My Weight Loss Adventure Week 9: NOOM

It was just before Christmas when I last wrote about my weight.  A lot has happened since then.  First Christmas happened.  Christmas was a lovely day spent with my housemate.  Knowing and understanding the need to social distance my family did not gather for our yearly holiday celebration.  At one level that really bothered me.  I missed the craziness of having a house filled with people.  I missed the unwrapping of family gifts and sharing special holiday foods.  I even missed the confusion of getting everything ready in time.  That type of holiday was not to be this year.

My housemate and I settled on a simple Christmas.  Instead of a dinner, we had high tea.  We got wonderful tea sandwiches and Mushroom Bisque from A Taste of Britain a local British Tea Room, we also purchased Royal Wedding tea which is an herbal tea with lemon and mint.  This came from A Taste of Britain also.  We bought tiny pastries from Fresh Market and some wonderful petite fours from Swiss Colony.  We also purchased from A Taste of Britain a Christmas Pudding with brandy sauce, but there was so much on our plates we left that for New Years Day.  It was great then, especially when ignited by covering it with brandy and setting it aflame.  It was a simple Christmas but one I will long remember.

Not long after Christmas, I received an E-mail from Noom.  Noom is a lifestyle change program designed to help you lose weight and to keep it off.  I had tried them before with some success, but not enough to keep me going.  This time they were offering me 90% off to come back.  The plan had also been lengthened to one year instead of seven months.  After some consideration, I opted to sign up again.

Noom mixes up a recipe for weight loss that uses principles from psychology, sociology, and the latest nutrition information to put you on a path that shouldn’t fail.  No food is barred from the program, but you do have a calorie budget to maintain every day.  You log everything you eat and the program does the counting for you thru the Noom App.  Along the way they give you a coach for personal dietary advice and goal setting and a group to keep you moving forward.

Noom is an active plan.  There are articles to read every day to help you gain a better relationship with food.  Noom helps you not only understand what you eat but also why you eat it.  It helps give you a better understanding of yourself and that is something we all need.  It has been said that “An unexamined life is not worth living.”  This is true and it is something we all need to do in all parts of our lives.  Noom helps you examine the physical part of your life.  It gives you the tools to make the changes you need to make, but the bottom line is you still have to make them.  No one can change you, but you.

Does it work?  That should be your first question.  Well, I started slow but I have now lost two and a half pounds.  I have a long way to go.  The weight isn’t melting off and no one promised that it would, but I am feeling physically well, and I don’t feel as though I am missing anything.  More time will tell of the end result.

One of my Christmas gifts from my two sisters was a pedal machine.  It’s like a stationary bike that you can carry around with you.  Just sit in a chair adjust the resistance level and the machine tracks your time calories burned and distanced traveled.  I like the machine, but I am not using it as much as I should.  Starting tomorrow, Monday, I will use it five days a week for a minimum of ten minutes.  Right now, it aggravates my knees so until my knees get a little stronger ten minutes is enough.  I would like to go to the pool at LA Fitness or The YMCA but until I get the Covid-19 vaccine I think I will steer clear of those places.  That’s it for now.  Stay Healthy Friends.

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