Noom vs. Nutrisystem: Which Is the Better Weight Loss Program?

If you’ve ever tried losing weight, you know how challenging it can be. Between rigid schedules, strict diets, and unhelpful weight loss counselors, achieving your goals is a lot trickier than it may seem at first glance.

Nutrisystem has long held a prominent position among weight loss programs in the US, delivering nutritious meals right to your doorstep. However, with advances in technology, newer weight loss platforms like Noom have emerged, offering a mobile app with convenient weight loss tools.

As a consumer, you may now find yourself in the dilemma of deciding between these two popular options. But which one stands out as the superior choice? I evaluate all factors to help you determine the best fit.

Noom vs. Nutrisystem: Which Is Better for Weight Loss?

On the surface, Nutrisystem and Noom look like they’re both equally effective products if you want to lose weight. However, they each address different preferences and needs.

Noom is a great service if you don’t want to cut out certain foods and prefer support from coaches and peers. 

On the other hand, Nutrisystem is best for those who want all the cooking and meal planning taken care of. Plus, I found it to be a more hassle-free and easy-to-follow program. 

What Is Noom?

Noom is a weight loss app that uses psychological research to help people achieve realistic goals. By educating people about how different foods affect their bodies, Noom creates a sustainable weight loss journey for its users.

The app is designed to promote losing weight on your own terms. Through personalized lessons, coaching sessions, and diet tracking tools, you can decide how much time you spend on Noom and how you shape your own weight loss journey.

You can also eat your own meals rather than stick to an uninteresting diet of low-calorie foods. You’ll get regular lessons about your body and how it interacts with food, as well as access to tracking features like a food log to help you get a clearer picture of the best foods to eat.

What Is Nutrisystem?

Nutrisystem is a meal delivery program that’s designed to provide healthy and easy-to-cook meals straight to your home. It offers a weight loss diet plan with customizable packages.

You can choose from hundreds of meals that cover breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks for up to 7 days a week. There is an extensive food list, and you can tailor the meals you receive according to your preferences, allergies, and moral or religious beliefs.

All meals and snacks are delivered pre-prepared, which saves you the time and effort of cooking. You can simplify the process of losing weight by having the healthy meal prep done for you.

Basic Features

Both Nutrisystem and Noom are popular weight loss programs that promise effective and science-backed results. However, I quickly learned that their approaches and strategies differ. 

Noom

Noom promises to help its users lose weight through psychological teaching in the style of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Instead of simply telling its users what to eat and when, the service promotes healthy and happy eating habits through education and low-calorie foods.

To sign up for Noom, you must take an initial quiz. You’re asked to provide your personal details and answer questions about how much weight you’d like to lose, your end goals, and your weight management history.

Noom then calculates when you should be able to reach your desired weight and gives you a personalized plan to get you started. This weight loss app contains regular lessons that you read in an attempt to alter the way you think about your body and food.

Through Noom, you can start losing weight by practicing mindful eating. You can choose what you eat and cook what you want with a newfound awareness of what you’re consuming. You can also track your own meals with monitoring tools.

Nutrisystem

With Nutrisystem, meals are delivered straight to your door. They can be heated up easily and quickly, saving you the hassle of cooking. In any case, I always recommend my clients pair a balanced diet with healthy drinks.

There are four different subscriptions you can sign up for: Basic, Partner, Uniquely Yours, and Uniquely Yours Ultimate. Each one offers a different level of choice over varying periods. All plans cover breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for each day they offer.

The Basic plan gives you five days of food from a choice of 100 recipes, while Partner offers the same but for two people. Uniquely Yours, however, gives a single person five days of food from a boosted menu of over 150 dishes.

Finally, Uniquely Yours Ultimate offers a whole week’s worth of meals and snacks from the complete Nutrisystem menu.

Meal Plans and Personalization

As you know by now, both programs promote weight loss but use different methods in their approach. This variation continues in the meal plans and personalization offered for Noom vs. Nutrisystem.

