“[Y]ou’re basically crapping yourself constantly and you lose 5 pounds” “Noom claims that if you can just change your thoughts, you’ll be able to resist the urge to eat certain foods. But that doesn’t acknowledge how human biology works. We are not supposed to try to override our hunger drive. That’s the major nuance that Noom is missing.”
(CW: eating disorders)
When diets involve obvious punishment, we question their validity. Very few people do a grapefruit diet or a Master Cleanse without thinking “This is miserable.” But when dieting is presented as a way to understand yourself better, we forget to ask questions. We forget to ask whether losing weight will make us happier or healthier. We forget to wonder whether restriction makes us vulnerable to binge eating or to needing dangerous levels of restriction, as Aidan experienced. And we forget that we’re paying someone to tell us we’re not good enough in the body we have now.