Review: The Body Confidence Program

I finished The Body Confidence Program two weeks ago, just in time to celebrate my birthday looking slimmer and feeling more confident about myself!

The 8-week program went much faster than I had initially thought and in the end the protein-rich meal plans were easy to follow and kept me full.

When you start the program you submit your ‘before’ photos and measurements online then at the end of every week you update your measurements. You’re allowed to weigh yourself at the start, but then you focus on the inches you’re reducing and not how much weight you’re losing. It’s very motivating, especially at the start when the inches reduce more quickly, to see your numbers getting smaller!

There are weekly conference calls with Ru-Tee, the founder of the program, where you discuss your progress and any issues you’ve faced with the other people doing it. Unfortunately the 30 minutes allocated wasn’t always enough for everyone to say what they wanted.

Initially, the recipes are limited, but as you complete each week, more recipes become available and give you more choice. Most of them are quick to make and give you leftovers you can adapt into a yummy lunch the next day. Most are also family friendly so you don’t need to make other meals for the rest of your family.

I followed the first week’s meal plan exactly but then adapted the others to fit in more with my tastes and my family’s. I also started making recipes in bulk to freeze so I didn’t have to cook so much. People who aren’t used to cooking every day may find this aspect of the program challenging.

Having one cheat day a week where you can eat whatever you want is a big positive of the program. Some weeks I really needed it, particularly if going out, but as the weeks passed I didn’t feel so much of a need to cheat.

The focus of the program is getting your diet right first and then getting your exercise right. Ru-Tee says the focus should be 80% on diet and only 20% on exercise and doesn’t believe in exercising every day, which was perfect for me! You get a good number of exercise ideas which are added to as the weeks progress or you can decide yourself what exercise to do. Every week there are also new articles to read which helps make sense of what you’re doing as well as educating you about staying healthy.

The biggest disappointment for me doing the program was that for the price (£450 for the eight weeks and then £29.99 per month for the maintenance program), I was expecting more personal support and feedback, for example a one-to-one weekly support call or longer more individual feedback after submitting my updated measurements. While I enjoyed the support from others doing the program via the private Facebook group, I wanted more expert individual support.

Having said that, the program works! I reduced by more than what is guaranteed. Ru-Tee says you’ll reduce by two jean sizes, which is 16 inches over your whole body and I achieved slightly more than that by the end of week 4; I reduced by a bit more than 22 inches by the end of the 8 weeks.

After finishing the program I’ve continued cooking many of the recipes and will continue to do so.

If you want to drop a jeans size or two and are interested in doing The Body Confidence Program you can use the code ‘FRIENDS1402’ to get £50 off.

Disclosure: I was very lucky to do The Body Confidence Program for free in exchange for documenting my progress. My opinions are honest and my own.

Read my update halfway through the program here.