What I ate in a day on Noom

Diet, exercise, restrict, become frustrated, quit, try something else: this pretty much describes my relationship with attempted weight loss prior to finding the thing that worked for me.

Noom is an app that I've been using to improve my health and get to a weight I am happy with, and I am not exaggerating at all when I say it is so different from other things I've used for this purpose.

To give you some personal background, I have always found weight loss to be an embarrassing topic for me, and when it came to trying it, I felt like most approaches were "all or nothing." I have tried veganism, keto, 6 day a week workout programs, low calorie diets with little direction, and honestly I hated all of those things. I didn't feel like I was unhappy enough with my weight and eating habits to jump into those things and implement them into my lifestyle because it felt like a lot of work and seemed to lack sustainability. Maybe I'm irregularly stubborn, but if it's not sustainable for me, I'm just not doing it. Personally, I would rather carry around the extra weight and not feel like I was depriving myself of any number of foods that I enjoy or spending my time doing workouts that I didn't love.

I also honestly don't enjoy most types of exercise, and will never ever be a person who wakes up at 5am to work out or spends hours meal prepping for the week ahead. I have tried these things, and I personally never enjoyed it like many people do when they have this lifestyle. Personally, I feel refreshed when I get plenty of sleep, have time and to read, have time and energy to spend with my husband and other loved ones, and when I don't spend headspace thinking about meals. I now know that I enjoy evening runs as opposed to early morning workouts, enjoy "food" prepping as opposed to meal prepping, and appreciate time in the evenings to cook every other day or so. I am hopeful that some of you guys identify with me, but I do have to say I admire people who enjoy the things I mentioned before.

Noom was something I had seen advertised over the course of the past year or so, and had considered it, but never felt like I knew enough about it to pay the cash and sign up. I'm not sure what happened that day, but one day in August, I just decided I would try the 14 day trial (I paid $10, but you can choose how much you pay for it,) and I thought if I hate it I'll just cancel it on the 13th day, and if I don't hate it... it could change things for me. You fill out a small bit of personal stuff about yourself, and then they give you a calorie "budget" that fluctuates depending on your daily activity level. I decided to choose the faster option for weight loss, which gave me less calories than I could've had, but I just decided that's what I would do and if it wasn't sustainable, I would adjust my speed. It ended up being fine for me, but it just depends on what best suits your personal needs.

Your budget is broken down into 3 different types of foods. The first type is green foods, which you can eat an abundance of. These are things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, vegetable broth, some pasta sauces, etc. The next type is yellow foods, which consist of meats, white rices and pastas, etc. Then there are red foods, which are things like chips, cookies, oils, cereals, and other things that don't provide a ton of nutrition. When you sign up, you have access to their food database, so you can scan or type in anything you have in your pantry or something you want to buy at the store, and the app will tell you what color it fits into. One of the things I love about Noom is that you can eat those things that fit into the red category, it's just up to you what you spend your red budget on. This helped me tremendously with cravings and never feeling deprived.

I have seen that Noom has picked up in popularity lately, which is exciting because I think it deserves so much credit. I honestly think that Noom is the future of weight loss, and I could go into why, but I may just do that at a later time. Since Noom has picked up in popularity, I thought I could share with you guys what I ate while I was using Noom in case any of you decide to try it.

By the end of my journey, I had lost 30 pounds, began a regular exercise routine, developed a goal-oriented mindset, slept better, had more energy through out the day, and had a better understanding of calorie density. I have been out of weight loss mode for about a month and a half, and have not gained one pound of weight back.

With all of that being said, here is what I typically ate while using the app every day to log meals, communicate with my coach, etc:

Breakfast:

Option 1: One serving of Vanilla Nonfat Greek yogurt. I prefer Chobani or the Aldi Friendly Farms brand because they are tasty and are green foods on Noom. :) I prefer to put 1/2 cup of strawberries or blueberries in the yogurt! You can do granola if you're willing to use red calories on it, but I've found that if I'm going to put red calories into the yogurt, I prefer a crushed up oreo so that it tastes like a Chick Fil-A parfait. Post-Noom, I will say that I still eat this almost every day because it's delicious and keeps me full.

Option 2: Strawberry banana ginger smoothie... this is just a cup of frozen strawberries, one banana, 1/2 cup of low calorie orange juice, and a teaspoon of peeled fresh ginger. All of these are green foods except the orange juice! If you don't love eating early in the day, this would be a nice option for you, but pack a snack because it won't keep you full for too long. I also ate this in addition to my yogurt parfait quite often.

Option 3: Kidfresh Waffles with low calorie syrup and butter with a fruit cup on the side. Kidfresh waffles are frozen, super easy to prepare before work, and are yellow on Noom, and Kodiak Cakes also make frozen pancakes that are good. I prefer the waffles because they're yummy and have a good price point.

Option 4: One egg with turkey bacon (2 slices,) a slice of toast or biscuit, and a fruit cup. This is what I typically ate on the weekends when I made a big breakfast for Matt and I. I love biscuits, but they're red calories, so normally I would only eat one with a low calorie butter spread, and just keep an eye on my budget to make sure I didn't go over red during lunch or dinner. It was usually very easy to fit my favorite foods into my budget, as long as I logged everything and said no to some stuff so I could say yes to other stuff. Eggs and turkey bacon are yellow, and always fit nicely into my budget.

