Advocare and the 24 Day Challenge

So, on February 22nd, we started a 24 day challenge through a company called Advocare. About 4 years ago, when I first started coaching for Georgia Juniors, my club director, Scott, asked me if I was interested in selling Advocare and making money from home. He said his wife had made enough money to allow her to stay at home and that the company had even sent them on a cruise. I was very uninterested, because I always promised myself if I was going to have to sell something to stay at home, I would rather just return to work. Since I talked to him, when people would ask me questions about losing weight, I would often tell them about advocare, because I had seen people experience results with the products.

Last year, another coach, my good friend, Laura had been trying to lose her baby weight for about a year. She decided to try the 24 day challenge to lose her baby weight and she lost some weight (can't remember how much, 10 pounds maybe?). She kept going with it and ended up losing 30 lbs. I saw her at our first volleyball tournament of the season this year (she coaches for another club now) and she looked so thin! Also, she had no prior intention of selling it and she was still selling it after one year of completing the challenge. Laura is a stay at home mom of three girls, she coaches high school and club volleyball, and also tutors on the side. Her husband coaches high school football and basketball, so I know she wouldn't have something extra like Advocare in her life if it wasn't a positive thing.

I talked to Scott again and found out that his wife, Denise, had made $28,000 the past month and had been averaging $20,000 a month over the last year or so. Also, I love to help people get in shape, and had been frustrated with some of the results I was seeing. I was giving people as hard of workouts as I was doing, and they were getting stronger, but they weren't losing much fat or slimming down like it seemed like they should. I also know a few friends in Washington that I played sports with that sell it now as well. I have so many results of people who do the challenge, lose the weight AND keep it off. 

I talked to Jeff about selling it, because I felt like they were good, reliable products and also because I felt like I needed something nutrition-wise to help people who ask me to help them lose weight or get in shape. We both decided we needed to do the challenge first, to be sure the products work, to know what people were going through when they did it, and really just to be healthier in our family as well. We want to set good examples for our kids of healthy eating and living.

Below are our before and after pictures:

Jeff lost 3 lbs, 2" in his waist and went from about 13 percent body fat to 8 percent body fat.

I lost 12 lbs (140 to 128), 2" in my hips, 4" in my waist, 2" each thigh, 1/2" each arm, and went from 17% body fat to 11.5%. 

The biggest surprise and excitement for us was that we lost so much fat while preserving our muscle! We were so excited about this, because we were both in pretty good shape before and neither of us wanted to look sickly skinny or anorexic! You eat every 2-3 hours and you are eating so clean along with supplementation, it really is the healthiest way to lose weight!

A few weeks later, I went to get Cheyenne's body fat tested for a study at UGA (they paid us $25)! Anyway, I asked if I could test mine as well and it was at 13.5% I had been adding in some extra carbs, because the trainer at Omni said I really was too lean and it wasn't healthy. On my printout at UGA, it said below 15% was risky for women. I asked the doctorate student and she said I was probably fine, except if I wanted to have more kids, because if your body fat is too low it will affect your ovulation. I have an IUD in right now, so it is really hard to tell if I am still having a regular menstrual cycle or not. We haven't even decided whether or not we want more kids or when we would have them yet, but I decided to try to get to 15% body fat just to be safe. I am still working out a lot, just adding in some extra nuts and carbs! I still want to stay healthy!

After posting our results on facebook and telling people we came into contact about advocare we have signed 11 people up for challenges (along with some other ransom products to several people) and helping them make that change in their life to be more healthy and happy! The products are so easy to sell because they are so great and people love the results they see when they use them. They pay you every two weeks and every pay check has progressively gotten bigger and last two weeks we made $500! We continue to use a lot of the products (meal replacement shakes, catalyst (an amino acid supplement that preserves your muscle, so your body is only burning fat), omegaplex, and multivitamins and chewy supplements for the kids, and of course the ever popular spark! Jeff also uses several of the performance elite products with his lifting). 

We feel so blessed to have this income opportunity in our lives right now! I love it because I don't feel like I am selling anything, I feel like I am helping people make a difference and change in their lives! 

My friend from church, Lynn, came over a couple days ago and she was on day 21 or 22 of her challenge. She came over to get some more products and I asked her how everything was going and how she was liking everything. She gave me a big hug and said, "I feel so good! I have been wanting to feel like this for at least a year now, and I just can't even believe how I feel. I feel like I'm 30 again!" She was someone that when you looked at her you wouldn't even think she needed to lose any weight! But, she has lost that extra fat that she didn't need, and is getting in shape and feeling so much healthier and happier. It made me feel so good, because I really felt like I helped her make a difference in her life!

I also went to a conference in Orlando for Advocare when we were in Florida. The people were all just normal people, there were tons of teachers who are using Advocare as a business and love it. At one point they brought up a panel of 8 people who were making at least $100,000 or more. This one woman was talking about how her family was so disrespectful about her being an Advocare Distributor, but everyone was respectful of her and her husband being teachers and coaches. However, she was making a really great income with Advocare and still helping people improve their lives, yet being teachers they were struggling to get by. She started to choke up when she talked about how much it meant just when her mom said, "oh she sells vitamins, but she actually makes money doing it." She said that was the first positive thing she had heard from her family. I was not surprised by this story, but could not stop thinking how ridiculous it was.

One of the reasons I never wanted to sell anything was because I didn't want to be one of those annoying people always trying to get you to buy something. Jeff and I both talked about it and we need to support our family and we love to help people be healthy and that is something we did as a hobby before anyway.  People come to us anyway asking for advice, because we have spent our entire lives as athletes learning how to get our bodies to the highest level of performance that we can. We decided that we really don't care what people think, we know these are great products and we know we can help people make changes in their lives, but we are finally getting paid for it just like every other profession gets paid for the work and time they put in. We should not feel ashamed for that, we have put in the work, we are selling quality products and we are proud of the fact that we can help people and support our family at the same time.

We love the products and we are loving what it is doing for our family and those who have allowed us to help them help themselves. 

The end:)