Michael Thurmond's Six Week Body Makeover - AVOID!
Oct 16 '05
The Bottom Line I believe you will lose weight if you can stick to it, but I found the food too restrictive, the prep too involved, and the exercises not easily achievable.
THE SHORT VERSION
I hated it.
THE LONG VERSION
Where do I begin? LOL I had lost 60# recently using a low-carb plan that I loved. I had stalled and was looking for something new to jump start my weight loss--and this looked perfect. Well, I guess I should say I got sucked into the infomercial. I did research online before purchasing, and of course there were the typical "yes it worked" and "no it sucked" opinions, but I thought I would take a chance. Boy did I get the short end of the stick!
SHIPPING
This item, ordered from a health site (not directly from the product website), took approximately two weeks to receive. So, if you see this on an infomercial and are excited and gung-ho about starting immediately, forget it.
PROGRAM CONTENTS & SETUP
There was so much stuff packed neatly into the box I couldn't help but be impressed. Books and DVDs (I ordered the DVD version, not VHS) and papers and recipes and menu cards and an exercise band. I eagerly jumped into reading the materials and setting up my plan (as did my husband--we figured if we were spending $120 on this diet, we both might as well try it). It took probably an hour or so to go through everything and read some of the startup materials and get our plans configured. It turns out we were both the same body type, which meant we would be eating the same things--which was a relief since it looked like we'd have a lot of prepping to do. The setup was quite easy--pick your body type from answering provided questions and pick your body shape from descriptions and pictures, finally picking what you WANTED your body to look like and locating the exercises that would give you the body you wanted. As I said, it was easy, but a bit overwhelming because there was SO much stuff to weed through--there are like 5 or 6 body types and you are only one...so there's lots of extra stuff you don't need.
SO, THE PROGRAM
Basically, this diet program was entirely too restrictive flavor-wise for me. I know the point is to lose weight--and salt retains water--but the food was SO bland and SO tasteless that some meals it was all I could do to literally choke the food down. (Egg whites might make a good omelet if you can add a pinch of salt and some cheese, but on their own with only onions or peppers? Blech. Chicken on the grill is delicious...until you take off the seasoning.) We tried ALL SORTS of non-salt seasonings and everything was still horrible, so right away I realized I would have to make SOME accommodations, otherwise I would never make it past day two. After adding some salt (and even trying NU-salt, which was NOT recommended) it became more tolerable, but still only barely tolerable.
And then there was the amount of prep work necessary. WOW. It seemed like all we ever did was cook chicken and cook rice and chop fruit and vegetables. I didn't add up all the time, but it felt like we were spending a LOT more time in the kitchen than we ever had. And in addition to that, you need SO many containers! (I thought I was the queen of tupperware before this diet...now, I have about three times as much!) And even cooking an entire bag of frozen chicken breasts at a time...with the two of us eating chicken 3-4x a day, it was gone in a day or two, so it was back to the grill again.
And don't even get me started on drinking water. Before the diet, I drank the recommended amount so I didn't think I'd have ANY trouble continuing to drink the recommended amount while on the diet. Except that when you're not eating salty food or foods RICH in flavor, you don't feel like you need to drink...at all. I don't think I drank the recommended amount of water ONE SINGLE day during the time I was on the diet.
Oh, the exercises. First, if you are not one who has exercised much in the past, be prepared to feel VERY frustrated. Yes, the video helps, but even with the video AND my husband (who is no stranger to exercise), I still had problems with all of the exercises. Most of them, it didn't feel like I was working any muscles...so I thought I was doing them wrong. I kept thinking (on each exercise)...am I too far away? too close? not using enough resistance? doing something wrong? positioned incorrectly? A few exercises I could tell I was doing correctly, but others still I couldn't even do--they made no sense and no matter how hard I tried (or no matter how patient my husband was), I could NOT successfully do them. I think if I had a personal trainer right next to me to show me how to do the exercises and make sure I was doing them correctly, it would be effective...but this wasn't. I was really afraid that I was putting forth all this effort to do the exercises but I was doing them wrong so they would not be effective in the least...and that wouldn't be good at all.
Luckily, I had a job that allowed me easy access to my food to be able to eat three times while at work (late morning snack, lunch, and late afternoon snack). If you had any service-type job (retail, nursing, real estate), I cannot see how you could possibly eat the required meals throughout the day. It felt like I was constantly running to the frig to get my snacks. I can say, however, that I was rarely hungry.
MY RESULTS
My husband and I did this diet for two weeks and I exercised three days before giving up--and I lost 9# (I didn't measure inches but I know my pants felt a little looser) and I think he lost about 10#. That amount of weight in only two weeks is a good average, but if you consider most of the loss was water weight from not eating salt, then it really wasn't much--most any diet I've ever done shows these same results in the first two weeks.
Overall, I can see how this diet would work--for someone who doesn't mind eating the same bland and boring food meal after meal, day after day, week after week. And someone who was fairly familiar with the types of exercises shown in the video. And someone who has the time to spend prepping in the kitchen. But for someone like me--who actually LIKES food--it was horrible. (For comparison, I went back to low-carb and lost the same 9# in less time eating much better food!)
RETURN POLICY
This product does come with a six week money-back guarantee. Let me just tell you that if you DO decide to try this and you realize you don't like it, send it back AS SOON AS YOU DECIDE. We knew at two weeks we didn't want it, and I should have returned it them. However, I waited too long--we were in the process of moving so there were other things on my mind. I had emailed customer support a good two weeks ahead of time, but NEVER received a response. I emailed them again a few days later and NEVER received a response. When I thought about it again, I was one day beyond the 6-week guarantee and I finally called (yes, I should have called initially, but the website said email was fine) they refused to refund my money and said they had NO record of any contact from me (funny, I have the emails to prove I wrote them). The health company I purchased it from (who holds the same money-back guarantee as the original company) told me to contact the Makeover Headquarters to request a refund. When I contacted the Makeover Headquarters, they informed me that they had absolutely no say over refunding a purchase made outside their original store and to contact the online company I purchased from. Yes, I was one day outside the guarantee, but I believe they should have still refunded my money. Instead, I got the complete runaround and eventually just gave up and ate the $120 as a lesson learned (don't buy diets from infomercials).
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Epinions.com ID:
sugarprincess
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Location: North Carolina
Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 2 members
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