Thankfully, black coffee is so low in calories that it's not even necessary to log it. ;) If you're putting milk and sugar in it, I would opt for unsweetened almond milk or soy milk because those are green calories, and stevia because it has no calories at all. When I make a fruit cup, I try to copy what Chick Fil-A does and use mandarins, apples, strawberries, and blueberries.

Snack option 1: Aldi keto break or Pepperidge Farm light soft wheat bread with 1/2 serving of butter or jam. First of all, I was thrilled to know that I could eat bread on Noom, like multiple times a day even. I like bread, and it's cheap and easy to eat on the go, so it has become a go to for me. Depending on the kind of bread you get, it could be yellow on Noom or even green. (!!!!!) I don't typically buy bread that is more than 45 calories per slice. Aldi has a couple of options, but the tastiest one is the Pepperidge Farm one, and I get that at Kroger.

Snack option 2: One sliced apple or one pouch of cinnamon applesauce. No peanut butter for me.. it's just too high in calories and would count for a good bit of red calories. I would rather eat ice cream or cookies than peanut butter, so I normally save them for those things.

Snack option 3: One banana, or one mandarin. Bananas are the cheapest snack option because they're inexpensive and filling!

Lunch: Both of these lunch options are very filling, and not fancy at all but I am a somewhat picky eater :) I am also content to eat the same things through out the week, so if that is not for you, you may want to check Noom's recipe tab or cook some grilled chicken, veggies, and a side to heat up as another option.

Option 1: A turkey sandwich on the bread mentioned above with light mayo, spicy mustard, lettuce and tomato. If i want to use up my red calories, I'll eat a serving of veggie chips or Boom Chicka Pop cheese puffs as a side because both of those things are tasty crunchy sides, but are lower in calories than your typical potato chips. Most turkey or chicken lunch meat is yellow, so just limit how many slices you're using, and put the smallest amount of mayo you can stand to put so you're not wasting your "calorie budget" on foods with little to no nutrients. Mustard is pretty much free game so if you like it, use it!

Option 2: One serving of chicken nuggets and a big salad. Aldi chicken fries are yellow on noom, as are most chicken nuggets from Kroger. Just scan, scan, scan to make sure! Bagged garden salad is green, most salad dressings are red but I use a low calorie yogurt ranch or a light olive garden dressing, so it doesn't take up too many red calories.

Dinner: The great thing about Noom is that I could mostly keep those the same as always, I just measured stuff out onto my plate using measuring cups so that I knew how many calories I was consuming. I mostly did that so that I knew if I had enough calories left in my budget for some post dinner cookies, which I normally did :) Here are a few dinner things I made:

Option 1: Whole wheat spaghetti (green) with traditional pasta sauce (most are green and equal to an entire serving of veggies! Yay!) and ground turkey (yellow.) If I had enough yellow calories, I would sometimes just do regular pasta. If I wanted to have variety, I would do something like a spaghetti squash, but I would have to eat either a piece of buttered bread or way more ground turkey with that so that I was eating enough calories.

*Note... This is something I had to learn about some of the "trendy" food items I had been eating... while it's great to eat vegetables, such as cauliflower and spaghetti squash, you are most likely not eating a sustainable amount of calories when you replace whole grains like brown rice with cauliflower rice. Same goes for veggie pasta replacements. This was nice to learn for me, because I would much rather eat real life rice than riced cauliflower, or real life noodles as opposed to those strange wet zucchini noodles. I discovered this because there were days when I was coming in way under my calorie budget and realized those things were the culprit. I am not saying they're bad, but they may serve better purposes as a side in addition to whole grains and protein!

Option 2: White or brown rice with stir fried then steamed broccoli, and ground turkey. I seasoned it all to my liking as long as I check to make sure my seasonings didn't have calories, and most don't. This is easily my favorite thing to make because it is so easy, filling, and yummy! White rice is yellow on Noom, and brown rice is green!

Option 3: Chicken fajitas with bell peppers, 1 or 2 low carb tortillas (yellow- low carb because they're lower in calories,) vegetarian refried beans (green,) and as much salsa as my heart desires. Salsa is super low in calories and a green food. If I had the room in my budget, I would make some Spanish rice from a box. Just scan them while at the store, most of them are yellow.

Option 4: Chicken taco soup loaded with vegetable broth, canned diced tomatoes, bell peppers if you like them, cannellini beans, salsa, and organic chicken breast (my recipe is on my instagram story highlights.) It's a nice mixture of green and yellow foods. If you add the cream cheese, get the neufchatel to cut down on calories!

Noom is much more than just following your food budget, but I do hope that the meal options can be helpful to you. It took a while to get the hang of everything, but once I found what worked, I stuck to it! Like I said before, Noom changed so much for me, and I am so thankful that I chose to take charge of my health journey, my weight, my physical activity, and most importantly my mindset. It has truly been a lifestyle change for me and I would never go back to the way it was before I discovered this incredible tool that helped me reach my goals. I'm so glad that I finally sat down and typed this out to share with you guys because it has been a big part of my life since August, and as you know, I enjoy sharing life and things that I love with you all on this blog space.

If you decide to try Noom, reach out and let me know!