Two Reasons that Herbalife is NOT the Miracle Diet

Recently, one of my best friends started the Herbalife diet plan. She is on Formula 1 of the plan, and replaces a meal once, sometimes twice, a day with a shake instead of a meal. It's been about a month and a half and she has already lost 9 lbs! That sounds great, right?

Well, not so fast. From what I know about nutrition*, I would not recommend Herbalife and here is why:

1. Processed and Unhealthy Ingredients: I took a look at the different shakes' nutrition and ingredients; these can easily find online. For reference, in this review I am looking at the ingredients in the Cafe Latte flavored shake and what shocked me first is that there are 50+ something ingredients in this thing! This automatically sends me red flags that this is a "processed" food/shake. The first ingredient on the nutrition label is soy protein isolate, which is basically protein and good for after a workout to help build and repair muscles. However, my one criticism of this ingredient is that with most soy in the United States, this is most likely GMO soy. If you are okay with that, let's move onto the next ingredient. The second ingredient is "fructose" which is SUGAR. I find it shady that it doesn't specify what kind of sugar it actually is - "fructose" is so vague and doesn't provide me enough information. Is it table sugar? High fructose corn syrup? Why is there sugar in this thing anyway and as the SECOND ingredient? The third ingredient is cellulose powder and I have no idea what that is to be honest, but it certainly does not sound natural. The next ingredient is corn bran which screams GMO again to me. This is followed by cocao powder (which is actually a recognizeable ingredient) and then guar gum. What the heck is guar gum? What I'm getting at with this ingredients list is that as a motto - if you do not know what that ingredient is or if a product has too many ingredients, it is not a natural food and is PROCESSED. You are better off getting your nutrients from vegetables and real food!

2. Weightloss is Not Sustainable on Herbalife alone: Since my friend has been on Herbalife, of course she has lost weight. She started replacing meals with low-calorie shakes. If she started replacing her usual meals with lower calorie food, she would also lose weight and it wouldn't have anything to do with Herbalife. They key to weightloss is to reduce the amount of calories you consume. However, how can anyone drink a shake as a meal for the rest of their life? Eventually you are going to get hungry and you will know nothing about actually EATING the right foods for your body. Herbalife is a temporary solution. Yes, you will lose weight but what about when you go off it? How are you going to maintain that weight when you never learned to eat properly in the first place?

Being slim requires a lifestyle change; there is no quick-fix gimmicky "diet" that is going to provide you with long-term health, other than learning to eat right and get exercise. 

* Please know that I am not a certified nutritionist or physician, but that my knowledge of nutrition is based on my own extensive research.