean nothing to me since you don't define it. But essentially I already see a therapist I don't need to use for my issues. But it was interesting because no one ever talks about this side of it. And it felt very out of place for I was reading through the website, like, I read through almost every single one of their tabs and whatnot. And it doesn't really talk about stress relief. It talks a little bit about it, like stress management. But the main focus was around like health care, weight loss stuff like nutrition stuff of that sort. So it felt very out of place to me. Right. Whenever they do mention mental health, it's how it can relate to your weight loss. Yeah. That's like the only way they ever advertise it. Yeah. That's weird. I didn't even know they had this part of it until you just told me before we started reporting. That's very odd. Yeah, I do not know either. I personally would recommend therapy if you need to work on mental health. But do you get a coach for the mental side of things, too? I don't know. I would hope so. I would hope you're talking to someone like a therapist. But I didn't see anything about it. I read somewhere there were, like, lessons on mental health. I'm like, what does that mean, like lessons? Am I going to watch webinars on how to manage my stress? That sounds like homework to me, and that sounds fun. No, that's weird because I feel like there shouldn't be coaches unless the coaches are like actual therapists. But that would be another lawsuit waiting to happen if they had just like, health coaches guiding you through your mental health journey. Yeah, well, Puma is really bad and zero so far. There's a lot going on. Yeah, well, we do have a couple of pros that we want to go over because we try to do the positive in all things. But as we'll find the negatives in this case, really do outweigh the positives. One of the pros is that you have a coach. It's not like they just give you a calorie goal and kind of kick you out and make you do it on your own. So that is great that you have someone to check in with the accountable to ask questions, too. But again, it's just good to be cautious about any kind of coach, even if it is a dietitian, because you just always need to know what the Criticals actually are, what their experiences, make sure you actually trust them. That goes for doctors, too. There's always going to be someone who's not a good fit for you, even if they are qualified to do the job they're doing. So that's just something I like to point out like they have a coach, but if they're not a good fit for you, that kind of stinks. Yeah. The other pro. Yeah. I didn't really have anything on that. Whenever I edit the episodes, we both say yeah, so much it makes me laugh and delete them because we just go there and say, yeah, for 10 seconds and we just sit there and think on. They were like, should we move on? Yeah. That's the one pitfall of being virtual. We have to rely on visual cues. Yeah.
Participant #1:
Okay. Some thumbs up. You're good, partner. The other pro is it does focus on behavioral changes rather than making rules such as like cut out carbs or donate past 07:00 p.m.. So that is nice that they have included. Do you know any specifically the behavioral changes? I actually don't know any. Off the top of my head, I know you count calories and you have a traffic light method, which we'll get to, but I wouldn't really even call those behavior changes. Yeah, I know. They talk about it. They talk about mindful eating a little bit. Yeah. I'm sure they go over like mindful eating portion control. I'm sure exercise is a big part. That's actually one thing I don't think I put in the notes here, but I wanted to talk about I was seeing that kind of like my fitness pal. You get a calorie goal and then it can also track your exercise or you can input exercise and then you get more calories if you exercise. And I don't love that because it makes you. Oh, I did write down actually, never mind until I'm getting ahead of myself. But anyway, this is one of our cons. We'll get to that. It makes you feel like you have to earn your food through exercise, where if you're feeling super hungry because you're on a calorie diet of only 1200, that's not because you're like broken or wrong, it's just probably not a good calorie goal for you. And you don't have to earn more calories by doing more movement. Like you probably just need more calories because of the size body you're in. Yeah, I forgot how I got to that point. But there's a Con that I don't love. No. Yeah. I don't really know what behavior changes. I'm sure they have like educational pieces in general, but I don't know. Let's talk about why Noom was a diet, though. One of my favorite things for claiming the anti diet. There are quite a few things that might show us differently and we made a nice list of them for you all. Yes, we're a fan of lists around here. Yeah. So the first one you're given a calorie budget and encouraged to track everything that is Diet 101, calorie tracking. I also realized the last bullet point I put was food tracking, which is the same exact thing I just said. So we're going to get rid of that. But yeah, you're encouraged to track. It's like calorie counting. It's also like macro counting. But you're just