Shakeology Chocolate Protein Powder - 30 Servings Bulk Bag | Meal Replacement & Post-Workout Recovery Shake for Weight Loss & Fitness

Awful taste and smell. This used to be delicious. Now its completely unpalatablePaid a lot for this and it was two weeks from expiration date when I received it.opened bag smelled like chemicals***Update 6/4/2015**This is an update to my original review after a few months of shakeology as well as trying an alternative. The thing is, I like the Shakeology product in general. It is healthy, blends well, and tastes good. I have been doing Insanity Max:30 for almost 4 months and have gotten amazing results. That said, Shakeology is simply not worth the cost. Beachbody is a pyramid scheme in which "coaches" (aka people willing to pay BB $15/month and have absolutely no other qualifications), those "coaches" recruit other "coaches" and so on. Social media is used to create fitness groups - which are great, but the ultimate goal is always selling Shakeology under the guise of "helping others". Even Beachbody's DVD's torture you with Shakeology ads before and after each workout.Shakeology essentially costs $140 for 30 servings, once tax and shipping fees are added on. If you sign up to be a "coach" for an initial $40 fee (waived if you buy certain products), you then continue to pay $15/month for the privilege of peddling Beachbody's products as well as a 25% discount in their shop. Considering the $15/month plus about $100 for Shakeology with the coach discount, then adding tax and shipping, Shakeology costs about $120/month for coaches, assuming they don't sell anything to make the money back. In short, it's still really expensive. And of course, if you subscribe to Shakeology (which you have to do to get the cheaper shipping), you have to call them to cancel the subscription. You cannot do this online. Coaches make 25% of any sales when people buy from their shops. What you are paying for is a lot of hype and the salary of the long chain of employees selling this product.I have tried NOW Pea Protein Powder and a serving of Amazing Grass Green Superfood instead, and the physical result was the same. However, the taste and consistency of both those products were awful. I am going to continue searching and trying new products as Shakeology alternatives. A quick online search will yield tons of products which are comparable to Shakeology, but are half the price or less. Amazon carries most of these products as well (just search "chocolate shake" or "meal replacement shake".) I'm still trying to find something that blends into smoothies well, but I simply can't justify spending the equivalent of my cell phone bill every month on Shakeology just for better taste. Garden of Life, Naturade, and Vega One are all on my list to try after some research.Beachbody loves to dazzle you with "exotic ingredients from all over the world". So basically they use a bunch of hybrid plants with antioxidants so claim that it's somehow more exotic and rare than ingredients like blueberries, which do the same thing. Don't be fooled.I love Beachbody's workout programs, but I will not be purchasing Shakeology again. It's been a good run, but there are so many comparable, cheaper alternatives.-----------------------------------------Original Review: I bought a month's supply of Shakeology from Beachbody, just to try it out. Unfortunately when you order from their website you are forced into a recurring subscription, which requires a long wait on hold on the phone to cancel. I don't like sales tactics like that and I definitely didn't like being forced to subscribe to Shakeology just to try it out. It appears that you can order a bag from Amazon with no such commitment.I do enjoy the taste of these shakes, but only blended with other things and made into a smoothie (my standard recipe for chocolate, vanilla and strawberry Shakeology smoothies is ice, 1/2 banana, 1/2 c coconut or skim milk, 1 TB PB2). I feel good after drinking my morning shake and I use it as a meal replacement. It's great after a workout also.Like others have said though, this product is extremely expensive. On my budget I can't afford to spend $120/month on breakfast shakes. Yes, it's less than $5/day when you break it down, but I would not normally spend $5/day on breakfast anyway. I think I am going to take Briana Phan's (another reviewer on here) suggestion and try NOW Pea Protein powder with Amazing Grass.Shakeology is great if you can afford it, but I don't buy the fact that you have to spend so much money to get the same results.Here's the deal. I've been drinking chocolate shakeology for two weeks now and can't get enough of it. It's expensive, yes, but if you track your monthly budget you'll find you