Real Life

Checking out Noom

stargrace April 15, 2021 No Comments

Yesterday was my 40th birthday, and I decided it was the perfect day to start making some changes.

I’ve never paid for any sort of weight loss program before in my life, despite the fact that I’ve had to lose weight for many years now, and even successfully lost 60lbs after my son was born – sadly, I gained it all back (and then some) when my daughter was born. Here in the far North of Canada I’m finding things difficult. A head of regular iceberg lettuce is $20 and can go bad in a single afternoon. There might not be any fast food available, but there’s also very little fresh healthy food. Most of what’s affordable is frozen, and filled with carbs.

I wanted to try keto but that’s just not sustainable for me, especially up here. I have other real life factors to take into consideration as well. My son is autistic and requires a LOT of my energy. I have multiple sclerosis and that means I can’t always do a lot. My motor skills have slowed down significantly, I have issues opening jars, picking up utensils, some days even walking is a problem.

That means doing exercises required and suggested by about 99% of the plans I’ve seen out there is simply out of the question for me. I can’t commit. What I CAN commit to, is my diet. What I put into my mouth. Maybe not always with the ‘what’ of it – but at least with the portions of it.

So I’ve decided to try out the 2 week trial of Noom, and see how it goes. The trial is an affordable ‘pay what you can’ plan which I selected $1. I know that most of these types of programs are a very simple food logging read a bunch of not-relative-to-you articles. The thing is I simply don’t have the energy to create an entire program for myself. I KNOW I can lose weight, I’ve done it before, but circumstances have changed so much since that time, and what I can dedicate energy on has changed.

What I’m hoping is that the psychological part of their program works to keep me mindful throughout the day – almost every day (I am hoping). I’m hoping their motivation works. Since I have never paid for a program before I have a LOT of caution going into it. If I continue with it, their ‘plan’ is roughly $220 for 8 months. That’s not bad – if it works for me. It certainly won’t work for everyone. Not every plan out there is made for every person and if it was we’d all be healthier and no one would be browsing through 101 different weight loss plans at 1am on a Thursday.

I did purchase some body weight equipment to help me with some strength training. Mostly for my fingers, arms, legs. MS affects my fingers to the point where some days they just sort of rest in a claw formation and I can’t even hold a cup of coffee. I’ve bought some stress ball type things, and those tension bands you might have seen before. They should arrive in a few days, and while right now things like exercise bikes are too high impact for me, maybe as I get healthier they’re something I can look to. Walking around the neighbourhood is also not an option here where we live, but again I’m going to focus on my diet and portions more than exercise, for now.

Let’s see how this goes.

• -1.5lbs from previous day