tracking your food at the Food Journal and you're given the amount of calories deep. And from what I understand and what I've heard for most people, the calorie goal is $1200, which is universally joked about these days as being the calories of a toddler. Like, it's probably not enough for you. No, I think I might eat 1200. When I don't move during the day, I'm feeling incredibly sedentary. I don't leave a position at all. Maybe then, but even then, probably not. And even then, you're not meticulously making sure that you're only eating chocolate or if you didn't get out of bed that day. No, like you're just eating based on your hunger and your fullness. And if your hunger and fullness tell you that you only need 400 calories that day, then that's totally fine. But if the next day your hunger and fullness tell you that you need 1800, that's okay, too. Yeah. So that's a big one. I think you're right. That's like the first thing that you should look for. Red flag. Yeah. This one I love. Well, I hate it, but it's very hilarious. The traffic light approach, that's like something that Nun is really passionate about and proud of and something they like, teach. It's probably one of the behavior changes, this traffic light approach. So as a Noom customer dealer, as a Noomer. Is that what they call them? Yeah. I hate that so much. Okay. As a Noomer, you are instructed to follow the traffic light approach, which you may have heard before. I think Weight Watchers followed this for a while, a long time ago. Maybe I'm wrong on that. They switched to it, actually. Yes, you're right. They try to be more a bit more liberated. They switched to it. They're always changing their rules. I was just like, we're looking into them the other day. The Wild West over there. Yes. The W's actually stand for not Whitewater. It is Wellness. What is that? They changed their name. Well, it's no longer weight loss. It's Www, which stands for Wellness that works. That's what it is. I mean, they're still Weight Watchers, like on their website Watchers, but they now want you to call it WW, which no longer supposedly. I kNoom they changed it. Yeah, I thought that was just so it didn't blatantly say, wait. Yeah, I mean, that's still her name. But now it's Wellness that Works is the other way you can describe it. Anyway, we'll just settle on them eventually. But with the traffic light approach, it makes probably what you're thinking. It makes sense. Like, you've got your green foods, your yellow foods and your red food. So green foods are the foods you want to eat the most of yellow foods you want to kind of eat moderation and red foods. You really want to limit your intake of
Participant #1:
this really perpetuates the idea of good food and bad food, which Emily and I always talk about. Like, we don't want to label any foods as bad or even good because our brain's reaction to that thought around a certain food. That label of a food is going to dictate how we respond to eating that food. Whereas the food is just a neutral thing, we just have a neutral reaction to it. And we are more likely to eat based on what our body like once. But on their website, it even says because we don't believe in good or bad foods, even though they like use this color coordination system, which clearly like States like green is good, red is bad. Like if you see something that's green versus red, you think automatically green, good, red bad. So even if they don't necessarily say like good food and bad food, almost anybody is going to still have that mindset when they see that different color coding system. I think that's one of my top pet peeves about Noom. Me, too, is the pie chart with all the different colors. As you can probably guess, all the green foods are like lower calorie foods and the red foods like Weight Watchers, alcohol, stuff like that. Yeah. And is it true that there are some foods that are more nutritious we should eat more of? Yes. But that doesn't make us a better person for eating those more nutritious foods than if we on a certain day ate more of those less nutritious foods. Yeah. It just develops a really bad it's feeding into that disorder. Eating of viewing foods is like good versus bad. And you feel guilt when you eat more red foods and you're like, oh, no, I have to limit myself with these. But with the green foods, you can eat however many of those. But like kind of what we talked about. If you need a copious amount of something, it's probably not going to be good. Right? You can owe on water for goodness. Yeah, literally. I love water. It's great, but you can drink too much and it's all about balance with everything we talk about. I know it's only broken records, but it's so true. Another thing I know, again, whitewashes are very similar. I really think people have similarities to Noom. A lot of those red foods are higher calorie. But the great thing about high calorie foods, like nuts and seeds and avocados and that kind of stuff is because they're high in calories, they're very filling. So most people don't feel the need to eat like three avocados. We're usually pretty satisfied after a serving, which is like a half or whatever or whatever serving it is to you. There's no discrepancy on that. But that's another point I like to make, too. Like