How Shakeology Fits Into a Clean Diet

Everyone knows the formula for getting healthier: exercising more, cutting out unhealthy food, and adding nutritious options to your diet.

The easiest of the three is the latter, and incorporating Shakeology into your daily routine is a convenient and filling way to help check that box.

Shakeology is high protein, good-to-excellent source of fiber (depending on the flavor), low-glycemic index (GI) shake that delivers vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytonutrients, digestive enzymes, prebiotics, and probiotics.

This powerful superfood nutrition shake can help you start to clean up your diet by helping to curb junk food cravings and satisfy hunger.*

How (and Why) Shakeology Works

There are many factors that contribute to how a product affects appetite.

In clinical studies, appetite is measured by surveys in which participants rate their desire to eat, hunger, fullness, and how much they think they could eat (a.k.a. prospective consumption) before and after consuming a test food or product.

Decades of research has found that of the three macronutrients – protein, carbohydrates, and fat – protein is the clear winner when it comes to feeling satisfied from your food.

In addition to the macronutrients, consuming more fiber may also be associated with eating less and improved weight control,and clinical studies show fiber can increase the feeling of fullness and slow digestion, which are associated with increased satiety.

The great news?

Since Shakeology is high in protein and a good-to-excellent source of fiber, it’s designed to help you feel more satiated than a less nutrient-dense option (i.e., something with the same amount of calories, but with fewer vitamins, minerals, macronutrients or phytonutrients).

To learn more about the benefits of Shakeology, we conducted an acute clinical trial of 41 overweight adults.

The participants drank Chocolate Shakeology (whey) on one visit, and a similar-tasting placebo shake on another visit.

This placebo shake had the same amount of calories as Shakeology, but was very low in protein and fiber.

On both visits, participants drank the shake, rated their appetite for 30 minutes, were then allowed to eat as much pizza as they desired over a 30-minute period (“meal”), and then did a final appetite rating.

The study results found that drinking Shakeology significantly reduced participants’ desire to eat (58 percent more than the placebo shake), as well as reduced hunger (51 percent more than the placebo shake).

Drinking Shakeology also tended to reduce how much pizza they ate during the meal.

In the entire group, food consumed during the meal following Shakeology was about 89 fewer calories than when they had the placebo shake first, but this is only considered a statistical “trend” (p-value 0.05 – <0.1).

However, in those age 25 and over (22 participants), this difference was considered statistically significant.

The take-home message: For the same amount of calories (in this case, both shakes were 160 calories) Shakeology was able to help people feel less hungry and have less desire to eat when consumed 30 minutes before a meal.

This suggests that Shakeology can fill you up, which may help you feel less tempted to cheat on your diet later.*

What Are Cravings?

Let’s talk about cravings. We all get them at one point or another, but they seem to happen more often when we’re trying to clean up our diet.

The reasons can be both physiological and psychological, but the outcome is the same – giving in to unhealthy cravings can be a big blow to the progress you’ve made.

The dense nutrition in Shakeology can help reduce junk-food cravings.*

We conducted a survey of 2,769 Shakeology users, including independent Team Beachbody Coaches, who drank Shakeology five or more times per week and exercised at least three times per week.

Eighty-one percent of the participants felt Shakeology helped reduce their cravings for junk food!

Shakeology and Overall Health

Lastly, I want to touch on the benefits of Shakeology in relation to general health. Shakeology is tested by an independent third-party lab as “low glycemic.”

The Glycemic Index (GI) measures the effect of a food (or supplement) on blood glucose.

Low GI foods release their carbohydrates slowly and elicit a lower blood glucose response.

This helps avoid a large spike in blood sugar and the “crash,” or dip, in blood glucose levels below baseline, that often follows. If this wasn’t benefit enough, low GI products may also help with staying fuller longer (satiety).

When we talk about the dense nutrition of Shakeology, we’re talking about all of the benefits packed into a 140 – 170 calorie shake: the ratio of protein to carbohydrate (~1:1), the combination and amounts of protein and fiber, the antioxidants from vitamins A, C, and E, and the ingredients that support healthy digestion health (fiber, prebiotics, probiotics, digestive enzymes).‡

The whey flavors of Shakeology also contain a specially designed vitamin and mineral blend with bioavailable forms of key nutrients like folate and vitamin B12.

Put it all together, and you can see why we say this is the easiest thing you can add to your routine to help you start to clean up your diet.

Changing Your Habits With Clean Week and Shakeology

Cleaning up your diet and jump-starting your healthy lifestyle takes commitment, but we are here to provide you with tools for success.

Making positive change requires that you minimize the effort it takes to make those changes; the easier you make it for yourself, the greater your probability of success.

Whatever habit you want to make, you have to think about how to make it as easy as possible for yourself to do it.

In his book, “The Happiness Advantage,” Shawn Achor describes the 20-second rule – making the desired habit your path of least resistance, or the easiest option.

Make what you want to do readily available, and make a bad habit at least 20 seconds harder to accomplish.

We can use Shakeology as an example: If you want to make a habit of getting “Your Daily Dose of Dense Nutrition®,” make it easy. Decide you are going to drink Shakeology at a certain time of the day, every day.

Put your blender out on the counter with your bag of Shakeology next to it and any add-ins you like to use, like bananas or boosts (such as Power Greens, Digestive Health, or Focused Energy) formulated to mix with your Shakeology shake.

If you want to discourage a habit – say snacking on chips – move the chips at least 20 seconds out of where they would normally be.

Maybe you move them from your pantry to the closet of an upstairs bedroom.

Not only will you have to climb a flight of stairs to get them (bonus calorie burn!), you have time to reflect on your choice as you make the effort to get to the chips.

Lifestyle change does not happen overnight, but adding Shakeology to your day, it can help you take those first few steps — which are often the hardest — to creating and maintaining healthy habits for life.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

‡ Calcium contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes.