Hey everyone,

What do you think of the Herbalife Shapeworks plan?

Take care,

Ianthe.

A pyramid marketing scam. My neighbour used to do it, it's pseudoscientific quackery.

Pseudoscientific quakery! LOL - interesting. It seems to work for me as long as you don't cheat AT ALL. Hmm - I think I'm going to stick to it to get the weight off... when it comes to keeping the weight off I'll just have to eat healthy I guess.

I went to the site quickly but it was too confusing and I didn't want to waste time, what exactly is it? you take their supplements and pills and food replacements or something ?

Any calorie restrictive diet will work if users don't cheat.

I remember my first dexatrim days back in the early 80's. How does dexatrim work, well back then, you took a pill and ate meals like cottage cheese on cabbage. I am not an expert, but I am guessing it was the small amount of calories the dexatrim plan had me on and not the drugs that got the job done. But the diet could not be sustained by me due to the lack of variety and low calorie load.

Yeah, it is about the low-calorie intake I think - and the fact that it's full of protein. Each shake has 190 calories and that replaces 2 meals a day... you have something healthy for dinner and you've got good calories for the day. I've had my first shake this morning and to be honest am still quite full - I find it surprising how much it fills you up.

The multivitamins are a very good combo (so says my doc) but have the most awful after-taste ever. My herbalife supporter says that you shouldn't have too much of the after-taste if you drink a lot of water like you are supposed to do then it shouldn't be a problem.

I must say that the hardest part I find with being healthy is drinking so much water!

My mother was a Herbalife distributor for a couple of years and that's about how long I was on Herbalife...I lost a few pounds, even with a little cheating here and there. It turned out to be a good diet for people always on the run without too much time to prepare healthy meals, but as for long term it didn't work. Healthy food with portion control has been the best for me, the shakes were great don't get me wrong but I missed eating my meals after a while. It consists of 2 shakes and one meal I usually had my shakes for breakfast and after my evening work out and a good hearty lunch...I will still pick it up and do it once in a while to get back on track with portion control, that's always a struggle!! good luck with the diet.

P.S. put a lemon slice in your water it helps.

I had a good read through their product catalogue, their website, and a good trawl of the web about Herbalife. I believe the majority of their customers are friends or relatives of distributors. The shakes and things may have worked due to simple calorie restriction, but a lot of the allusions to magical health benefits are really pushing it as far as medical advertising is involved.

For instance, you don't get it in their offical literature but the distributor gave my mother a photocopied book of "testimonialss" along the lines of "I used to bruise easily and since starting Herbalife now I'm fine" or "I used to have cancer, started herbalife, and it went into remission!".

From a business point of view, if you want to find out how successfully people aren't doing, enter herbalife into Ebay and look at everyone trying to offload the stuff.

As an aside I am actually sort of a specialist in quackery; I worked in Autism, Motor Neurone Disease, and now Parkinson's and MS. I've seen a large proportion of the health scams out there. Feel free to Google me if you're feeling sceptical of my scepticism

Personally, I always feel that "real" food is better than meal replacements. But damn if it isn't hard to have apetizing, prepared food around whenever you need it.

I suppose if you were often pressed for time and without a kitchen, something like this would be very helpful. Seems to me that Slim-Fast and co. is the same concept, and much more economical though. I don't see anything horribly special about Herbalife from my quick read-throughs.

A coworker let me try it and to be honest, I found that it was nothing more than a very expensive placebo. It didn't hurt, but there were no exceptional benefits.

I also agree with Paul, with regards to it being a distribution pyramid. My coworker and her daughter, and her sister, and her sister-in-law all were involved in selling. I asked to see before/after pics...never saw them.

Now, I'm not saying that HL doesn't work, I just didn't find any evidence of anything genuine.

Yes it is a marketing pyramid scheme, but based on personal experience, it did work for me despite my cheating on the program.

If taken with about 500ml of skim milk, one shake is about 220 cal (2 scoop protein shake, 1 scoop extra protein powder). For weight loss, you're meant to substitute 2 meals a day with it, with whatever you want to eat for your 3rd meal. For weight maintenance, you sub 1 meal a day with the shake, and for weight gain, you take 2 shakes a day plus your 3 regular meals.

It didn't keep me very full per se, but it worked for me to drink one in the morning and one in the evening...I ate a heavy lunch, as well as had a bit of soup or fruit to help me through the day. I was also taking the Cell-U-Loss supplement (to help with water retention) and drank their green tea 3x a day.

