Looking to shed some of those holiday pounds? Your first thought might be to join a weight-loss program. There are plenty out there, but the best known is arguably Weight Watchers (WW).
If you’re into your tech, you can even use a Weight Watchers app. However, these days there are a growing number of rivals vying for Weight Watchers’ crown as the ultimate calorie-counting app. Two stand-out options are Noom and MyFitnessPal.
So, does the secret to shedding the pounds (and keeping them off) really lie in your smartphone?
Let’s take a greater look at how Noom and MyFitnessPal shape up.
What is MyFitnessPal?

One tried-and-true way to lose weight is by recording everything you eat to make sure you consume fewer daily calories than usual.
For this purpose, MyFitnessPal enables you to log your eating habits quickly and easily by picking out food from the app’s database. You can also add foods to this database, not to mention log exercises — such as jogging, swimming, and dancing — you undertake to burn calories.
What is Noom?

To a large extent, Noom is — like MyFitnessPal — a calorie-tracking app. You can use it to log foods and physical activity and get an overview of which nutrients you are consuming (and in what amounts).
Being a Noom subscriber can feel akin to following a weight-loss program. That’s because Noom will proactively advise you on various matters — from using the app to figuring out why you aren’t eating as you should be.
What do MyFitnessPal and Noom have in common?
Do you just want an app to help you track how many calories you consume and how many you burn? Then you would be well-served by MyFitnessPal or Noom.
However, both apps also come with much deeper functionality. After all, they have been developed by experts in fitness and nutrition.
Your main goal right now might be just to cut down on calories to get slimmer — but ‘slim’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘healthy’. How many of the right nutrients are you also putting into your body?
It’s also easy to overestimate how much food you can eat ‘guilt-free’ as a result of physical exercise. Your morning run might not burn quite as many calories as you think. The right app can help you to discern what is really going on.
Tracking calories and nutrients
When you sign up with either MyFitnessPal or Noom, the app will calculate an appropriate calorie goal for you to aim for each day.
Your calorie intake must be high enough to keep your body functioning as it should. However, if you are trying to lose weight, there’s a limit to the daily calories you should be consuming.
Even if you want to gain weight, going over a particular calorie consumption threshold could negatively affect your health. So, with its calculation, the app will aim to strike just the right balance.
The app will also account for various nutrients and calculate how much of each you should seek to get each day. Here’s how MyFitnessPal compares the recommended nutrient levels to what the user has actually consumed…

Many of us already know how important it is to keep an eye on what we eat. However, it can be tricky in our busy, hectic lives to find time to note the individual amounts of calories, protein, fiber, and so forth in everything we eat.
Thankfully, you don't have to write any of it down. MyFitnessPal and Noom have their own databases where nutritional values for many popular food items are already recorded. You might not even have to manually search those databases…
Picture the scene: you wake up one morning and decide to swim at your local gym. You could even choose a swimming program like Swim & Slim: 90-Day Challenge. This whop offers one-on-one coaching to help you lose weight and improve your fitness.

As you prepare for your morning swim, you head to the cupboard and pull out a box of morning Oreo O's cereal to energise you. While eating, you log it in either the MyFitnessPal or Noom app using its in-built barcode scanner!
With this nifty little tool, your smartphone can scan the barcode on the cereal box. In the Noom app, it will show up like this:

That ‘GREEN’ tag in the top-left corner shows that the food either is low in calorie density or has a high concentration of healthy nutrients (if not both).
As green foods — e.g. vegetables and whole grains — are good at keeping you fuller for longer, they should comprise a large part of your diet.
In contrast, orange foods — like chocolate and red meats — have few healthy nutrients and so should be consumed sparingly. Yellow foods are in the middle on the calorie density scale. Nonetheless, Noom recommends you eat green, yellow, and orange foods in sensible proportions rather than cut any out entirely.
Recording physical exercise
Imagine you’ve just been walking for ten minutes at a brisk pace of 3.5 miles per hour (mph). You can record this in the ‘Log Food’ section of the MyFitnessPal app.
While there, go down to the ‘Exercise’ section and tap ‘ADD EXERCISE’. Then, tap ‘Cardio’. You will be able to locate ‘Walking, 3.5 mph, brisk pace’ in the database of exercises (on the ‘All Exercises’ or ‘History’ tab).

