Are weight loss shakes and Herbal Life worth it?

[Winston]

I have a question.

I met a distributor from Herbal Life in the city park here in Taiwan. She wants me to become one of her customers and has invited me to meet with her again. Her company, Herbal Life, is an MLM company (which I'm against) but they offer also weight loss and health products, such as weight loss shakes. She told me that I could lose weight effectively with their products. Their website is:

http://www.herbalife.com

My question is, is it worth it? I researched online and found out that Herbal Life products are expensive and overpriced. You could just get weight loss shakes from the supermarket for much less. So what is so special about their shakes? Are they worth paying more for?

What do you think?

Also, do you think weight loss shakes are a good idea in general? Can they replace meals? Is that a healthy and effective way to lose weight?

Any experiences in this area?

[Winston]

I met with the distributor again today. She was pretty pushy and even used a few shaming tactics on me. I felt pressured for sure. Weight loss is great, but these Herbal Life distributors treat this like some kind of religion.

She wanted me to buy the products now rather than go home and think about it. That's always a red flag, because if something is really worth it, then the sales person would not fear you going home to research or think about it.

She told me that the total cost for the shake, protein drink, and vitamins was 3700NT ($120). Wow that's expensive.

I went to the supermarket later to try to buy a weight loss shake, but they said they didn't have any. I think they are hard to find in Taiwan.

Do you think weight loss shakes are worth it? I could just drink two cups of coffee as a meal replacement or use anything as a meal replacement right?

Here is what Steve Neese told me:

Winston,

No diet is effective long term unless you can stick with it forever. How long can you do a milkshake diet? Short term you'll lose weight but then gain back even more . These short term diets are called yo yo dieting and this makes you even fatter than before due the way it messes with your metabolism.

What seems to work is eating like foreigners do - small portions. And snacks throughout the day if you get hungry. No processed foods , stay low carbs. That being said , some folks just have a slow metabolism and even if they eat right they still end up fat. Again , small portions, no processed or man altered foods. I eat very high fat (steaks and bacon etc) and low carbs (though natural complex carbs like veggies are ok) and I lost weight this way. Nothing else worked for me until trying this. Exercise can help but everyone I observe who lost weight and kept it off did not do much exercise. In fact, I lady at my work is marathon runner and runs during lunch break every day and she even eats right too and she is still fat.

[Winston]

Here is what my dad said about it:

Dear Win,

I would not buy any of them or become one of their customers. There are something like this all over Taiwan, MLM and direct sale products. People will stop you trying to sell you all kind of health or beauty related products. Taiwanese are great suckers for this kind of things. And it is a big business. Just watch the TV you will know what people are crazy about. Sure, those sales people are very friendly and persuasive and sometime aggressive as well. Be aware.

An effective sensible diet is eat consciously and aware of what put in your mouth, chew more, don't over stuff your stomach in one meal, avoid junk foods, sweets, etc. You know all these stuff, you just don't have the will to carry through. Those shakes may taste good for a while, but very soon you will get tired and it costs money. I doubt that will really help.

Yesterday, I thought of one thing. You always leave foods, bread, cakes outside on the table. Especially, now you know how to get to Carrefour, you would buy lots of breads and cakes. Please always put in the frig. They will spoil in a day with this hot temperature. Eating spoiled foods is very bad for health, especially livers.

Take care. Love,
Dad

[Winston]

I also tried the one meal a day method. But my appetite went out of control. I can't seem to control it. Even if I use a meal replacement such as salads, fruit or vegetable juice, I'm still hungry. It's very hard to control.

I felt that there was something fishy about that Herbalife distributor. Still, she said she wanted to be my coach, not saleslady, so my fee would pay for her coaching services as well. She was a good salesperson. But I'm not the kind of guy who will buy something big like that without thinking about it, no matter how good the salesperson is. The greatest salesperson in the world couldn't sell me something I don't need. I explained to her that I'm not like other people and am not quick to buy something big, no matter how good the pitch was, especially when I am pressured to buy it immediately.

Btw, she brought up that a famous Nobel Prize Winner in medicine named Dr. Ignarro endorses Herbalife and even speaks at their seminars. She showed me photos of him at their seminars. Does that mean anything or lend credibility to them?

Here is what one of my health advisors told me:

Hi Winston,

Yes, Herbalife is another MLM scam in my opinion. I mean, what a racket. Did you ever look at the ingredients? Designed to look super impressive by listing maybe 40 natural ingredients... dandelion leaves, raddish stalk, whatever, whatever... 40 different things that MAY or MAY NOT be in there, but even if they are, how many micrograms are you getting and what the hell good does it do you anyway?

It's expensive concoctions that may (and probably do not) do anything at all.

Does it seem logical to CONSUME a drink... to lose weight?! LOL!

Here's my diet. It worked extremely well... I went from 75kg to 68kg in 6 weeks.

1) ONE meal a day, at 5pm
2) NORMAL portion
3) NO snacks in between
4) If you break these rules, you pay some genuinely large money to someone that you don't want to
5) Fruit doesn't count - have a banana or fruit juice during the day if you like.

In my case, I paid Angelica P1,000 ($23) every time I broke the rule. In 6 weeks, I only did that once, because we went out for dinner. Seriously, choose an amount that HURTS you (P1,000 didn't hurt me... it was the principle of the thing. Now I would make it P20,000 or so!) For example, promise to pay Diane $100 every time you break your rules... and have the self-control to stick to it. Controlling money expenditure is a lot easier than controlling eating! It really does work, so long as you are honest with yourself and pay a truly hurtful amount of money to someone else every time you break your rules.

It's simple, free and effective. Worked great for me.

[PaulB]

That's awful advice. Visit the link I linked you in two other threads.

[ClearView]

Have you tried the paleo diet?