I did this from June to October.
Yes, it’s calorie counting with more foods that have a lot of volume/nutrition for the calories, they’re labelled red/amber and green. I found this v useful to start off with, raised my awareness of how to eat well and feel satisfied, eg most cereals and white bread etc is red.
The main element of Noom IMO is daily info about the science/psychology of weight loss. Lots and lots of useful tips and info, but at times could be very heavy going to read IMO. Tricky language, took about 15-20 mins a day and quizzes, without doing any of the recommended thinking/writing tasks.
The calorie counting took around 15 mins a day too, but the food database is much more limited than My Fitness Pal.
You’re assigned a “coach” who encourages you to set goals: very formulaic. Puts everything back to you.
And a group chat thing, with a “group coach” posting, v few participants post.
You’re required to weigh in daily.
I found the information and food categories good, and lost around 20lbs, but have put around 7lbs back on since stopping. Getting to goal really freaked me out somehow and went back to binge eating.
It’s not designed to help with binge eating issues. The coaches ignored comments/Qs about bingeing. The discipline of logging was useful for me, and eating enough to feel well.
So a mixed review from me!
I preferred it to weight watchers and slimming world, but not to my fitness pal which is what I plan to return to.