I have been worried that when this challenge was over, that I would slowly slide back into old habits and lose my results.  My partner has been watching my progress (including the stuff I don’t write about) for the last three months, and he is now determined to get back into shape.  I’m excited; it’s so much easier to make the gym a habit when you have a friend to go with you!

This week I have lost: 1.2 lbs,  gained 0.5 inches on my hips, lost 0.5 inches from my chest, and saw no change to my waist measurements.  So that brings me to 91 days.  All done now!

Let’s recap.  To complete the 90 Day Challenge, I set a goal of losing 30 pounds, and received three Body By Vi Transformation Kits.  These kits retail for $249 each.  Add to that, $17 for shipping and handling, and $17.43 for international surcharge, and your total is $283.43 per 30-day period. Multiply by three to get your 90-day cost of $850.29.

The Body By Vi Transformation Kit gives you an easy system.  You don’t need to learn much to use it as directed, you just need to be a little disciplined and make time in your day to drink your shakes and eat your snacks.  The shake mix does taste good, and it’s easy to create a variety of flavours by adding different ingredients (like cocoa powder, peanut butter, fruit, etc) to the mix.  I was told I didn’t need to exercise, but would likely see better results if I did.

After 91 days, I have lost: 8.6 lbs,  2.5 inches from my hips, 3.5 inches from my waist, and 1 inch from my chest. So much for that 30 pounds…

This graph shows my weekly changes in pounds and inches for the 90 days.

I’m not one to part with money easily.  As my mother would say: I’m so tight, I squeak.  Personally, I think Visalus is expensive, especially given my lukewarm results.  So I collected all of the packaging from my Body By Vi Transformation Kit and wandered into my neigbourhood supplement store, Edge Nutrition, to see if I could assemble a comparable non-Visalus transformation kit on the cheap.  Now before you protest about Visalus’ proprietary formulas and superior ingredients, let me remind you: 8.6 pounds in 90 days—so save it.

The kind gentleman at the store was happy to point out suitable alternatives to all of the items in the Transformation Kit: an oil supplement, an appetite suppressant/metabolism booster, shake mix, and a multivitamin for good measure.  Not wanting to take up too much of his time, I returned home to look  at the items on the website and do my math.  I created an online shopping cart of the items, and made sure to include 90 days worth of each product (except the protein powder; I ended up with an extra week’s worth).  The pre-tax subtotal for all of the items came to $271.22.  Add in your HST, and the grand total would come to $306.48.  That’s about 36% of the cost of Body By Vi.

Why is Visalus so expensive?  Is it better than what you can get at the store?  Maybe; maybe not.  Body By Vi is a multilevel marketing (MLM) business: You sell the product, and you sign people up under you and they sell the product, and so on.  Distributors who have a lot of “legs” or are several levels deep make money based on the sales performance of the people under them.  Obviously, the higher up the chain you are, the more you make, since you get a piece of all of the profits in your downline.  The markup on the products has to be huge, because the profits get split and shared at each level.

Would I buy this product?  Not likely.  If I was interested in being a distributor, perhaps, but I have an aversion to MLMs.  I’ve heard of people dropping an incredible amount of weight in a short time with this product, but it didn’t work that way for me.  This 90 day period has been a great opportunity for me to focus on my health and fitness, and I have seen some improvement in my mobility and physique as a result.  However, Body By Vi is not the magic bullet for obesity.  Dammit.

Houida just finished her final week too. Check out her results.
Did you miss my week 12 post? Check it out here.