Noom® vs MyFitnessPal™

Which lifestyle program should you join?

From our perspective, you have two options:

1. If you want to count calories, track your food intake, weigh your macros, lose weight fast and have a higher risk of weight regain, you can consider MyFitnessPal or Noom®. In our opinion, Noom® might be the better programme as it contains some helpful information on behaviour change and psychology, as well as a human coach for support which can keep you motivated.
2. Suppose you’d like to lose weight sustainably, be supported by a UK-registered dietitian or nutritionist, and follow a programme trusted by the NHS and backed by scientific evidence published in the British Medical Journal. In that case, Second Nature might be the better choice.

Lifestyle programs can provide a helpful structure for your health journey when you feel out of control with unhealthy habits.

In particular, they can be especially useful in helping you achieve your weight goals. Programs are a great way to join individuals going on the same journey, which can be incredibly motivating.

Everyone is different, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to choosing a lifestyle change program. It ultimately depends on what suits your individual needs and what fits into your lifestyle.

Some people want rigid rules and a quick fix when working towards their weight goals, whereas others like more flexibility and a long-term lifestyle change.

To save you some tiresome research and help to answer some crucial questions, this guide compares two popular lifestyle change apps: Noom® and MyFitnessPal™. We’ve included comparisons to the Second Nature program.

Both Noom and MyFitnessPal are calorie-counting programs

MyFitnessPal relies on you logging food and exercise. Through logging exercise and meals, MyFitnessPal calculates the number of calories consumed and burned to try and help you achieve a calorie deficit (where you’re taking in less than you’re using up).

Counting calories and logging them in the app works well for some people. However, this can lead to obsessive tendencies and isn’t sustainable in the long term for others.

Noom and Second Nature are digital, app-based programs focusing on behaviour change and sustainable weight management.

Like MyFitnessPal, Noom focuses mainly on counting calories. This is despite Noom’s marketing as a sustainable weight loss programme and use of behavioural science.

Noom may just be another strict diet

Despite Noom’s advertising as a sustainable weight loss solution, and their programme containing some information on behavioural science, their approach to nutrition and other programme elements mimic many of the restrictive dieting approaches seen in Weight Watchers and Slimming World.

Dietitian and eating disorder expert Christine Byrne wrote a review on Noom for Outside magazine in 2021 and quoted:

“Don’t Be Fooled, Noom Is Just Another Diet.

The popular app promises weight loss without dieting. Then it proposes restrictive eating habits.

…behind Noom’s popularity and slick “no dieting needed” marketing, it’s really just another diet. The app is essentially a calorie tracker supplemented by lessons on behavior change and a personal coach who messages you. Many nutrition and mental health experts have warned that the way Noom presents itself is misleading.“

The risks of calorie-counting and strict dieting

Strict calorie restriction risks putting your body into what’s known as ‘metabolic adaptation’. This is essentially a starvation response by your body when energy intake is very low.

This triggers a cascade of events designed to encourage you to eat more and continue to store fat. You might feel lethargic and hungry, and your mood might also experience a dip.

Because of this starvation response to strict dieting, Second Nature has taken a different approach – one where you determine what level of intake works for you, and surprisingly, it can lead to more weight loss in the long term.

Second Nature’s approach: Indulgent but supports weight loss 

In 2022, the NHS published data in the British Medical Journal from the National Weight Management and Diabetes Prevention programme, where five providers delivered weight loss services in the UK.

The results showed that after 12 months, Second Nature was more than twice as effective as the four other providers. Neither Noom nor MyFitnessPal has published long-term data to support its approach.

How does Second Nature’s approach work?

We approach nutrition and healthy eating differently. We don’t count calories, track macros, weigh food, or assign strict targets on your intake.

We provide you with evidence-based guidance on a balanced diet and teach you to understand what your physical and emotional drivers for eating are to reach your weight loss goals.

We also provide tools, such as our hunger scale and mindful eating techniques, that help you tune into your physical hunger cues and manage your food choices.

Alongside this, we help you build healthy habits that you can enjoy for a lifetime to help you maintain a healthy weight.

Our feedback inbox is filled with people like Jo, who lost over eight stone to achieve a healthy body weight on Second Nature after following our nutrition guidelines and receiving the support of our app and health coaches.

The difference is that members of Second Nature learn to love food again. They’re no longer restricted. They’re liberated.

If you’d like to join over 150,000 others who’ve joined Second Nature, lost weight and kept it off, then click here to take our health quiz.

Otherwise, keep reading as we look at other key differences and similarities between Second Nature and the Noom programme.

Did you know?

Second Nature was the first-ever digital behavioural change programme commissioned by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. It continues to be part of their weight and type 2 diabetes management service.