Honestly, Is Beachbody Good For Weight Loss?

While these stories are true, names have been changed or withheld to protect the privacy of the people who shared their experiences. Thank you for understanding.

Eve was feeling emotional about her body weight and was in a vulnerable state being only three months postpartum. She hoped losing weight would make her feel better.

Two girls she went to high school with were Beachbody Coaches and she joined one of their VIP support groups, “honestly I feel that it was more about wanting to be a part of the cool girl team. I wanted to be pretty and perfect and have this life that I saw on Facebook and Instagram.”

Eve told her Beachbody Coach that she had a history of anorexia and was newly postpartum. She had been hospitalized twice to be treated for her clinical eating disorder and relapsed once more before meeting her husband and becoming pregnant. Her pregnancy was complicated and concluded with difficult labor including her liver and gallbladder being in failure.

Regardless of this, she was recommended by her Beachbody Coach to limit herself to 1200 calories a day and was subscribed to the flagship products: Beachbody On-Demand and Shakeology.

Eve quickly began to experience health complications and never received the very support she signed up to get, “I found that the shakes did not particularly curb my appetite more than any other smoothie or shake I could make on my own. The workouts were hard, even the modifications. I do not think they are at the beginner level as advertised.”

“I really struggled. I was dizzy all the time and it felt like I was being anorexic without actually being anorexic. When I spoke to my ‘coach’, she told me to just have black coffee when I was getting dizzy… Then the ‘coach’ pretty much ghosted the group.”

Eve had originally joined Beachbody because she saw her friends on Facebook posting: “non-stop about how great they felt and how wonderful and fabulous their lives were” but what she got was far from what was advertised.

Eventually, her husband convinced her to stop for her own health, “I was miserable and a mess… I did lose some weight but gained it all back, it was definitely not healthy.”

Unfortunately, Eve’s story is more common than not.

Beachbody was founded in 1998 and we all soon became too familiar with the late-night infomercials selling workout DVDs. I’ll admit, aside from jogging here and there, Insanity was the first workout program I ever did. I remember my brother and me pooling our money and doing our workouts in the loft above my parents’ garage when I got home from school. 

The company started innocently enough, making movement accessible at home is never a bad thing! But in 2007, Beachbody changed its’ business structure into a multi-level marketing (MLM) company and quickly became more problematic than helpful.

The problem with MLMs in the health and wellness industry is that it creates more opportunities for misinformation- specifically misinformation that targets people feeling vulnerable about their health. MLM distributors in this space are desperately pushing miracle pills, shakes, and programs with no scientific evidence to back up their claims.

RELATED BLOG POST: DO MLM WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM REALLY WORK?

It’s almost impossible to escape the constant tirade of Beachbody marketing on social media now. There are over 450,000 self-proclaimed “coaches” giving out fitness and nutrition advice under the guise of credentialed weight loss support.

The misinformation they spread and lack of training in coaching ethics results in too many stories just like Eve’s- leaving people with body dysmorphia, disordered eating habits, and compromised health.

What is required to become a Beachbody Coach?

The main thing you need to know about Beachbody is that there are very few requirements to become a coach. According to Beachbody’s own policies and procedures guide:

“There are a few requirements to be an Independent Beachbody Coach:

• You must be at least 18 years old.

• You must be a resident of the United States, a U.S. Territory, or another country where Beachbody has officially opened
  its network marketing business.

• You need a Social Security Number, Federal Tax ID Number or applicable tax identification number in the country in
  which you reside (so long as Team Beachbody has announced that the country is officially open for business).

• You must buy a Coach Business Kit (optional for residents of North Dakota).”

That’s it. You need to be an adult and you need to purchase their business kit. This business kit includes a guidebook on how to market the products and a coupon to the annual coaching summit, but no further nutrition or fitness training.

Beachbody Coaches don’t meet any of the basic requirements of being a credentialed nutrition or fitness professional.

This is exactly where the danger lies.

If you are taking health advice from a Beachbody Coach, you may be taking health advice from someone who has never:

• Had any training, education, or experience in nutritional science.

• Had any training, education, or experience in exercise science.

• Had any training, education, or experience in psychology or behavior change practices to support having the job title “coach”.

• Used the Beachbody products before.

• Graduated from high school.

The definition of a coach is “One who instructs or trains. Especially: one who instructs in the fundamentals of a sport.” Because of this, using the title “Coach” inherently implies that one has training or expertise to share and teach to others, and this title gives Beachbody Coaches more authority than they deserve.

Using the title “Coach” misleads people into purchasing their programs with the pretense of receiving credentialed coaching and support towards their weight loss and fitness goals.

Jess fell for exactly that same trap

Jess saw Beachbody coaches on social media flaunting their alleged results and expected to see some of the same results by working with, what she thought was, “a coach who was highly educated on everything fitness.”

It didn’t take long for Jess to realize something was wrong with the programming, “I realized I was getting no results. I’d follow the meal programs, the workout calendars, the everything… with simply no results. I’d lose a pound here or there, but my body composition was unchanged.”

It took one conversation with a credentialed fitness professional to identify something underlying that was preventing Jess from losing weight, and that was a big red flag. “I realized the ‘coaches’  were not educated. They were unable to give feedback, etc. They’d just encourage me to try a different program or different meal plan.”

Jess realized this program was more about making money than losing weight “They did not teach how to incorporate things into everyday life. For the coaches, it’s their income… they’ll say anything to make a dollar.”