Overall, I lost 6kg (13.2lbs) in just under 5 weeks and kept it off for a few months without exercise, until I started my current job (heavy drinking + lots of rich foods) and fell off the wagon!

It was a quick fix thing...good to jumpstart a diet/new health plan I suppose. Now I drink a shake occasionally and exercise almost every day instead...I think the results will last me a lifetime this time around.

(By the way, I think what was key for me - despite the cheating - was not eating after 7pm at night...)

Thanks for that Pei It is definitely working for me. I have lost 5kgs so far and like you I have a heavy lunch sometimes and am not doing very much exercise due to my crazy life at the moment. I am scheduled to start jogging with a friend of mine so I'm looking forward to seeing how much more effective it is with that. I also agree that it's a kick start... I think once I am close to the weight I want to be I will then rather eat healthier and make sure I exercise enough.

Take care,

Ianthe.

Scam, considering you can buy slimfast in most supermarkets for less cost, and it is effectively the same stuff. Works if you dont mind living on chocolate (or insert flavour) flavour milkshake for as long as you want to keep the weight off.

I'm sticking with my 4/3/3 balanced diet.

I starting Herbalife today for weight loss and improved health. I'm using Shapeworks shake mix and multivitamin complex, the herbal concentrate (tea), and the cell activator.

I need to lose almost 100lbs. The reduced calories will obviously cause weight loss, but also the water and vitamins that I don't normally ingest should improve my health. I may add "Niteworks" to help me sleep better and improve my poor circulation. I'll talk to my coach to see what he recommends.

I've tried doing these type of diets in the past on my own. I don't last very long because it's so inconvenient socially when most of your friends and family are "foodies". This will be different because my Herbalife coach is a coworker and friend Most of my coworkers use this product and are looking forward to supporting my efforts. I'm finding that surrounding myself with positive and supportive people creates a fertile environment for success.

I do wish people would stop referring to these people as coaches.

They have seen a presentation on the products, given no formal training in the contents of their products, and are simply no different than joe bloggs. As you state your friend in work is a herbalife salesperson, the reason im familiar with herbalife is because I have a friend who has been a distributor for the last 5 years.

I'm all for positive feelings, but don't buy into the whim, your coworker is no more qualified to comment on your nutritional needs, than myself, or the man you meet on the bus.

They aren't coaches.... they're distributors/salespeople. I bet sooner or later you will also be approached by the coworker to become one, as they will mention that its cheaper to buy in bulk, so if you get involved as a distributor you too can save money on the herbalife products, by ordering things for other people at the same time as your personal order.

What they may not mention at this point is that they get money on your sales, as a down chain. It pays more to recruit you yay! for pyramid schemes.

My neighbour had all his kids on Herbalife supplements and they didn't exactly look the picture of health. Are you doing some exercise as well or just using the supplements?

Scientifically 99% of what Herbalife says is complete BS.

excellent way to lose muscle and deteriorate your overall health. There is no 'way' to lose weight and get healthy but to live healthy.

If you can replace most of your meals with milk shakes, you can eat 5-6 healthy meals a day.

Yup, real, natural foods, in realistic amounts coupled with real drops of sweat at the gym or on the trails = REAL, SUSTAINABLE results.

I like that 80% rule of thumb. Try to make the good choices most of the time, and the treats now and then will have no effect on the big pic., while keeping one sane.

I've lost 13lbs since Saturday! I appreciate all of your comments regarding my earlier post. If anyone has reliable information to substantiate their opinions I would love to hear that as well. Thank you for taking an interest.

To those who encouraged exercise, I walked 20 minutes yesterday and 30 minutes today after lunch. It felt good and improved my focus when I went back to work.

In my experience the first week shows the fasted weight loss, so now it's time to grit my teeth and sike myself up for the long haul.

I think it's a pretty dumb idea to trust anything you can't just buy in a store. Any product that requires hearing a sales pitch to buy it is a scam, unless you either drive it, sleep in it, or boss it around.

A member of my family makes wild and radical claims about the products of his MLM company -- like how they have a monopoly on quality, their snake oil is different, their molecularly-bound oxygenated water is totally not tap water with the same concept as the magic elixir of the 70s, no totally, trust me.

Quality products are available on the open market. If the only way in the whole world to get a particular type of, almost invariably radically overpriced, merchandise is to go through their distributor and hear the pitch, it's not a quality product on the open market.

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