Jenny Craig and Noom are both commercial weight loss programs that focus on developing healthy habits and losing weight in a sustainable way. Jenny Craig is often compared to Weight Watchers, but here in this comparison of Noom Vs. Jenny Craig, we see how the popular weight loss program stands up against Noom’s relatively new app-based approach.
Noom
Pros
- App-based with no premade food to buy
- Science-back program
- Focuses on behavioral management for weight loss
- Daily lessons to keep you motivated
- Very affordable if you can pay for a full year upfront
- Good for self-motivated people
Cons
- Expensive if paid by the month
- No premade meals, so you have to shop and cook
- Daily weight checks may trigger those with a history of disordered eating
- No in-person support
Jenny Craig
Pros
- Complete system with premade foods
- Online and in-person support is available
- A long history of success
- Less grocery shopping and cooking
Cons
- Must be able to afford the food to go with the program
- Expensive
- Challenging to learn the cooking and shopping skills needed for sustained weight loss
Weight Loss Programs
Noom and Jenny Craig offer different styles of weight loss programs – one being a complete plan with prepackaged meals and the other being a weight loss app that’s science-backed and behavioral-focused.
Weight Loss with the Jenny Craig Program
Jenny Craig is a complete weight loss program that offers a structured dietary plan, complete with prepared meals and snacks that are delivered to your door. If you want a weight loss program to remove the burden of grocery shopping and cooking while you focus on losing weight and getting healthier, they are is one of the best weight loss programs around.
Jenny Craig offers meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus snacks. These meals are low-calorie and nutritionally designed to support sustainable weight loss. The number of meals you receive per day depends on the plan chosen.
When you sign up, you also get one-on-one coaching with the Max Up Weight Loss Plan. In addition to supplying food for weight loss, Jenny Craig’s program is science-backed and includes elements of intermittent fasting to speed up weight loss.
Noom Weight Loss Program
The basis of the Noom diet is quite different from what Jenny Craig offers. Noom is an app-based weight loss program that doesn’t offer prepared meals or strict diets. Instead, Noom aims to help each person understand the behaviors that can lead to weight gain, along with a structured diet approach that helps to develop healthy eating habits.
With Noom, you are expected to track calories and other health metrics, but you choose the food. Noom does suggest a daily caloric intake for optimal weight loss, but this is individualized based on your weight loss goals, medical history, gender, and other details.
One notable feature of Noom is they never suggest a daily calorie intake that is super low, no matter what your weight loss goals are.
Noom’s diet plans are structured off of a color coding system for the foods. The most calorie-dense foods are considered red foods. Many red foods are also somewhat lacking in nutrition, so these should be limited to no more than 25% (at max) of your daily intake.
Foods to enjoy in moderation are considered yellow foods. These are things like healthy fats and lean proteins. They’re still calorie dense, but they offer nutritional value that makes up for it. Then there are green foods. These foods offer the perfect partnership of low-calorie and high-nutritional value.
By learning to identify healthy foods, problem foods, and your personal behaviors that lead to weight gain, you’re able to make positive diet changes and achieve sustainable weight loss.
Weight Loss Programs Winner
Honestly, comparing Noom vs. Jenny Craig is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. They’re both weight loss programs, but the approach is so different. Jenny Craig wins here because it offers a complete weight loss plan, including a diet plan and food to go along with it.
Jenny Craig is great for those who like a structured diet plan, while Noom is best suited for those who want more control and also want to address the emotional factors of weight gain.
Apps
Apps are a key component of anything that has to do with fitness and weight loss today. They make it easy to stay motivated and track your progress no matter where you are. Noom is completely app-based, while Jenny Craig has a foot in both worlds.
The Noom App
The Noom program is entirely based around its app, so Noom users need a smartphone, or at the very least a tablet, to really get their money’s worth from the program. That said, Noom offers one of the most well-thought-out and well-designed apps for weight loss that we’ve seen.
With the Noom app, you can connect with other Noom users for support and camaraderie, get in touch with your coach, create custom meal plans, and track food intake, exercise, and other key health metrics.
The Noom app also includes a weekly shopping list and food choices for each color category. The Noom app is also where you’ll connect to the behavioral science daily lessons.
The Jenny Craig App
The Jenny Graig App features many of the same characteristics of similar complete weight loss plans, such as Weight Watchers. You can use the App for fitness and food tracking to log your weight and keep track of your progress as you move toward your goal weight,
There are also recipes, inspiration, and access to support when you need it. You can even text a Jenny Craig consultant during those times when you need extra support.
