What makes it different from Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and their ilk is that Noom is all dressed up in the rhetoric that activists have been using for decades to try to take down diet apps once and for all. Its critics say that beneath the buzzy wellness vocabulary and millennial pink branding, Noom is just another diet app. It positions itself as a program that teaches users to lose weight the smart, healthy way, following the tenets of the body positivity movement while still helping users make their bodies healthier. Noom appears to be trying to split the difference between traditional diet culture and the rising anti-diet movement. (While the 95 percent number has been called into question, other studies do consistently show that the vast majority of diets fail.) “And yet corporations still sell diets and sell the idea of a smaller body as a more valuable body, as an inherently healthier body, as a better body.” “There is no other product that could have a 5 percent efficacy rate and be peddled as hard as diets are peddled,” says Sonya Renée Taylor, founder of the digital media and education company The Body Is Not an Apology, citing a widely quoted study from 1959. What’s more, they add, most diets do not result in long-term weight loss and can even damage your metabolism in the long run.
Citing a mounting pile of research, these groups hold that the correlations between weight and health are not nearly as straightforward as diet culture would have you think. In the other corner are the rising anti-diet and Health at Every Size movements. It is also an article of faith that it’s important for your overall wellness and your personal happiness that you be thin at all costs. Under this system, it’s an article of faith that if you simply exercise a little willpower and expend more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. In one corner is the traditional diet culture most American women grew up in, which holds that weight is a crucial indicator of health. The fight between Noom and its critics is part of a larger cultural war that has begun to play out over the past 10 years over how we should think about food, weight, bodies, and health. “They were like, ‘Well, it’s helping me rethink some of my habits and unpack some of my issues with food.’ And then a few months later, I would hear from them again being like, ‘Actually, it’s ruining my life.’” “I was hearing from a lot of people who were doing it who didn’t think of themselves as dieters and wouldn’t want to be doing a diet,” Sole-Smith says. In an interview, Sole-Smith said she was drawn to reporting on Noom in part because of the client base that its “not like regular diets” ad campaign was drawing on. Virginia Sole-Smith, the journalist behind the fat activist newsletter Burnt Toast and a high-profile critique of Noom in Bustle last October, agrees. “The idea that there could be a way to lose weight without having all of the psychological and emotional hang-ups around food and diet culture is super appealing,” says Meredith Dietz, the reporter behind the recent Lifehacker article headlined “Fuck Noom.” “But I don’t think Noom actually delivers.” Critics say that Noom is just another diet app at best, and a deceptive gateway to disordered eating at worst. “Noom’s key differentiator - applying psychology to achieve long-term weight loss - has recently backfired,” it explained.
It was even circling the possibility of an initial public offering for early 2022, with a prospective valuation of $10 billion.īut the Wall Street Journal didn’t think that IPO was going to happen anytime soon. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that Noom was valued at $4.2 billion in May 2021, and late last year it expected its 2021 revenue to total more than $600 million. Noom’s messaging insists that it teaches users healthy, sustainable habits that leave them feeling happy and satisfied as the pounds melt away. “And yes, we also help people lose weight,” it added in the caption. “With Noom, every day is ‘No Diet Day,’” it declared on Instagram last May. That’s the dream that Noom, a buzzy weight loss app targeted to young people, has been selling for years. Imagine that you could transcend America’s toxic diet culture, and at the same time, you could also be really, really skinny.
#Vox nutrition jobs how to#
Imagine that you could simply learn how to get in touch with your body - thoughtfully, mindfully - and teach yourself not to crave foods that don’t nourish you.
Imagine that you could repair your broken relationship with food, with hunger, with your own skin, and in the process shed those 10 pounds you’ve been wanting to lose. Imagine that you could lose weight without going on a diet.
0 kommentar(er)