So, tap this ‘Walking…’ entry before specifying how many minutes you spent walking and when you started doing it. MFP will calculate the number of calories burned before you tap the ✔️ to finalize logging the exercise.

However, you can go even further than this. By integrating MyFitnessPal or Noom with other apps and devices, you can collate a wealth of accurate data about your physical activity.
When installed on a smartphone, MyFitnessPal can access its pedometer to track steps. On the main screen, find the ‘Steps’ box (pictured below) and tap it.

You will then be prompted to choose a step-counting device. Your smartphone’s built-in motion processor should be the first option listed, but what if you have a fitness band as well? In that case, tap ‘Add a device’ to see if your particular wearable is among those possible to integrate with the MFP app.
When connecting the app to a step-counting device, you can set a ‘Daily Step Goal’, e.g. 10,000, within the app. Once you’ve finished, the dashboard should look something like this:

Yes, the app can use the steps data to give you a calorie ‘discount’ letting you eat slightly more than usual that day without guilt.
Setting weekly goals
If you are currently in bad shape, you might feel daunted. For this reason, you should aim to break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks.
In either app, you can set a goal to work toward for the week. On the Noom dashboard, tap ‘Weekly Commitment’. You will be given some suggestions for your weekly goal but could also simply write your own.

It’s similar with MyFitnessPal. See the ‘Choose your next habit’ box and tap it to produce a list of options for your weekly goal.

Unlike Noom, you can't create your own by tapping ‘None of these’. Taking that route will just lead you to this screen…

At the time of writing, MyFitnessPal’s habit tracking function is still at the beta stage. On the plus side, you could potentially shape the feature’s development by providing feedback.
Noom vs MyFitnessPal: Key differences
Food suggestions
Let’s return to the earlier-mentioned hypothetical situation of the keen swimmer. You’ve just spent an hour swimming at your local gym and you're famished.
To get ideas for what to eat, you could open your calorie tracker app and see which nutritious, filling meals it recommends.
On the MyFitnessPal smartphone app, you would tap ‘More’ and then ‘Recipe Discovery’. The recipes featured here are sorted into categories, such as ‘Post-Workout’ and ‘High Protein’.

Similarly, the Success kit tab on the Noom app provides a gateway to recipes for more than 3,000 healthy meals.

These recipes aren’t categorised as clearly as those on MyFitnessPal. However, you can still search the Noom recipes by meal type, calories per serving, and dietary preferences — such as ‘vegan’, ‘dairy-free’, and ‘low-carb’.
Workout ideas
Many fitness gurus will advise you to take up physical activities you know you will enjoy. The more you enjoy an activity, the likelier you are to keep returning to it. To prevent boredom from setting in, however, you might need to mix things up.
That’s where workout ideas suggested in the Noom and MyFitnessPal apps come in very useful. Want a six-pack? This ‘Stronger Arms & Abs’ class (in the Noom Move part of the Success kit) could be of interest.

You could also try this ‘6-Minute Core with Katie Crewe’ class, one of more than 85 ‘Workout Routines’ taught on MyFitnessPal.

Keep in mind that many of those classes are only available on MFP’s Premium tier. Those you take on Noom will be covered by a subscription charge (unless you are on a free trial).
Ongoing support
After registering your Noom the , you will be guided through a series of mini-courses. Many of these will introduce you to core functionality of the app, while others will delve into the motivations behind your diet choices.
In the meantime, trying to get to grips with Noom’s intricate, even cumbersome interface can be bewildering. One saving grace is the AI-powered Your Team, which will occasionally offer tips unprompted (and can be summoned to answer queries whenever you want).
When you log into the app for the first time on a new day, look in the top-right corner for the speech bubble symbol. This links to your Noom inbox — and if you’ve got a new message there, you’ll see a ‘1’, like in the screenshot below.

