Allow me to set something straight right from the start: I was never what you would call “athletic.” It wasn’t as though I had any real aversion to sports or exercise — I was active as a child and I always enjoyed the outdoors — it’s just that when I hit high school and the other guys started packing on muscle, I didn’t. And that meant that once my metabolism started to slow down in my late 20s, that lanky kid I’d gotten so used to seeing in the mirror stopped being so lanky.
And that’s just how it was for the better part of a decade. Poor habits cemented themselves and opportunities for physical activity became fewer and further between. Then, as I landed in my 40s, I found out that I was prediabetic.
Why am I telling you this? Because today I’m down about 40 pounds and more fit than I’ve ever been in my life. How’d I lose 40 in my 40s? I’m not going to lie — it wasn’t some magic bullet, and it wasn’t a starvation diet. It was actually something that I’d been flirting with for a while and then finally decided to commit to. I’m talking about the Le-Vel Thrive Experience.
I’m going to walk you through my personal experience with Thrive — the ups, the downs, and the results — so you can get an insider’s perspective. But before I do that, let’s just take care of some of the groundwork. Such as what exactly is Le-Vel, and what is the Thrive Experience?
Le-Vel and the Thrive Experience
Le-Vel is a health-and-wellness company, and the Thrive Experience is its main product offering. More specifically, Le-Vel (sometimes also called Le-Vel Thrive) is a producer and supplier of nutrition and wellness products, such as beverages, vitamins & supplements, detox formulas, and even skincare.
That’s great and all, and those other products are probably wonderful, but they’re not what I’m here to talk about. My experience was with the Thrive Experience — Le-Vel’s flagship product that helped it bring in over 10 million customers and promoters (not to mention nearly $3 billion in sales) in just ten years. The Thrive Experience consists of three steps: capsules, shake mix, and the Thrive DFT, all of which you can purchase separately or as part of the Thrive E60 Challenge. We’ll dive more into those in a second.
First Impressions
OK. Back to me. Like I said, I’d been slowly circling the drain of poor health when I got diagnosed as prediabetic. And although that was certainly a shock, it was also the jumpstart I needed to stop thinking about improving my health and finally start really improving it. My sister-in-law was a Thrive promoter, so I was already familiar (at least on some levels) with what the whole program was about. I gave her a call and she hooked me up with some samples.
And that’s when I got my first taste of the Thrive Experience.
I woke up on the first day of the rest of my life, and rather than stumbling into the kitchen to make some coffee I reached for a tall glass of water. This is because I was following the Thrive directions, which recommended that for step one I keep a glass of water on my nightstand so I could take my first dose of Thrive M Premium Lifestyle Capsules before my feet ever hit the floor. Down the hatch.
20 minutes later I was showered and clean, so I moved on to steps two and three.
With the capsules percolating nicely in my belly, I mixed up a serving of the Thrive Premium Lifestyle Shake Mix (salted-caramel flavor, because if you’re going to try a taste of something new, it helps if it tastes good). Then I moved right into the final step, by slapping a Thrive DFT (kind of a foam plaster that sticks to your skin) on my upper bicep.
And that was it. The whole process took about 30 minutes. And other than having to remind myself to skip the coffee in favor of the water, capsules, and shake, it was pretty darn easy.
Sticking with It
I said right at the start of this that the Thrive Experience isn’t a magic bullet. It takes commitment, and if you want to see the best possible results, it also takes some pretty serious effort. But I decided that if I was going to try it, I was going to actually try it.
And that meant taking on the other part of the Thrive Experience: making and keeping personal fitness goals.
What did I want to accomplish when I started with Thrive? Well, being able to tie my shoes without having to hold my breath was certainly up there, and I guess my primary objective was to get down to a healthy weight so I could keep myself out of the danger zone for type-2 diabetes. But in terms of something I could measure, I decided I would stretch myself.
Now, I’m not going to get into the details, but I will say that I had to change my daily schedule to accommodate regular exercise. I made the executive decision to cut my daily caloric intake down to 2,000 per day and to eliminate refined sugar from my diet.
Was it fun sweating, panting, and reading nutrition labels every day? Not really, but it was doable. And as my samples of the Thrive Experience products started to run low, I noticed something: I was sticking with it.
Results
Maybe it was just the fact that I was finally properly motivated, but unlike my previous forays into fitness, I managed to stay enthusiastic. I also found that my cravings for the wrong kinds of food weren’t really an issue anymore. I didn’t daydream about donuts. I didn’t sneak bites of my kids’ fries. And I didn’t look for excuses about why it would be OK to skip my morning jog. Something was different, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was.
So, I reached out to my sister-in-law and I ordered the full 60-day Thrive Experience package.
I continued to live my life. I ate when I was hungry. I went to bed when I was tired. And I exercised not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because I was sort of developing a taste for it. And through it all, I started each day with the three-step Thrive Experience. And one day, I discovered that I could tie my shoes without holding my breath.
And that brings us back to where we started. As of last Monday, I’m officially 41 lbs down from where I was two years ago. Oh, and as for being prediabetic? Let’s just say that the new me got a new diagnosis, and things are certainly looking up.
What is the Thrive Experience? For me, it was a way to finally get my health under control. And sure, it took some work on my part, but the results are so worth it that I can’t believe I waited so long to get started. So, if you’re flirting with the idea of giving Thrive a try, I’d say go for it. I don’t know if you’ll have the same positive experience I did, but I can tell you that there’s only one way to find out.