Apps Winner
The Noom App wins for all the features it offers to help you lose weight, maintain weight loss, and develop healthy eating habits. Plus, Noom encourages you to track key health metrics, such as blood pressure and blood sugar.
Noom also wins here because all the features of its app are available for one base price, whereas Jenny Craig reserves some features for members of its Max Up Weight Loss Plan.
Community Support
Some popular weight loss programs, such as Weight Watchers, really put an emphasis on community support during the weight loss journey. This isn’t a review of Weight Watchers, but neither Noom nor Jenny Craig really match up to that level of connection if that’s the type of support you’re looking for.
Noom Support
The Noom app offers access to the larger Noom community. The community is organized into smaller groups, where you have a better chance of forming friendships and teaming up with accountability partners. When you sign up for Noom, you’ll also have regular check-ins with your Noom coach.
On the surface, the Noom app sounds great, especially for people who want the safety net of a weight loss support network as they move toward reaching their goal weight but also don’t want the commitment of meeting at support groups or constant check-ins. However, some Noom reviews have mentioned that the community is rather small, and the groups are not that active. Also, their Noom coach just checked in once or twice a week, but the level of support was subpar.
Jenny Craig Support
The Jenny Craig program offers a support community, but it’s minimal for customers that aren’t signed up for the Max Up Weight Loss Plan. Customers can log into the support network, connect with others, participate in challenges, and seek out in-person support groups. However, when it comes to personal coaching, that service is only offered to members of Jenny Craig’s premium program.
Community Support Winner
It’s amazing how important a support network is when you want to lose weight. Both Noom and Jenny Craig offer support networks, with each having its pros and cons. Jenny Craig wins here because its support network seems more active, and while you have to sign up for the premium Jenny Craig program to have access to personal coaching, this feature does seem more beneficial and interactive than what’s offered by Noom.
Menu & Food
Noom Food
Noom doesn’t offer any prepackaged foods, and they mostly put control into your hands when it comes to how you’ll fuel your body each day. There is a diet plan and calorie tracking with Noom, but you eat according to color-coded food groups and learn portion control and meal planning skills along the way.
Noom categorizes food as being either red, yellow, or green foods. Red foods are the ones that are calorically dense and not optimal when it comes to nutrition. Yellow is the moderation food group, and green is the food with the highest nutrition and fewer calories. With Noom, you can still eat your favorite foods, but the focus is really on portion control and nutritional quality.
Jenny Craig Food
The Jenny Craig program features pre-made meals, offering a spectrum of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. The meal delivery program is included in the price of the membership, and how many meals you receive depends on the level of membership you choose. For example, the Essential Meal Plan is a middle and more popular option, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner but no snacks or extras.
The downside to Jenny Craig food is that the meal plans feature all prepackaged foods, which are processed, include additives and preservatives, and are sometimes on the high side for sodium intake.
Jenny Craig states that all of their meal plans offer no more than 2.000 mg of sodium per day, but that’s cutting it pretty close to the upper suggested limit of sodium intake. Jenny Craig meals and meal replacements might not be the best option if you have preexisting health conditions and need to limit sodium.
Menu & Food Winner
Jenny Craig wins this category, but it really comes down to what you want out of a weight loss plan. The Jenny Craig plan features premade meals, which makes food logging and meal planning super easy. It’s one less stressor you need to worry about. However, the nutritional quality of the prepackaged foods doesn’t even come close to the whole foods you’d prepare on your own with Noom. In this category, it really is a toss-up over convenience and nutritional quality.
Pricing
Noom
MONTHS | PRICE PER PLAN |
1 | $60 |
2 | $119 |
3 | $149 |
4 | $159 |
5 | $164 |
6 | $169 |
7 | $174 |
8 | $179 |
9 | $185 |
10 | $189 |
11 | $195 |
12 | $199 |
Jenny Craig
MEAL PLAN | SERVING PER WEEK | COST PER DAY |
Weight Loss Plans | 35 | $28.99 |
Essential Meal Plan (Breakfasts - Lunches - Dinners) | 21 | $21.99 |
Simple Meal Plan | 14 | $13.99 |
Price can be one of the deciding factors in choosing a subscription weight loss program like Noom or Jenny Craig. While your health and happiness are definitely worth the investment, the price also has to fit into your budget.