Expect Your Team to chip in from time to time with congratulations on recent achievements and some pointers on what to do next.

As is clear above, you can select from various pre-prepared questions if any of them happen to match what is on your mind.
If they don’t, rest assured you can type in your own custom message and receive an AI-generated response. For example, thinking of having protein-boosted granola cereal for breakfast? Run the idea past the Noom AI chatbot Welli for some general health advice.

As the app indicates, AI tools can be prone to error and bias and can’t substitute medical or legal advice. By typing “message coach” in the Your Team chat, you can connect to a human Noom coach as soon as they are available.
MyFitnessPal lacks a strong AI component. You can, though, reach out to other MFP users by tapping ‘More’ and then the largely self-explanatory ‘Community’.
Which is more user-friendly?
Getting started with MyFitnessPal
To register an account with MyFitnessPal, you can use its website or iOS, iPadOS, or Android app.
It could be best to register through an app if you like the idea of using your Apple ID or Google account to log into MyFitnessPal. Here’s what the initial signup screen looks like on the iPad version of the MyFitnessPal app:

Let’s also see how to register an account on their website. On the homepage, click ‘START TODAY’. Then, on the next screen (pictured below), click ‘CONTINUE’.

After being asked to give your first name, you’ll need to select up to three goals from the lengthy list provided. As explained below, you must include one “weight goal”.

Let’s assume you see yourself as overly skinny and want to gain weight. More specifically, you might be keen to sculpt your physique into something visibly more muscular.
In this scenario, you could select ‘Gain weight’, ‘Gain muscle’, and ‘Modify my diet’. (Your attempts at building muscle could come to little if you fail to significantly up your protein intake.)
After clicking ‘NEXT’, you will be hit with further questions probing exactly why you made the above selections. For example, has your healthcare provider advised you to gain weight?

If you are also seeking to build muscle, you could be picky about what kind of muscular look you are going for. Are you hankering for a ‘toned’ look, or something closer to Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding prime?
Either way, you can receive relevant guidance right here on Whop. You can join the RiseUp Muscle Gaining program offering beginner-friendly training and nutrition plans. This whop’s owner, Nicolas Berube, was inspired to develop the RiseUp program after gaining more than 20 pounds of muscle in just two years.

Back to the MyFitnessPal signup process. At some point, MyFitnessPal will ask about your baseline activity level. This is how physically active you tend to be in your day-to-day life (excluding workouts, as MFP will count those separately). Your current job could be a major influence here.

After providing a number of other personal details, including your age, height, and current weight, you will soon be ready to complete your MyFitnessPal registration.
Using Noom
Noom — unlike MyFitnessPal — lacks a permanent free tier. You can sample Noom with a 7-day trial but to start it you will still need to provide payment details. The trial is designed to roll over automatically into a paid subscription as the initial 7-day period elapses.
So to get started with Noom, install and load the smartphone app before tapping ‘Get started’.
As you can see below, the iPhone app lets you input your email address and create a password. Alternatively, you can use an Apple ID or Facebook account to streamline the Noom signup process.

You will soon be asked to complete an initial quiz. The questions will cover subjects including…
- Your weight loss goal. How many pounds do you want to lose, or would you prefer to just maintain your current weight and get fit?
- Out of ‘male’, ‘female’, and ‘intersex’, which sex best describes you?
- The gender you identify with. The options include ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘non-binary’, and ‘self identify’.
- Your age, height, and current weight. You can also mention the ideal weight you are aiming to reach and by which specific occasion (if any), e.g. a vacation or wedding.
- Whether you are at risk of testosterone deficiency, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, or depression.
- Whether you have an active diagnosis of an eating disorder, such as bulimia or anorexia.
- Whether you want your Noom plan to focus on nutrition, physical activity, building good habits, or two or all three of these goals.
- The kind of pace you would prefer to progress at, e.g. as fast as possible or ‘slow and steady’.
Eventually, Noom will calculate how long it will take you to achieve your target weight. You will also be presented with the orange ‘Try for free’ button pictured below. Tap this (and the ‘Start Your Quiz’ button on the following screen) to launch yourself into a Behavioral Profile Quiz.