Noom

One of the main selling points about Noom is that it doesn’t give you rigid dietary restrictions. Instead, the app uses a traffic light system to rank foods based on calorie density. Orange foods are high in calories, yellow foods are moderate, and green foods are nutrient-rich.

You can find recipe ideas, create meal plans, and track your healthy eating habits in the app. While Noom won’t tell you what you can and can’t eat, it will still point out foods that are high in calories and encourage you to eat them in moderation.

Because you take an initial quiz about your eating habits and desired goals, Noom offers personalized courses that are tailored to your body type and aspirations.

Nutrisystem

In my opinion, the best thing about Nutrisystem is that it offers a range of Flex meals to remove the worry of what to eat. Nutrisystem meals all come pre-prepared – subscribers must simply select which ones they want from a menu of over 150 dishes.

You can personalize your meals by searching for ones without certain ingredients. For example, you can avoid allergens by filtering the menu for dishes without nuts, eggs, wheat, or milk.

You can also browse by category and find meals suitable for vegetarians, vegans, and even those with diabetes. And if you want to gain muscle while you lose weight, you can search for meals that are high in lean protein.

Professional and Community Support

Both Nutrisystem and Noom have different approaches to professional and community support, so it is important to explore this aspect to determine which service best suits your needs.

Noom

Noom offers both professional and peer support as part of the service. Every user is offered a certified personal health coach to help them stay motivated and keep them accountable if they start to veer off target. 

Access to coaches is 24/7 but only available through a chat function, and the same goes for the peer support groups in the Noom app. Face-to-face coaching sessions and video chats aren’t possible.

While these services are provided and encouraged for Noom users, they are not obligatory. Noom understands that everyone is different, and some may not need to be held accountable or may respond poorly to coaching. The main thing is that support is offered.

Nutrisystem

Since Nutrisystem is a program centered around meal delivery, there isn’t much professional or community support. Users simply pick the meals they want from a pre-selected menu and order them to their homes.

Nutrisystem users will benefit from indirect support, as the meals they offer have been carefully selected by dietitians and nutritionists to help you lose weight.

There is also a decent level of customer support with Nutrisystem. They have a self-help portal online where you can find answers to your queries, or you can contact them directly by phone if anything goes wrong with your meal delivery program.

Effectiveness in Weight Loss

Both Noom and Nutrisystem are effective programs, but just how effective are they? I’ll walk you through how I evaluated the success of each program and what I discovered.

Noom

Noom is an effective weight loss program, particularly in the short term, and many studies support this. For instance, one study showed that around 80% of Noom users reported positive results within the first 6 months of using the app.

One of the ways Noom helps people shed pounds is by encouraging them to eat more whole foods. According to a recent study, this simple lifestyle choice can dramatically reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases.

However, I must mention here that research into the long-term feasibility of Noom is lacking. While proven and effective in the short term according to customer feedback, Noom’s efficacy over longer periods is disputed. There are surprisingly few reviews that center around long-term results, but some cite the expensive cost of maintaining a Noom plan for longer than 6 months.

Nutrisystem

Nutrisystem has been found to be effective in helping people lose weight, especially over a period of a few months. Nutrisystem even offers a money-back guarantee if you don’t see significant short-term results.

In fact, its efficacy was supported by a 12-week trial that found Nutrisystem users lost significantly more weight and belly fat than those on the DASH diet.

Further research showed that the program helped people with type 2 diabetes lose more weight than if they attended a support group.

It’s worth noting that, like Noom, there is little research on proving the effectiveness of Nutrisystem in the long term. One scientific publication found no 12-month outcomes when comparing Nutrisystem to other similar programs.

I also found that customer feedback supported this. While they raved about seeing immediate results, there wasn’t much to suggest people stick with Nutrisystem in the long run. Some reviews stated that it’s just too expensive to maintain a year-long Nutrisystem diet.