spend at least that much on fast food and/or coffee (more on the coffee part later).My first taste of Shakeology...well, it's odd. Mainly because our tastes are used to processed/sugary stuff, which Shakeology is basically the exact opposite of those things. I bought a $15 Hamilton Beach blender and it makes blending a breeze, It's small and easy to clean. I make two shakes each morning without all the cleaning hassle of larger blenders. Trust me, use a small blender and it'll make the shakes tastes better and save you time preparing.I basically drink the same shake every day: chocolate Shakeology, water, peanut butter, ice. It's like having a peanut butter cup breakfast. I wish I could afford to drink more often! It's true that these shakes curb your appetite and sugar cravings. It takes some time for your body to adjust, but if you drink this for breakfast every day and stay away from all the sugary/processed stuff during the day, your cravings will change. This one shake gets me through until lunch, and even then I'm not that hungry. I never have that "I'm starving!" feeling where I want to consume a large pepperoni pizza by the time I get home from work.Through Beachbody, they also provide the T25 home DVD workout. I've never liked DVD workouts but I gave this a shot. It's pretty intense, and I have to say I really enjoy it. Mainly because each session is only 25 minutes and the countdown timer is always shown (including how long you have left for each set you're doing). It makes the workout go faster and keeps you motivated to keep going because you only have "x" amount of time left before you're done.However, no matter what you're doing for exercise, Shakeology will most certainly help you. I'm a coffee freak. I drink 2-3 cups or iced coffees a day. But, Shakeology has almost replaced my desire for coffee. And I say "almost", because I still tend to grab one later in the day. It's bittersweet because I absolutely love coffee, but I really don't drink it in the morning anymore. Shakeology gives me plenty of energy and I'm usually feel so satisfied I'll forget that I even want to grab a coffee.Finally, the cool think about the Shakeology powder is the large amount of easy-to-prepare shake recipes that it comes with. Most only require 2-3 simple ingredients. I love adding strawberries to my choc/PB shake, and sometimes vanilla extract. Tonight I mixed half a scoop with my Fage Greek Yogurt and it wasn't too bad. Definitely an upgrade over plain yogurt, but not nearly as good as the shake. Still, a nice option if you eat a lot of Greek yogurt.If you're really interested in trying Shakeology, buy the month supply and stick to it. Give it an honest shot. Obviously, you can't supplement a meal with it and then eat junk the rest of the day and complain that it doesn't work, nor expect it to work wonders within a week by itself. Depending on how healthy you already eat, it may take at least a week for your body and tastebuds to adjust. Keep in mind that a high sugar diet wrecks havoc on your tastebuds and cravings. Healthy, low-sugar foods like Shakeology might literally taste like dirt to you when you try it because your body is expecting the 12 teaspoons of sugar you normally drink from a Pepsi.The long-term cost is yet to be determined, but considering I normally spend at least $4/day on coffee, I know I can already afford the 30-day bag because I've been doing it for years via my coffee rituals. Good luck, and enjoy if you try!!I'm a big believer in the Beachbody workouts. I do just about all of them. If you do their workouts, you can't escape the Shakeology ads. After 2+ years of listening to those bloody commercials, I finally figured I'd better at least try it. I mean, if their shake is as good for my nutrition as their workouts have been for my fitness, I'm happy to spend the $$. As long as I can stand the taste. I already have a cabinet full of expensive so-called miracle powders that are just rotting because they taste so bad.So I purchased the Sampler pack. Glad I did. I'm reviewing the Chocolate flavor only, because it's the only one I've yet tasted. It was NASTY. I mean, so bitter and unpleasant tasting, I had to force it down.I also downloaded and printed the nutritional label for this product and the Spirutein chocolate drink, which I've been drinking for years, and compared them. Spirutein, at about a 1/3 the coast, has comparable amounts (or more) of just about everything in the list. Check it out yourself. And the Spirutein actually tastes good. OK, it doesn't have the exotic jungle superfoods. But if that's what's making it taste so darned horrible, I can live without them.Now..if only I could have my beachbody videos without the Shakeology COMMERCIALS...ugh.