Noom Costs
Noom is a subscription program with a single rate – meaning there aren’t any tiers of basic or premium memberships. A single month of Noom isn’t cheap, but the price discount you get for signing up for a longer membership averages the costs out so that Noom ends up not being such a bad deal – if you can afford to pay for a full year in one shot.
A single month of Noom costs $70 with an auto-renewal plan. This might be an option if you just have a few pounds to lose or you completed the free trial but still aren’t sure if you want to invest in Noom long-term. $70 for a program and app to lose weight, but with no food or supplements included, it feels a little steep.
However, you can choose how frequently your subscription auto-renews, and for each additional month you add, there’s a cost saving. If you sign up and pay for two months at once, the cost is about $65 per month. With a six-month auto-renewal, the cost averages out to just under $30 per month. If you’re able to pay $209 for the annual renewal, the cost is a little over $17 per month – which is a great price for everything you get.
Jenny Craig Costs
At the forefront of the Jenny Craig system is the food. The prepared meals make it easy to lose weight without worrying about what you’ll have for lunch at work or how you’ll prepare a meal that fits within your diet on those busy nights. However, these perks come with a cost.
Jenny Craig offers four plans. The Basic plan is simply seven breakfast and seven lunch meals. There aren’t a lot of “bones” to this plan, but the cost is the cheapest, averaging about $14 per day, plus shipping. For two meals a day, this doesn’t sound bad, but we’re also talking about breakfast and lunch, which are typically the cheapest meals of the day.
The Essential meal plan offers seven each of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus free shipping. The cost of this plan is about $22 per day.
The Max Up plan features the same as the Essential plan, plus seven snacks/desserts and recharge bars. This plan also includes a 12-week membership plus one on one coaching. The Max Up plan is about $29 per day. There’s also a Max Up + Fresh plan that features an additional seven Fresh meals. This plan is about $27 per day.
Pricing Winner
When you consider that you don’t have to do any grocery shopping with Jenny Craig, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal, but the fact is that the one-time cost of Jenny Craig is rather high and can feel like a hit to the pocketbook. It’s really only worth it if you’re diligent about eating only Jenny Craig meals. Noom, however, offers all of its features to every member, and if you can pay for a full year at once, the Noom app is a minimal investment for your health.
Reviews & Results
Noom
Jenny Craig
The true test of any weight loss journey is whether or not the weight loss and health changes are sustainable. Both Jenny Craig and Noom have average to above-average ratings in this department.
Noom
Noom reviews average between 3.8 and 4.3 stars, depending on where you look. Noom’s approach to behavioral science and allowing people to have more control over their food lends itself well to a successful weight loss journey. People who follow Noom have lost a considerable amount of body weight and have managed to keep it off.
A glance at the Noom site shows us inspiring stories about couples who have lost weight together and completely transformed their lives, along with stories like that of Brandy, who lost and kept off 100 lbs after a lifetime of struggling with her relationship with food.
Jenny Craig
Jenny Craig is thought to be one of the best systems for losing weight, but the reviews aren’t all as stellar as you might think. While so many people have had success with Jenny Craig, others claim that maintaining the weight was difficult once off the program and were no longer relying on the premade meals.
Reviews & Results Winner
Jenny Craig has a long history of helping people shed body weight, but Noom offers something different for long-term diet success that others like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, with their point system, miss out on. What Noom does differently is they make you dig deep into the roots of why you’ve gained body weight, why it’s so difficult to take it off, and why yo-yo dieting happens so frequently, and Noom helps you develop healthy habits for sustained weight maintenance.
Winner
Noom
Noom is our overall winner. We like the Noom approach that teaches their users to balance healthy habits with lifestyle changes and the behavioral science that backs it all up. Noom is also the more affordable diet program, and you learn how to make your own meals while mastering portion control and prioritizing healthy foods.
At the end of the day, Noom and Jenny Craig are so different in design that it really depends on the type of structure and convenience you’re looking for.
Choose Noom if you:
- Want to discover the “why” behind weight gain and unhealthy habits
- Don’t want premade food but prefer to prepare your own
- Are you tired of playing the yo-yo weight loss game and want a sustainable approach
- Can afford to pay for an annual membership for the best savings
- Don’t need frequent contact with a large support community
Choose Jenny Craig if you:
- Want the guesswork of grocery shopping and meal prep taken out of the equation
- Like a more structured program
- Require more community support and coaching to stay motivated
- Don’t have any pre-existing medical condition that requires you to eat non-processed, low-sodium foods
- Can afford the long-term costs of following the program