high calorie is not bad. No, that's a hard one. And I work in weight management, as you guys know by now, and people are like, so afraid of nuts. And peanut butter. I recommend that to everyone. Me too. It's for snacks. Yes. If you eat a whole container, is it going to be 500 calories? And that might be too much for your calorie needs that day. Yeah. But if you have a good serving for you and you balance it in a nice snack with a string cheese and a piece of fruit, not just like a giant thing of nuts, because you will overeat that. You're way less likely to overdo it. And it's actually a really great snack and it's going to provide a lot of key nutrients for you. And also don't eat it out of the containers. Yeah. That's an easy way to overeat anything, but especially nuts, I feel like. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about the next red flag of the Noomman diet. They recommend daily weighance. And this drives me nuts. Speaking of nuts,
Participant #1:
because weight fluctuates so much and as so many of us have been programmed growing up and seeing in the media, that being taught that our weight defines a lot of our self worth. When you see fluctuations in that weight, especially going up, you're going to feel discouraged and feel bad about yourself. And it might lead to restriction and over compensation or over exercising. You're like, wow, my weight went up zero six of a pound. It was all those you have to poop avocados, go to the bathroom. Right. Go take a dump and get weight again. It'll be down. Also, like your liquid intake, specifically, your water intake affects your weight every single day. The types of food, the time of day, your clothing, whether or not you went to the bathroom. There are all these things that influence weight. And it's completely normal to fluctuate. I think. I think it's two to £4 is the fluctuation. I don't remember the exact number. Yeah. But like every day you can fluctuate and it's completely normal. I promise you, you're not going to put on £5 of fat overnight. You might have ate a really high sodium meal and drink a million gallons of water and it's all retained in your body. But it's very discouraging because then also, if you're on, you're constantly checking in with that goal rate they gave you. Like, folks, for example, if you like one to £2 every week, what if you hit your £2 halfway through the week and then you gain it all back? Yeah. And that will happen. That's just how it works. That's incredibly demoralizing. I typically don't even recommend my weight management people to weigh themselves more than like every two or three weeks, preferably not at all, because I feel like everyone's happier. We focus on those non scale victories, but daily is just so hard on your mental health. Every patient that I see that insists on weighing themselves daily get so upset and they face their choices off the scale that day. And then it's really hard to tune into your hunger cues if you're only basing it off of if the scale was up or down. Like, there's so many cons. There's so many more cons to laying yourself data than there are any pros. I was going to say, even if you do want to use date or wait as a data point, cool. That's fine. I'm not one to say that you shouldn't look at your way ever, if that's what you want to do. Doing it daily is not going to be any more beneficial than tracking up once a week or once every few weeks. There are too many different factors if you're going to track your weight. I'm not telling you to do this because this will lead to this 99% chance. You'd also have to track your food, your water intake, what your clothing, how much you defecated. That also changes. It like how much you urinated, how heavy your clothes were. There are all these things that affect weight so much. Now I am not telling you do please do not go away your waste products or your clothing because that will be really annoying. Like, imagine how much more brain space you would have to spend on things that actually matter if you didn't know. I have a patient who can tell me his weight on September 18 of 2017. He knows what his weight was, he's obsessed. And imagine how much more brain space he would have to spend on like, oh, what fun meal should I for dinner tonight or what hobbies can I get into? Or let's just watch TV and chill the F out. Imagine a brain case you would have if you didn't spend so much of it concerned with the number on the scale that you have no control over anyway. You have this very false sense of control when, as we described, the number on the scale is like, yeah, you can eat less, move more, but it's still going to go up and down. I feel like we should do an episode on nonscale victories. We should do an episode on nonscale victories and why you shouldn't use weight as a success. Write that down. Right now I feel like it's something we talk about almost every single, but it might be nice just to concentrate on it for an entire episode because it's something, unfortunately that we've been trained to focus on and prioritize. Even if you do, even if you do like have an emotional connection to weight, that does not make you a bad person, that makes you a victim of diet culture. Yes. So we're saying all these things. We are not upset with you.
