Shaklee 180 Review

A few months ago I was asked if I'd be interested in doing a review of a Shaklee weight management program.  I'm not really into the scene for a couple of reasons.  First, I watched my mom struggle with different diets for most of my childhood and have an overall negative outlook when it comes to weight management programs.  Second, I don't have any weight issues that would send me in pursuit of help for dropping weight.  My husband, however, is a different story.  For the past two years he's been trying to lose weight.  He's had some success with other weight management and exercise programs, but seems to hit a point where he hits a wall and his success is halted.  It's frustrating for him and it's frustrating to watch.  So I asked my husband if he'd like to give Shaklee 180 a try and give me his thoughts on the program.  He was up for it.  The Shaklee 180 program is supposed to help you maintain muscle while losing fat.

Starting back in April,  Bryan began drinking the Shaklee smoothies and eating their meal in a bar and snack bars.  The kit also included an energizing tea and metabolic supplement.  He found that he was getting headaches when he took the metabolic supplement, so he had to discontinue using them.  He didn't care for the tea (hot or cold) at all so he didn't use that either.

The Shaklee 180 kit includes a "Plan for Success" to help you take your shape in a whole new direction.  The meal plan is based on a 1200 calorie diet, but you can use the Shaklee 180 app to create a personalized nutrition plan.  The app is similar to the My Fitness Pal app that my husband has been using for about a year and a half.  It helps you keep track of the calories you've consumed and I think that helps him feel like he needs to stay accountable for what he's consuming.

So back to the plan for success.  The program makes this really simple.  It has each meal, plus snacks laid out for you in an easy to understand format.  A breakfast with Shaklee 180 is a serving of fresh fruit, an energizing smoothie and 1 metabolic boost supplement.  To spice things up a bit you can add your fruit to the smoothie.  The mobile app offers some fruit smoothie recipes to get those creative juices flowing.  Lunch is either a meal-in-a-Bar or a smoothie with a metabolic boost supplement.  Of course, the program is flexible enough that if you want to swap out dinner for lunch and have a meal-in-a-bar or smoothie for dinner you can do that with this program and be perfectly fine.  When it comes to snacks you can choose from the energizing tea or a snack bar along with 1-2 servings of guilt-free foods.  The plan for success insert even offers some suggestions of guilt free foods that make great snacks like raw carrots or broccoli and pickles or cucumbers.  Dinner consists of a healthy meal and a metabolic boost.  The guide offers you a breakdown of what a healthy meal looks like.

With any weight management plan that involves using specific program food, the first thing you're probably wondering about is the food, right?  No one wants to start out a weight loss program and find out that the food is horrible and leaves you feeling hungry all of the time.  That's just a recipe for disaster.  So I asked Bryan to be perfectly honest about the food and tell me what he thought about it.

Bryan is definitely a fan of the energizing smoothie. He enjoys the taste of them and describes them as  thick, filling and lasting the entire morning.  Other shakes he has used in the past didn't have as much substance to them and left him feeling hungry within two hours.  He says the Shaklee shakes are like a meal by comparison.  Bryan chose the chocolate shakes for the kit and he thought they tasted pretty good.  He said a lot of other chocolate protein shakes are chocolate colored but they don't really taste like they have chocolate flavoring.  With the shaklee shake he said if it didn't have the gritty powder consistency to it, you might actually think you're drinking a chocolate milk shake.  He said the shakes mix up well.  Initially he was mixing the shakes with just a spoon and it wasn't mixing up as well and as quickly as he would have liked so we got a little single-serve blenderand he gets perfect shakes within seconds.  The energizing shakes come in four different flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and cafe latte.  Bryan can't speak to the other three flavors, but the chocolate variety gets his recommendation.

The Meal-in-a-bar comes in two varieties blueberry & almond crisp and peanut butter & chocolate chip.  Bryan decided to continue along his chocolate theme and chose the chocolate peanut butter variety.  He thought the bar was quite sizeable.  He describes it as being like a very heavily compacted krispy treat that has a deep peanut buttery flavor with chocolate chips.  He says it was filling and very convenient for on the go eating.  It's great for a quick eat while lunching.

Snack bar is essentially a mini version of the meal in a bar.  The snack bars are available in the following varieties: chocolate chocolate,  lemon & cranberry, and crunchy peanut butter--there's even a option to get the snack bars as a variety pack.  Bryan tried the chocolate chocolate flavored snack bars.  He found them to be a satisfying snack  that banishes the munchies.  The chocolate chocolate variety has a nice rich cocoa flavor so it's great if you're a chocoholic.

Between the smoothies, and the meal and snack bars Bryan was very satisfied with the meal-plan.  He felt like he had enough to eat for the most part, but he does think he could have benefitted from the energy that he would have gotten from the metabolic boost supplement.  He was disappointed that that part of the program didn't work out for him.

So I bet you want to know what kind of results he had while using Shaklee 180, right?  Well he didn't do too badly.  He lost seven pounds in the five weeks that he used this program.  Five weeks for a 30 day program?  I know, the math doesn't add up there, does it?  Bryan had a week long business trip the second week he was using the program so he had to take a week off from it.  So we're not looking at perfect use results when we look at Bryan's experience.  I suspect he might have lost more weight if he had been able to use the program for 30 consecutive days.   I know he's happy with the overall results.  In his first week of use he dropped three pounds and after that he lost about pound a week.  Now he did combine the meal plan with moderate exercise to optimize his results.   About four days a week he would walk or bike and then two days a week he would do a little bit of running around on the soccer field as he coached our daughters' teams.

So I asked Bryan if he would recommend this weight management program to others.  Given his experience with the metabolic boost and his general dislike of the tea he said he'd really only recommend the meal and snack bars and the smoothies.   He says the smoothies were the best part of the meal plan.  If, like him,  you don't like tea, he doesn't see the point in going for a kit that includes the teas.  Also, since he had issues with the metabolic boost he points out that perhaps the program isn't for everyone, but I think that can be said about almost every other weight management program out there.  I suppose it's just a matter of finding what works for you and gets you the results you're looking for.

From what I can tell, the Shaklee 180 Turnaround program isn't just about eating a few specific foods to lose weight, a big part of it seems to be about learning to eat healthy and get fit.  It's not just a matter of eating a few specific foods and expecting the weight to melt away.  So if you're considering this program, or really any weight management program, it's pretty important to make sure you have some support.  It's helpful to have someone cheering you on and offering encouragement along the way.  There's an awesome team of people who are dedicated to cheering you on and helping you reach your goals with the Shaklee 180 program on FaceBook.  They certainly offer plenty of inspiration and lots of helpful tips for healthy living.

You can learn more about the Shaklee 180 weight management program by visiting this site.  Becky will be happy to answer any questions you may have for her about the program.

I was provided with a Shaklee 180 Turnaround kit by Becky, an independent Shaklee distributor, in exchange for my honest review of the program.  Visit Becky's Shaklee page for more information on this program and many other Shaklee products.