Mike & Kristen's Advocare 24-Day Weight Loss Challenge

For the first 21 years of my life, I think it's pretty safe to say that I was at the peak of physical fitness. I was active in sports all through my childhood, played soccer and ran track in high school, and then continued on to play 4 years of Division II college soccer. Then, I embarked upon a 4-year, all-consuming, massive expenditure of time and energy, also known as medical school. It wasn't until my first year of medical school that I truly experienced the "freshman fifteen." My playing weight my senior year of college was about 180 lbs and by the end of my first year of medical school I weighted in the mid-190's.

Since that point in time, maintaining my weight has been a constant struggle and a continuous cycle of failed attempts at weight loss. My main struggle has always been with my diet. As most of my friends know, I have a particular weakness for Diet Dr. Pepper and Doritos! Given my athletic background, the will to exercise has never been a problem. Recently I even had a lot of short-term success doing the Insanity program (excellent program and I highly recommend it!). But, when the program ended, I got lazy about working out and my eating habits continued as they always have and now my weight is right back where it was. Today I weighed in at a staggering 214 lbs with a 42" waist.....

Roughly two weeks ago, my wife's cousin mentioned to us that he was in the middle of a weight loss program that he was (and is) really excited about. It's a 24-day weight loss challenge created by a company called Advocare. The program starts with a 10-day metabolic cleanse. Then during days 11-24, known as the "max phase," the products are supposed to help you obtain additional weight loss. One thing that makes this challenge a little different is that it does not appear to be an exact how-to recipe. You establish healthy eating habits as well, which I am really excited about and hope I can continue after the challenge to keep the weight off. There are a couple other important items to mention before I close out my first blog post.

First, my wife, Kristen, is also going to be doing the challenge with me! For those that don't know her, Kristen is already in good shape. She also completed Insanity and had truly impressive results (she was back to the level of fitness that she had when she was a college volleyball player). But even she has put back on a few of the pounds compared to when we finished Insanity in December.

The next important topic is what I've learned about Advocare after researching their products and through talking with Dave and a couple of his friends. Advocare is a multi-level marketing (MLM) company. Prior to a couple days ago, I knew very little about MLM's other than hearing that my in-laws had taken part in Amway with less than stellar results. Advocare has some nice background features. The company has been around since 1993. Drew Brees and several other pro athletes endorse Advocare and use their products. My beloved Ohio State Buckeyes football team were big proponents of Advocare during the Tressel era (not sure if Urban has changed things up or not). Tressel's former OSU strength coach is involved with Advocare and supposedly there was even an Advocare banner hanging in the OSU locker room (again, not sure about the newly minted Meyer era). I have a healthy dose of skepticism with this though, because I did notice a few interesting/potentially concerning tidbits about Advocare. Supposedly, Advocare makes contributions to Drew Brees' charity foundation even though they tout him as a non-paid endorser (honestly, I'd be more shocked if he truly had no ties to the products other than personal use). Also, Advocare claims to have Olympic level quality to their ingredients, but there is one Olympic athlete that tested positive for a banned substance. She attributes it to Advocare, but they disputed it. If there are really a bunch of college and pro athletes using Advocare, one positive test result out of all of them isn't too bad in my opinion.

Now it's the time for the full disclosure portion of the post.....

Kristen and I weighed the pros and cons of everything that we could find about Advocare and we have decided to make a larger purchase of the products beyond the 24-Day Challenge ($185 retail plus shipping and taxes). This enables us to get a kick-back from any product purchases that others make through the little Advocare microsite that they assigned to us.

Ding, ding, ding...there it is. That's why he went through the trouble of creating some stupid blog. Now he and Kristen are going to start hounding all of their friends to buy stuff!

I can honestly say that Kristen and I are not going to active push these products on people. We're definitely not trying to ruin any friendships or make any enemies with this. Furthermore, other than this blog and a few Facebook posts, we really aren't going to suggest it for anyone (or at least not until I have a significant weight loss that I can maintain). Our only true financial goal is to make back the initial money that we put back into buying the products. Anything past that is purely icing on the cake. Our close friends know that we live pretty comfortably right now and that finances surely won't be an issue when my fellowship ends in a little over a year. However, if the results turn out anything like our Insanity experience, there will probably once again be several friends asking how we did it and trying it out for themselves. The other safeguard that helped with our decision to buy enough products to reach what they call the "Advisor" level is that if the challenge doesn't help us lose weight, then all unopened products can be returned for a full refund (clearly mentioned when we signed up).

So here's to hopefully having an amazing 24 days!

If you want to explore the Advocare site more for additional details, here's our link:
www.reclaimyourbodyandlife.com

Mike - Day 1 (214 lbs, 42" waist)

Kristen - Day 1 (132 lbs, 31" waist)

Time for a couple disclaimers:

Disclaimer #1: I have no proof that any of the background details regarding Advocare are truly factual. It is information that I came across while researching whether or not I wanted to try these products for myself. I believe it to be true, but I'm not going to bet my life on it.

Disclaimer #2: I am a physician and protecting my medical career is of paramount importance to me. I have researched the Advocare products thoroughly and my wife and I have chosen to use them for our own personal weight loss endeavor. However, I will not provide an official medical opinion with regards to the safety and efficacy of the products for others. I've put in too many years of hard work to put my medical license at risk. Basically, I've chosen to use Advocare products for myself and you'll have to decide for yourself or consult with your personal physician to figure out if these products are safe for you too.