Participant #1:
That's a good point. Because I do get so fired up and I feel bad for my clients sometimes I treat them with care, but I do get so passionate and upset and really fired up about this kind of stuff and I have to talk about that a lot. Like, I'm not mad at you. I'm not fired up at you. It's because you've been taught all these things and it's totally out of your control. But now you have to spend money to see me, which I totally appreciate. It gives me a job, but you're spending this money to undo all the things that have happened to you just being alive as a human in this culture. Yeah. I haven't gotten fired up at a podcast in a while. I'm feeling very I got fired up during Herbal Life. Yeah, I was just not fired up a week ago, but I forgot about it already because I get fired up every day we're doing that. I feel like a lot more controversial topics recently. It's topics that were really adamant about, like something we talked about. We could kind of take it or leave it, like dining out, for example. We're not really passionate about dining out tips we could give them so you guys have them. But when it comes to weights and relationship with food and stuff where we like, really? That is like our wheelhouse. Yeah. You should move on to the next one. We've been talking about daily for a very long time. We probably could have two things and everyone would have like, been like, okay, cool. Like 15 seconds. And are they done? Yes, they probably already have been doing that for a while. The next one I really already touched on. So I won't go over it again. But it's the whole idea of adding calories back when you do a workout and making it feel like you don't get to eat those calories if you don't get off your bus that day, not the case. So I say we skip to the last one. So this one we're also probably going to get fired up about, I don't know how I did it. And then maybe you can define it better than I can or describe it better. But sometimes what I've been hearing about is if you were to Google intuitive eating, sometimes based on names like marketing strategy, they would pop up
Participant #1:
SEO. If you look up registered dietitians or intuitive eating, they are mostly scenarios. They're using SEO to make themselves on the homepage. And because they're so popular that they're popping up all the time. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So imagine you're trying to better relationship with food, trying to get out of the die culture space, and you're like, what is intuitive eating? And you put it in the good old Google because most of us do. And then that's the first thing to pop up. Yeah, I know, because everything that we just talked about, tracking calories, weighing yourself, the traffic light approach, earning your food through exercise, those are all things very critical to not being intuitive eating. Those are all like the basics that if you have any knowledge at all, intuitive eating, you know that those are all things you don't do or incorporate. No, it is so frustrating because when Intuitive is Googled Evelyn Tribal and I am kicking myself because I don't remember the other dietitian's name. Elise Wretch, right? I think so. But their website should be the first website that comes up. Since they are the co founders of Intuitive Eating. You think it makes sense. But since they even though they have a huge I know they're very popular because some way dietitians support them and just general other health care professionals are kind of incorporating Intuitive Eating more. Yeah. Weight loss program is the number one search result under Intuitive Eating. And the thing is, I wouldn't know any better. I always feel like, oh, Noom a health program that is associated with Intuitive eating. It's something I'm interested in. Exactly. And if you don't really know what Intuitive Eating is, you just kind of heard of it. I guess you may not know that it's not a weight loss diet or program or any of that. Actually. There's weights not even discussed almost talking about how you shouldn't weigh yourself. Yeah. So they have nothing in common. Literally nothing in common at all. No. They are plugging in a buzzword that has gained more movement. Rightfully so. And using it to their advantage. That's happening a lot with the Intuitive eating world right now. It's very over and poorly utilized and misunderstood. People think it's to eat whatever you want diet. It's so frustrating. I'm not even like an Intuitive eating specialist or counselor. I think I do want to be eventually. But same. That's not what Intuitive Eating is at all. No. It's so much more than just like eating Donuts all day. Yeah. And no dietitian or no Intuitive eating specialist is going to tell you to eat. Tell you to eat Donuts on every day. One of the main parts of Intuitive Eating is the aspect of gentle nutrition, which means you honor your health, you actually take care of your body, not just eating things that yeah, it tastes really good, but maybe aren't the best for you nutrition wise. It's not just getting whatever you want. It's a whole framework and it's scientifically back. And it's so much more than just eating whatever. Yeah. I think that's something I have talked to so many people about how I support Intuitive Eating. It's something