After all, your behavior and habits are bound to be major factors in how soon you can realize your weight loss ambitions.
This new quiz uses a slider system enabling you to precisely indicate how much you agree (or disagree) with various statements. Here are just some subjects the quiz will cover…
- Whether achieving your weight goal is important for progress in other aspects of your life.
- Whether you would love your body more if you did achieve your target weight.
- Any external barriers to your weight-shifting efforts, or whether the obstacles are more psychological, e.g. a lack of self-confidence.
- How motivated you feel when it comes to working toward your weight goal.
Your answers will help Noom to help you. You will have a few further quizzes to complete, too — enabling Noom to also take account of your current weight, eating habits, and nutritional profile.
You’ll eventually reach this screen, with Noom challenging you to set your first goal. Tap the orange ‘Set Your First Goal’ button.

With all this information you are providing, you are helping Noom to put together a plan personalized to your needs. This stage is therefore going to feel a lot like getting initiated with a new personal trainer or nutritional coach.
MyFitnessPal vs Noom: A closer look
Best for calorie-counting novices: MyFitnessPal
Key to the appeal of MyFitnessPal is its immediacy. As established earlier in this article, you do have to answer quite a few questions before creating your account. However, once you have that account, there’s no lengthy tutorial you are expected to go through before you start recording your daily habits.
In fact, as you land on the app’s dashboard for the first time, you should be able to decipher pretty quickly how to log food. Just start by tapping — ahem — ‘Log Food’ on the bottom navigation panel…

Having, say, a bag of Reese’s minis peanut butter cups as a snack? After tapping ‘Log Food’ in the MFP mobile app, you’ll see four different sections where you can record food consumption: ‘Breakfast’, ‘Lunch’, ‘Dinner’, and ‘Snacks’.
Scroll down to the ‘Snacks’ part. Like the other three sections, it will have a blue ‘ADD FOOD’ link.

Tapping it will lead you to several options. Since the Reese’s bag will have a barcode, tap ‘Scan a Barcode’. Now bring the bag’s barcode into the viewfinder of your mobile device’s rear camera.
If the device scans the barcode correctly, the app should fetch nutritional data about this food. You can then simply tap the ✔️ symbol in the top-right corner of the screen to log the food as a snack.
Another big plus point of MyFitnessPal is its permanent free tier. For $79.99 a year or $19.99 a month, you could upgrade to the Premium package — but even this comes with a 1-month free trial.
Best for analyzing food intake: Noom
Imagine you are out and about in town and start feeling hungry. If you don’t have any snacks on you, so you duck into the shop and buy something easy like a Tony’s Chocolonely bar.
Now you sit down on a bench somewhere nearby to tuck into your chocolate. As you nibble, you fish your smartphone out of your pocket and load the MyFitnessPal app. Here’s what you see when you use the iPhone app to scan the barcode of a milk chocolate Chocolonely bar:

The app tells you the bar contains 273 calories, 26g of carbs, 17g of fat, and 3.9g of protein. However, the real story of the food’s nutritional value is told in the percentages.
This one bar would contribute a mammoth 56% of the fat amount this particular user should be consuming on a daily basis. In sharp contrast, the chocolate would bring them a mere 6% of the daily protein intake they ought to be aiming for.
This is all still useful stuff to know, but you can get a lot more detail if you scan with the Noom app instead. To do that, scroll to the bottom of its main interface, where you see ‘Track More Habits’.

