The Noom Mindset: Learn the Science, Lose the Weight - Hardcover

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Noom is a consumer-first digital health platform that empowers its users to achieve holistic health outcomes through behavior change. Noom was founded in 2008 with a mission to help people everywhere lead healthier lives. Fueled by a powerful combination of technology, psychology, and human coaching, Noom is backed by more than a decade of user research and product development. Today, Noom’s platform includes two core programs: Noom Weight for weight management and Noom Mood for stress management. Headquartered in New York City, Noom has been named one of Inc.’s Best Places to Work and Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Technology. Learn more by visiting Noom.com.

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Chapter 1: You Rule: Your Role in the Change You Want to Make
 

Nothing changes if nothing changes.
—Anonymous

We suspect (since you are here) that there is something about your life that you would like to be different. Maybe you would like to get back to a healthy weight, where you felt so good in your body. Maybe you would like to get fit, or break some bad habits, or feel better, or just feel more like yourself. Maybe you know what you need to do, but you’re having trouble doing it; maybe you’re not sure where even to begin. Maybe you’ve already made some positive changes, but you want to make sure they stick.

Whatever story brought you here, you are in the right place, because Noom is all about helping people make changes. Our methods may not be like the ones you’ve tried before. We don’t throw a bunch of rules at you, control what you eat or how you work out, or even say that you need to change at all. Instead, we approach behavior change from a psychological perspective: What do you want to change about your life, and why do you want to change it? And why haven’t you changed it already?

We’re all about the why of behavior. Knowing your why is motivating. According to self-determination theory, or SDT, people are most successful at meeting goals when those goals relate to their innate psychological needs, especially autonomous motivation. Autonomous motivation is about doing something because you’ve decided to do it for yourself, and because it is consistent with your personality and values. Making that connection between why and your inner reasons for making a change—reasons that come from you, not from what someone else tells you that you should do—will, according to SDT, increase your motivation and make you more successful at achieving what you set out to achieve, whatever you decide that will be. This is what we here at Noom believe to be true based on the research we’ve done, and what we have seen in our most successful program participants. Understanding your why is an integral part of our program. In fact, “Why?” is our favorite question. Why do you make certain decisions, have certain thoughts, or form certain habits? To begin answering this question, we help you develop your self-awareness and learn how to experiment on yourself. We love experiments, as you’ll soon see! Our entire program is rooted in experimentation, and everything we implement is rigorously tested. Experimentation is key, not just to how we run our company and develop our curriculum but to how you can quickly and efficiently figure out what works for you. “We’ve purposefully optimized Noom to maximize learning speed via experimentation,” says cofounder and president Artem Petakov. “Experimentation is how I figure out what works in my personal life. It’s how we figured out what works for Noom. And it’s how you can figure out what works for you.”

But we don’t experiment just for the sake of experimenting. We base our experiments on research. We pull from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and a lot of other psychology concepts we’ll introduce you to along the way. We teach you how to identify and change destructive thought patterns that keep you from reaching your greatest goals, achieving your biggest dreams, and having the life you want for yourself, but the way we show you how to do this is always based on the evidence. We’re here to help you reach your goals your way, rather than trying to make you do things our way. There is no one right way to do anything because everyone is different, so we help you pay more attention to your own body and tune in to your psyche—because that is where all the answers lie. You just have to access them. Noom doesn’t give you a program. Noom gives you the tools to access the success “program” that’s already running in your own brain.

That’s how you build a life you love. We can show you how to shift painlessly into a calorie deficit that will lead to weight loss, how to have more fun moving, or how to feel calmer or more energized. Whatever your goal, we will always encourage you to ask “Why?” and we will always let you take the lead. We’re just here to hand you tools when you need them so you can set goals that are in line with who you are, and so you can stay motivated, inspired, and reassured that science is in your corner. You know yourself better than anyone else ever could, so while it’s your life, your plans, your goals, we’re in your corner. Because we trust you, and we want you to trust yourself. Because we believe in you, and we want you to believe in yourself. Because we know you can do whatever it is you decide you want to do for yourself.

Because you rule. You are the single greatest force in your health and in your life. You are the most influential, are the most powerful, and have the most control over what you will and will not do. All you have to do is understand, unlock, and harness that superpower you already have within you. Our goal—because we have goals, too—is simply to help you figure out how to do that.

If you’ve struggled in the past with how to eat healthier, exercise more effectively, lose weight you don’t want to be carrying around, or have a more comfortable relationship with food or your body, fear not. Noom has a ton of new tools. We can help you reframe how you look at food, exercise, weight, and even yourself, so you can stop fighting with food, the scale, the mirror, or your inner critic and start living in a way that can help you feel more confident and comfortable in your own skin. We like to say we are lovers, not fighters, and we want to help you put the battles aside so you can start truly enjoying your beautiful self and your beautiful life.

Here are some of the ways we do that:

• We use psychology to help you change your habits and behavior in ways that can make you healthier and better able to reach your goals, rather than just giving you food lists and meal plans and rah-rah talk (okay, we take that back, we do sometimes use rah-rah talk).
• We will never tell you what to eat, or what not to eat. We’re cool with carbs, fine with fat, and pro-protein. We’re not even going to tell you to quit sugar (mmm, sugar) or require that you eat two pounds of kale every day. Veggies are awesome, but you don’t have to do wheatgrass shots or even make smoothies in the morning if you aren’t into smoothies. We want you to eat what you want to eat. We want you to enjoy it, not feel guilty about it, and to choose foods deliberately and with knowledge and forethought so that what you eat can help to make you feel great, physically and psychologically. Because no matter what your goals, feeling great will make them easier to achieve.
• We work with any eating style. If you’re an ethical vegan or a lacto-ovo-vegetarian or you’re totally into paleo or keto or low-carb or high-carb, that’s cool, too. You can be on any of those things and still “do Noom,” just as you can if you are a regular omnivorous-type human. Remember, we care more about why you eat than what you eat.
• We don’t require exercise. We encourage healthy movement throughout the day because we know it’s beneficial to your physical and mental health; whether or not you do formal exercise, and how you move your body, is your business. You can, if you want, use Noom to help you make exercise a habit, or to inspire you to move more intuitively in your life, but we promise we will never make you go to the gym...