I was thinking of trying Isagenix®

[Jackmannii]

@Poysyn

For the month, it was about $300.00, which was less than he would spend going through the drive thru at lunches for the month.

Who spends more than $10 a day getting lunch at drive-through places?

You can get a Big Mac Meal at McDonald’s for something like $5.69 (not that it’s a source of great nutrition).

There are umpty-billion supplements and gimmicks for losing weight, virtually all of which make it possible to lose weight if your caloric intake is less than what you’re expending.

The trick is staying the course long-term on any of these plans, not to mention how much cash you’re shelling out for unnecessary pills, shakes etc.

[Poysyn]

@Jackmannii

Who spends more than $10 a day getting lunch at drive-through places?

You can get a Big Mac Meal at McDonald’s for something like $5.69 (not that it’s a source of great nutrition).

There are umpty-billion supplements and gimmicks for losing weight, virtually all of which make it possible to lose weight if your caloric intake is less than what you’re expending.

The trick is staying the course long-term on any of these plans, not to mention how much cash you’re shelling out for unnecessary pills, shakes etc.

My husband did :). He had VERY unhealthy eating habits. Not going to get into it, just trust me. It worked for him and he liked being on that super-regulated kind of plan. I have continued it, but without the Isagenix program.

[kambuckta]

@VinylTurnip

Yes, I took it and lost weight. I went from 180 unhealthy pounds down to a trim 77. My wife says that my eyes and skin are the loveliest shade of yellow she’s ever seen, and I no longer have to spend money on manicures because my nails fell out. Sure it’s expensive, but the results are undeniable and lots of people today have third mortgages. If my hands weren’t withered claws, I’d give Isagenix two thumbs up!

Totally off-topic, but I just want to tell you Vinyl that you are my fave poster evah. Your posts never fail to give me an attack of the guffaws, and when I’m feeling blah or a fed up with the mediocrity of the board, I’ll do a search on your latest contributions to cheer me up.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a massive virtual-crush on ya. Just sayin’.

[DSeid]

Just some detail on cost. Do the same one healthy choice moderate roughly 500 calorie meal a day. Whey powder from Costco, same grams of quality protein a day for under $50/month. A multivitamin a day, maybe a buck a month. Fiber supplement, maybe $5/month. Add a calcium supplement. Add some for throwing some real fruits and veggies (frozen, juices, fresh when cheap and in season) for making some more tasty smoothies. Still hitting maybe $60, certainly less than $65 a month. Same nutritional value. Same efficacy. That other $235 to 240 they charge you? That’s the cost of woo.

“Working” depends on how you want to define the term. Any serious calorie reduction held for a month or more will cause weight loss, this one no better or worse than many others. The structure of meal replacements may be good for some people to kickstart a plan. Your husband may be one of those people. But defining “working” as losing X pounds is a pretty low bar to hit. A more meaningful definition of “working” is changing the basic lifestyle habits in lasting ways that impact long term health outcomes and function. That’s Jackmanni’s point: what is the plan to transition into lasting long term changes that can persist even without the positive feedback of the scale going down each week?

[typoink]

So, I actually used Isagenix. So, OP, here’s the what:

It’s lousy. Does it work? Maybe sorta: if you follow it religiously, you’d be reducing calories unless you already eat like a bird. So you’d probably lose weight. Following the plan, however, is incredibly difficult, because the products are seriously unpleasant.

As everybody on here is pointing out, “detox” is marketing woo, so let’s ignore that whole part.

Why did I try it? Simple. My mom got wooed by a friend who became a seller and bought a bunch of the supplies. She, like moms do, casually offered me a bunch of this amazing new diet product. I, like a broke guy in my 20s might do, figured, “hey, free sorta food.”

Nope. The program elements are lousy.

The big centerpiece is the “juice cleanse” stuff. It tastes like spoiled cran-apple juice with an uncomfortable chemical aftertaste. Vaguely medicinal and slightly oily. It’s full of aloe vera gel, which is a laxative. You connect the dots.

During the cleanse, you also get to eat brown chalk lumps, err, “chocolate snacks.” If these were originally manufactured as dog treats and repurposed when somebody realized the cocoa powder was killing dogs, I wouldn’t be surprised. Just awful.

There’s also meal replacement shakes. These aren’t exactly terrible. They’re just seriously overpriced and taste worse than SlimFast or generic protein shakes.

