Emotional Eating, Anxiety and Noom
Diets DON’T work. If you’ve lost the same weight again and again, you know this to be true. If you think you might have a problem with emotional eating, take my Emotional Eating Quiz.
I work with a lot of people on weight loss, health and wellness. What I’ve seen over and over is that emotional eating and anxiety are connected! And therefore, you can’t change eating behavior long term unless anxiety and emotions are addressed.
In my experience, here’s what works for emotional eating:
- Changing your thinking process about food, diets, your wellness, and your self-esteem
- Addressing emotional eating, which often means addressing stress and anxiety
Noom is a paid weight loss and wellness program (with an app for your phone) that uses a psychology-based approach to changing how you eat by helping you change the way you think. The overall approach is very aligned with my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach.
So, I joined Noom to do my own assessment of whether their program can help with long term weight loss/maintenance and emotional eating. Short answer: YES!
I have worked through the program myself and actually tried and practiced the strategies they suggest. There’s a lot of great stuff there!
I have had clients very successfully use Noom in conjunction with our work together to make deep changes to their relationship with food and to break emotional eating patterns.
Yes, Noom can help!
There’s a free version of the app for tracking your food choices, weight, steps, exercise, and water intake but lots of free apps do that.
To make real, long-term change you need to join the program. They have annual plans and sometimes offer some great discounts. My personal experience with Noom says it’s worth it!
I’ve tried their strategies for myself, and I’ve used them with clients – all with positive results. I am continuing to work the whole program myself (more than a year’s worth of material and practicing) so I can continue to learn more strategies to help my clients.
Education + Coaching
The Noom app gives you daily lessons to read, along with a lot of positive reinforcement which makes it feel fun (full disclosure: sometimes even hokey).
It is very educational and consistent with my approach which is neuroscience-based and researched-based. It goes way beyond food to guide you in these areas as well: stress/anxiety, sleep, nutrition, hormones, emotions, mindfulness, wellness, healthy movement, self-care and self-kindness.
What I love is that they realize that stress and anxiety and mental health has to be addressed in order to end emotional eating habits and patterns.
An integrated approach is what makes Noom different than diets. I firmly believe this is needed for lifelong, sustainable weight loss and maintenance.
Through the Noom app, you’ll get support and motivation from a personal coach. You can also connect with other members and through a virtual support group facilitated by a group coach. The interactive nature of Noom membership also makes it unique compared to other apps.
Nothing Changes Until You Do
Here’s the formula that’s needed for any kind of long-term change, including weight loss and especially emotional eating:
- Change the way you think
- That will change the way you feel
- That plus learning new tools will change your actions/choices
- That will change the results you’ve gotten in the past
Noom’s app and the coaching that comes with membership can help you do just that. Take small steps every single day. Learn to set appropriate goals. Most importantly, learn how to evaluate and change thoughts and feelings that often sabotage your actions.