I actively incorporate in my practice. They're like, oh, so you just tell people to eat whatever they want. I'm like, do you really think I am out here, like, having these appointments, just talk saying like, oh, yeah, eat all of that pizza and eat only pasta and never eat a vegetable and go do all these I'm like blankie on any other thing. Don't eat all this sodium. I'm trying to think of all the scare tactics, like eat all the high fat foods and eat all the sodium and eat all the eggs, eat cigarettes, all the cars. Yeah. Just eat whatever. No, that's not what it is. It's teaching health in a way that actually improves your health rather than just focusing on weight loss. Yeah, more than that. But that's how it kind of relates to Noom. Speaking of intuitive eating, though, we did an episode on intuitive eating. So to understand it a bit better, I believe it's episode five. So it's a bit flash in the past or however that frame goes. But go check out that episode because we do a lot better job. Or even if you're someone who is interested in learning mountain to do beating or you are under the perception that is eat whatever you want, go listen to that episode because we do a lot more depth about it and kind of debunk a lot of those myths around intuitive eating. Honestly, I feel like we should touch that based on it. I'm just going to say we need to revisit it. I think I think we should revisit like half of us. We can only title it like it's intuitive eating that eat whatever you want diet and spend the whole time talking about that. All right. Well, let's wrap this up. So final thoughts. You guys probably gathered this. You probably know when you first clicked on our episode, but we'll tell you anyway, Noom is a diet. It's not into the beating. We know that diets don't work. So as Noom is just another diet, it's probably not going to work long term. Will you lose weight? Probably. But will you be able to maintain that weight? Probably not. So same thing, different day around here. You know when they say people are the same person in a different font, Numa is a different font of Numa's. Weight Watchers is what Noomman with a little bit more potentially the behavioral a little bit, which they don't even like. Really, they advertise that and they talk about that being the big thing.
Participant #1:
Yeah. I also want to know this is completely I don't even think we incorporated this in, but people have confided in me that Noom gave them an eating disorder. I'm like that is not good at all. So bad. So don't do it. But again, if you guys listen to this podcast, you probably either follow Emily and I are both of us and know that we probably are going to say that. Yeah. Okay. I am excited for this bonus question today. I thought of it before we like recently. I thought it would be a really good one today. So today's bonus question is, are nut milks like almond oat milk? I guess not really nut milk, but almond, soy, coconut, all those different kinds of like nut milk, milk, nondairy milks. Are they actually milk or should they be called like almond beverage? I'm going to say no, they are not because I'm pretty sure the National Dairy Council actually filed a lawsuit against this. Really? I'm trying to remember when it was, but they're not allowed to say like almond milk. If you look at a lot of beverages it'll say almond beverage or nondairy beverage.
Participant #1:
I say oat milk. I say almond milk, coconut milk. But it's actually I think I'm pretty sure there was legal option because I looked up because we are all about definitions around here. Milk definition. It said an opaque white fluid rich in fat and protein secreted by female mammals for the nourishment of their young. Women don't have young. Oats don't secrete anything or coconuts. Yeah. Oats aren't reproducing and having young they have to feed.
Participant #1:
Yeah. It's fancy. When you say like I'll have the oat beverage, please, I like it better. I think it sounds cool than oat milk. Same. Can I have a cold brew with oat beverage, please? That was an easy one. Yeah. Which is good because we just spent probably an hour talking about Noom. Keep it quick and simple for everyone. Yeah. Okay. Nut milk should be called nut beverages. Yeah. I listened to a podcast actually where I got this idea and the host called it Nutter aid. Like datagrade. Yeah, I know.
Participant #1:
Interesting. I like nut beverage. Sounds fancy.
Participant #1:
Nutty beverage some reason I like almond beverage and oat beverage but I don't like just general nut beverage very much. I think the word nut is just like not I have a nut liquid. Oh no. Anyway, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Wait, that's more accurate. It's more accurate but it sounds really gross. I have almond water
Participant #1:
that's like almond flavors.
Participant #1:
Disgusting. If you got like one of those I'm thinking of like a baked good almond but like flavored water. I don't know if maybe it'd be sweet. I also don't like flavored water so maybe it wouldn't taste
Participant #1:
okay. Anyway, sorry. Do your outro. Okay. Thank you guys for tuning in to today's episode. We hope you're enjoying season three so far. We're having a great time and we will see you guys next week. Yes. Thank you for tuning in.