And then there’s the meal replacement bars. I actually kinda liked these. They’re an easy grab and go breakfast, and some of the flavors were okay. They are, however, basically just hyper-dense candy bars and I’m sure no better / cheaper / healthier than something like a Cliff bar.

So…don’t bother. It’s overpriced, mediocre, and extremely, extremely artificial and processed tasting. Unless you’re one of those people who literally can’t tell foods apart and just want some slight variations the texture of your nutrient pastes, you’ll find it unpleasant at best.

[Clothahump]

We tried it. I liked their shakes but they are just too damn expensive. We can buy shake mix from SlimFast for 1/3 of what Isagenix charges.

[Poysyn]

@typoink

So, I actually used Isagenix. So, OP, here’s the what:

It’s lousy. Does it work? Maybe sorta: if you follow it religiously, you’d be reducing calories unless you already eat like a bird. So you’d probably lose weight. Following the plan, however, is incredibly difficult, because the products are seriously unpleasant.

As everybody on here is pointing out, “detox” is marketing woo, so let’s ignore that whole part.

Why did I try it? Simple. My mom got wooed by a friend who became a seller and bought a bunch of the supplies. She, like moms do, casually offered me a bunch of this amazing new diet product. I, like a broke guy in my 20s might do, figured, “hey, free sorta food.”

Nope. The program elements are lousy.

The big centerpiece is the “juice cleanse” stuff. It tastes like spoiled cran-apple juice with an uncomfortable chemical aftertaste. Vaguely medicinal and slightly oily. It’s full of aloe vera gel, which is a laxative. You connect the dots.

During the cleanse, you also get to eat brown chalk lumps, err, “chocolate snacks.” If these were originally manufactured as dog treats and repurposed when somebody realized the cocoa powder was killing dogs, I wouldn’t be surprised. Just awful.

There’s also meal replacement shakes. These aren’t exactly terrible. They’re just seriously overpriced and taste worse than SlimFast or generic protein shakes.

And then there’s the meal replacement bars. I actually kinda liked these. They’re an easy grab and go breakfast, and some of the flavors were okay. They are, however, basically just hyper-dense candy bars and I’m sure no better / cheaper / healthier than something like a Cliff bar.

So…don’t bother. It’s overpriced, mediocre, and extremely, extremely artificial and processed tasting. Unless you’re one of those people who literally can’t tell foods apart and just want some slight variations the texture of your nutrient pastes, you’ll find it unpleasant at best.

And you can do the same thing going to a health food store.

[Lasciel]

Found THIStoday and thought of this thread. Sorry, Rosy, can’t offer actual personal experience - I lose weight the cheap-o way (eating less, working out at home) because I’m broke and can’t afford overpriced woo crap.

[Hilarity_N.Suze]

I have not used it. However, a friend got into it about a year ago, via her brother. (She is a twin. They are early 50s, tall, large-boned. Interestingly enough she is actually taller than he is by maybe an inch, around 6’1", and I know she weighed at least 300 lbs because I once said something snarky about somebody weighing “like 300 lbs” and she replied, rather mildly, that SHE weighed that, which I would not have guessed.)

Okay, so the brother, who was a runner but who still had a potbelly, got into this. I’m not 100% positive it’s the same thing, because the name seemed a little different, but it sounds really similar. The thing is that he embraced it like a religious conversion or like a new love affair or something. He talked her into it, and now she’s also an evangelist.

They have lost weight, but the main thing is there is some exercise component to this. I don’t know what the physical downside is but the social downside is that you cannot say ANYTHING to her that she can’t relate to this wonderful amazing program and oh by the way, she’s now a distributor (or something). She’s got a bunch of new friends who are all into this, and really she’s like one of those people who did est back in the '70s and then decided they couldn’t really be around anyone who hadn’t also done est because they just weren’t worthy.

I mean she relates it to EVERYTHING. So she is now many pounds lighter and, basically, looking good, but it came with a whole new group of friends and my sense is that if she cannot talk her old friends, i.e. me, into joining up and getting with the program, at some point we will no longer be friends.

Which is just about going to be okay with me, because as I said, this program is all she can talk about. Also: it is going to make her rich.

That’s the downside. I have seen the brother twice since he got on this, once in August, and he looked pretty good–a lot better than when I saw him before. And then in December, and he looked fantastic. Great shape, years younger. She also looks better. But he quite frankly now looks more like her son than her twin brother, and I got the impression that the exercise stuff he’s doing, which is also somehow related to whatever company, is what’s making the big difference.