Tap ‘Track More Habits’ and then ‘Meals’. You’ll reach a screen asking what time of day it is. Eating your Chocolonely bar in the afternoon? The obvious option to tap next is ‘Afternoon Snack’.
After tapping ‘Afternoon Snack’, you can search for that Chocolonely bar in a database. You only have to type ‘Chocolonely’ in the search field to see the milk chocolate version at the top of the results! (Nonetheless, you could just use the app’s in-built barcode scanner instead, if you would prefer.)
Noom classes this food as Orange on the scale of how well it will fill you up. Once you’ve finished logging the food, tap ‘View Analysis’ on the Log meals screen. Now scroll down the Analytics screen to see how many remaining Orange calories you are entitled to today.

The message is clear — you don’t have to entirely deprive yourself of ‘naughty’ foods. They can still contribute to a healthy diet. You can keep yourself satiated for longer by striking the right balance of Green, Yellow, and Orange foods — and Noom encourages you to do that.
Best for resolving persistent weight problems: Noom
The Noom calorie-counting app is offered under the brand of Noom Weight, an acclaimed weight-loss program designed by psychologists.
These mental health professionals aim to help users discern why they eat what they eat. When you trace and resolve the underlying psychological issues driving your unhelpful food consumption habits, you can anticipate lasting beneficial results.
When starting a Noom Weight subscription, you can decide the length of the term (and thus when the plan is set to be automatically renewed). The more regularly this auto-renewal kicks in, the lower the plan’s cost per month. The cost can range from $70 for a monthly auto-renewing plan to $209 for an annual auto-renewing plan.
Best for on-the-go use: MyFitnessPal
There’s a saying that “abs are made in the kitchen”. Indeed, when striving to shift weight, it makes sense to assess your diet before anything else. In theory at least, reducing your calorie intake is simpler and easier than putting in physical exercise.
Still, you can shed fat at an appreciably quicker rate when you do throw some strenuous physical activity into the mix. The only problem here is that, when you do exercise like this, you are likely to do it well away from home.
Fancy a jog? You will inevitably have a lot more room for one in the local park vs your living room. What if swimming is your thing? Your laps could be far longer in a ‘proper’ swimming pool than an inflatable one occupying your backyard.
What a relief, then, that you can even install a MyFitnessPal app on a smartwatch. This device can track your physical exertions and automatically send this data to the app, saving you valuable time.
So, which is best — MyFitnessPal or Noom?
Are you a complete beginner to calorie-counting apps? If so, you could find Noom’s interface somewhat confusing. There is so much packed into Noom that you could keep struggling to remember where particular features are when you need them.
In comparison, the layout of MyFitnessPal is more logical, making it easier to get around even when time is tight. Where MFP does slightly fall down is in the depth of features it offers. You are unlikely to come across quite the same level of tuition and one-on-one assistance you would with Noom.
Noom dives more into the psychology behind your eating habits, helping you to ascertain with precision why they took root. This, in turn, enables you to tackle the underlying causes — meaning the results you get with Noom are likelier to last.
All in all, then, MyFitnessPal could be the better choice if you want to ease yourself gently into the calorie-counting game. What if you’ve already been in it for quite a while but hit a stubborn plateau in your weight-loss mission? Noom might turn out to warrant the extra investment of time and money it would demand from you.
Start getting into shape today with Whop
Of course, other calorie-tracking apps abound. However, even if you compare Weight Watchers vs Lifesum vs Noom vs MyFitnessPal, the most important thing is developing a healthy long-term relationship with food.
The data-heavy focus of an app can only do so much to help you there. Fortunately, Whop hosts online fitness communities where like-minded individuals can tell you from their own experiences what works and what doesn’t.
Once you’re all up and running on the platform, you can explore it to find courses to study and resources to download. Then there are the opportunities to receive custom coaching on nutritional matters.
Join Whop today to explore fitness whops that will help you get in the best shape of your life this year.