Both Jess and Eve fell victim to relying on a Beachbody Coach who had no nutrition or fitness credentials and for both of these women, it not only prevented their weight loss efforts from being successful but also hurt their health.

If you are looking to lose weight or improve your fitness and health, taking advice from a Beachbody Coach is not the way to go. At best, you won’t get anywhere towards reaching your goals, but at worst- you could be taking on the detrimental risks associated with crash dieting.

RELATED BLOG POST: HOW DOES WEIGHT LOSS WORK?

Are Beachbody results real?

I know subscribing to Beachbody is still tempting because the Beachbody Coaches are constantly posting all of their own weight loss success stories and the successes of the people they’ve subscribed to their programs.

To understand what these results mean, you need to understand what weight loss success means. The current proposed industry definition of weight loss success is “intentionally losing at least 10% of initial body weight and keeping it off for at least 1 year.”

I don’t inherently agree with this definition alone, because by this standard, someone who has a serious eating disorder could be considered to have successfully lost weight.

My definition of weight loss success is losing a decided amount of body weight and maintaining those results without experiencing any adverse health effects. I think that this is a definition that most fitness and nutrition professionals can agree on.

Beachbody weight loss programs consist of very-low-calorie and food-restricted diets, paired with unnecessary supplements, and high volume workouts. They are also designed to be short programs in duration, only a few weeks or months long. This is the very definition of a crash diet.

What you see in the before and after photos of their advertised results is the initial weight loss. What you don’t see are the detrimental effects of crash dieting- including the bodyweight rebound.

Can you lose weight? Technically yes, in the same way, that an eating disorder such as anorexia can cause weight loss. But there is no guidance for maintaining the weight loss and avoiding the detrimental health risks of crash dieting:

• Gallstones

• Loss of muscle tissue

• Loss of bone mass

• Deregulated metabolism

• Nutritional deficiencies

• Weakened immune system

• Bodyweight rebound

• Impaired intestinal function

• Electrolyte imbalance

• Heart arrhythmias

• Kidney damage

By my definition of what successful weight loss is, Beachbody programs are not worth it. Their crash diets, paired with the toxic positivity from their uneducated coaches, are a recipe for disaster.

If a weight loss program doesn’t set you up for long-term success to maintain your results and runs the risk of compromising your health in the process, it is a bad program. You’re better off not trying to lose weight at all than spending your money and time doing a bad program that is setting you up for failure.

Beachbody isn’t for everyone

A comment I sometimes get when I post about the negative impact Beachbody has on the nutrition and fitness industry is along the lines of “Well that wasn’t my experience” or “Beachbody just isn’t for everyone” and I want to open up the discussion on how these comments lack empathy and contribute to the toxic positivity culture that Beachbody thrives on.

It is perfectly natural to want to share your own experience but in situations where people are being actively harmed by an entity, it is more important to approach the conversation with empathy and listen to the experiences of others.

The reality is that for every one of these unempathetic comments I get, I get at least half a dozen comments and messages from people who have been harmed by Beachbody products and coaches. This is the disproportionate harm I am trying to address and why I will argue that Beachbody isn’t for anyone.

One person’s neutral or positive individual experience does not negate the commonly shared experience that is: Beachbody distributors are under-qualified and predatory salespeople who take advantage of vulnerable populations to sell crash diet programs and products.

Supporting or defending Beachbody because of your own neutral or positive experience is problematic because it is an attempt to diminish or invalidate the horrifying things that most other people have gone through.

Eve and Jess were two of over twenty real women who shared their honest stories with me about their experiences with Beachbody. Of over twenty women who have shared their stores, only two of them had either a neutral or positive experience to share (and neither of those women still use Beachbody which I believe further validates the value and quality of the products being sold).

Before you try and defend Beachbody with your personal experience, read some of the experiences shared with me in the images below and consider the abuse these women are enduring from Beachbody and whether you want to be associated with that or not.

Alternatives to Beachbody

Many people get roped into Beachbody because of their desire to have access to at-home fitness programs, nutrition guidance, and weight loss support. The good news is you don’t have to subscribe to Beachbody and put your health at risk because there are better options available!

If you are solely interested in fitness programming, I suggest the following options:

CBM Training Club is a subscription service that delivers a new workout program (with at-home and in-gym options) every four weeks. These programs are designed by a personal trainer to meet the CDC and ACSM minimum exercise requirements for healthy adults- if you think a structured plan would keep you more accountable, CBM Training Club may be for you! 

Daily Burn At-Home has a wide variety of video classes you can choose from in group or 1-on-1 formats. They also have subscriptions for running, yoga, and HIIT programs!

BodyFit by bodybuilding.com is a subscription that gives you access to several different types of at-home and in-gym programs written by popular athletes and trainers. The best part? It is about half the cost of Beachbody On-Demand!

Fitness Blender is a website run by wife and husband duo, Kelli and Danieal Segars. Their entire video library is FREE, and their fitness challenges and programs are available for purchase at affordable prices.

If you need nutrition guidance and weight loss support, you will not regret investing in a professional who gives you individualized coaching. You just don’t get the same results when you are following a cookie-cutter program designed for someone else’s body- so I cannot recommend individualized coaching enough.

If you are serious about reaching and maintaining weight loss results in a healthy and sustainable way, I invite you to apply for CBM 1:1 Coaching. It is free to apply and if I feel like we may not be a good fit for each other, I will do my best to refer you out to another credentialed coach who I think would fit your needs.

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