Benefits

Noom and Nutrisystem differ in their approaches to weight loss, but both have their benefits. Each program is backed by research indicating its effectiveness in the short term.

Noom takes a more psychological approach, offering flexible and educational plans without enforcing a strict diet. Through the app, you can customize your own plan, find healthy recipe ideas, and track your eating habits.

In contrast, Nutrisystem removes the hassle of cooking by sending pre-cooked meals to your door. Their range of low-glycemic meals may also help control blood sugar levels and improve weight loss for those with type 2 diabetes.

Downsides

I have found that the main drawback to both services is cost. As you’ll learn in the next section, neither program is financially sustainable as a long-term weight loss solution.

With Noom, you still have to buy the food and cook the meals yourself. This may prove problematic for some and may reduce their chances of completing the program. However, professional coaches and community support groups keep users accountable.

Nutrisystem, on the other hand, lacks support group features. Additionally, its meals are somewhat limited, especially for users following certain diets.

Both Nutrisystem and Noom’s plans typically instruct their users to follow low-calorie diets of around 1,300–1,500 calories per day. This regime can slow down your metabolism, which some research suggests may hinder weight loss in the long term.

Cost

Neither service is cheap, but both brands can offer affordable weight loss solutions over the short term. Noom has just one subscription but several ways of paying, while Nutrisystem offers plans of varying levels and costs. Here’s how they compare:

Noom

Subscription	Price
Monthly	$59
Annual	$199
7-day trial	$0.50

Nutrisystem

Plan	Price
Basic	$8.93 for women, $10.36 for men (per day)
Partner	$10.71–12.14 per person (per day)
Uniquely Yours	$10.71 for women, $12.14 for men (per day)
Uniquely Yours Plus	$12.86 for women, $14.29 for men (per day)

Best in the Weight Loss Category

Keep in mind that Noom and Nutrisystem aren’t the only programs out there that may help you reach your weight goals. Let’s see how they compare against another top program.

How I Compared Noom and Nutrisystem

It’s always a good idea to test out these kinds of programs or read testimonies from previous users before you make a commitment. That’s why I’ve personally tested these programs to give you a clear understanding of what you’re getting into. Here are the criteria I used to evaluate them:

Quality

Noom and Nutrisystem are relatively high-quality services. The meals and meal prep offered by Nutrisystem use quality ingredients and recipes recommended by professional dietitians and nutritionists. Noom also makes use of expert services, offering their users personal coaching with a qualified professional.

Effectiveness

Both Noom and Nutrisystem are backed up by research that supports their effectiveness in the short term (up to around 6 months). However, their effectiveness as long-term solutions is disputed. Therefore, I think that neither program offers a sustainable solution for losing weight over longer periods, and users may regain weight after finishing the programs.

Price

Neither Noom nor Nutrisystem are particularly cheap. Noom works out cheaper over a monthly period, but many people only use Nutrisystem for a month or two. After that, Noom users start to pay more. While not totally unusual for weight loss programs, I still believe the price of both services could be better.

Brand reputation

Both services score highly in brand reputation. Nutrisystem has been a leading service for years and has become well-respected in the US for its meals and results. Meanwhile, Noom is a newer service but still respected nonetheless. The app has been featured on numerous high-profile platforms such as CNN, The New York Times, and Good Housekeeping.

FAQs

A Word From Our MD

Final Verdict: Is There a Winner?

So, which program should you choose if you want to lose weight? Noom and Nutrisystem offer different approaches to weight loss, so it’s ultimately up to you to pick the system that you prefer.

Both offer good value for money in the short term but may be ineffective in the long run. If you’re someone who enjoys cooking and doesn’t want a restrictive diet, choose Noom. However, if you don’t want to plan your meals and want to lose weight with an easier method, Nutrisystem may be the better service.

Remember that weight loss plans aren’t the only way to lose weight. If you don’t see Noom and Nutrisystem working for you, you can try probiotics for weight loss or buy weight loss supplements. That said, always consult a professional before engaging in any weight loss methods.