My Results from the 3-Day Refresh (I Hated It, But Did Lose Weight)

A couple of weeks ago, I had lunch with a good friend. She told me she was in the process of doing Beach Body’s Ultimate Reset – a strict 21 day vegan clean eating program. She lost 10 pounds and looksgreat.

I was inspired to check it out butI have bunch of travel coming up, plus holiday parties. There’s no way I could find 21 days together to tackle that until the New Year. But I did want to try a little jump start and while I was looking, I came upon the 3 Day Refresh, also by Beach Body. I thought I would give it a whirl and see if a couple of days would shed a few pounds and inspire me.

Here’s what it is in a nutshell:

3 days of shakes. Each day you have a Shakeology shake for breakfast and a Vanilla Refresh shake at lunch and dinner. You can have some fruit and vegetables throughout the day, as well as unsweetened tea. There’s also a Fiber Sweep drink that you have mid-morning. The idea of the Fiber Sweep was what scared me the most but I thought what the heck and went all in.

Here’s the breakdown from my kit:

Comments:

The Vanilla Refresh shake tasted disgusting to me. I did manage to tolerate it a little better once I added in some fruit – it was better with some raspberries or strawberries mixed in – but I still didn’t really like it.

I didn’t mind the mid-morning Fiber Sweep. You’ll find lots of comments from reviewers online saying it’s God awful but I thought it was fine. Just a quick chug down. It had a sweet taste (it does have Stevia in it. I didn’t know that pre-ordering because I normally don’t do any sweetener of any kind.)

The chocolate Shakeology was great. I’ve always loved Shakeology shakes and this 3 Day Refresh only reminded me that I need to order some!

Day 1 and 2 went well. In fact, I wasn’t really hungry at all which was weird. The shakes were definitely filling. And I chugged a lot of water. I actually even felt kind of energized and happy these two days!

But I really did hate that Vanilla Refresh so I skipped it at dinner both Day 1 and 2 and only had a bowl of vegetables both nights. I also realized I forgot to have the scoop of “healthy fat” each afternoon.

A normal day on the 3-Day Refresh is around 900 calories but I think I probably only had about 6-700 calories each day. Which probably lead to my problem when I woke up Day 3….

I woke up Day 3 and the instant I stood up, I was wondering what the heck was wrong with me. I was winded, dizzy and felt like I was going to pass out just walking to the bathroom. This went on most of the morning as I tried to get dressed and my heart raced. It wasn’t pleasant. I still wasn’t hungry but I had this feeling like I was seriously lacking in any sort of fuel to make my body function at all. Of course, my funny mind immediately thought, “so THIS is why those people on Naked & Afraid can never do anything after a few days.” 😉

So at that point, I bailed out. This was Friday, and on Saturday morning I was scheduled to run a 5k. I knew there was no way I could survive another day on 700 calories and run it if I felt so horribly the day before. I went downstairs and decided I’d stick to a few days of Whole30 clean-eating. I made myself some poached eggs and within an hour, I started to feel better. At lunch & dinner I had a salad with no dressing and a protein (grilled chicken). I still had a headache all day but I wanted to still eat well and hopefully get some good results in the couple of days I had done this.

If I judge “good results” but the scale, I lost 4 pounds in those 3 days. Probably just water weight, but I’m happy to be where I am not because it inspired me to continue with a healthier diet. But I won’t be doing this one again!