Faster Way to Fat Loss Honest Review

If you’ve been searching the internet for a balanced and detailed take on the FASTer Way to Fat Loss, look no further! Read my FASTer Way to Fat Loss honest review, including all my pros and cons, and then find out whether or not I think it’s worth the high price tag.

My referral links are included below for your convenience. This post is not sponsored in any way.

Well friends, I’m stepping outside my comfort zone a little bit today to share my experience with a nutrition and fitness program called the Faster Way to Fat Loss. If this isn’t something that interests you in the slightest, feel free to pass on by this post! But I’ve been getting lots of questions, so I put together this post in hopes that it can be an honest answer to what some of you may be searching for. I’m going to share my own personal experience with the Faster Way to Fat Loss, a thorough review of the program, whether or not I recommend it, and (gulp) my own before and after photos.

If you’re like me, you’ve been hearing the “buzz” about this program from other bloggers and influencers out there (mostly on Instagram) for a little while, which is enough to get you curious but maybe not much more than that. It wasn’t until my friend and neighbor, Marisa from A Lovely Living, jumped into the Faster Way to Fat Loss this past winter that I began to look into it and think more seriously about trying it out myself.  I followed her journey, picked her brain about it, and decided this might be a program that could work for me. I’ve officially completed an entire round (I participated in the May 6 round which wrapped up on June 23), so I can now share my complete and total honest review with you!

FASTer Way to Fat Loss Honest Review: Program Overview

First things first – what is the FASTer Way to Fat Loss?  Yes, it’s yet ANOTHER fitness + nutrition program geared towards women that has recently hit the market. (There is a men’s program too, but the target audience is definitely women.) It’s different than anything I’ve ever seen, though. FASTer Way to Fat Loss combines intermittent fasting, macro tracking, carb cycling, and fitness to maximize results by burning fat and building lean muscle. As someone who is NOT a fitness or nutrition junkie, that was all a bunch of confusing buzz words to me. I began looking into it and searching for more answers and honest reviews, but I was frustrated that I couldn’t find much more out there about this program beyond that list of buzz words and very vague descriptions. So, as a non-fitness person, here’s my brief explanation of the basics of the program as I understand and experienced them:

Intermittent Fasting. As part of the program, you have a scheduled eating window and fasting window each day. They recommend a 16/8 window – 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of feeding.  This is the reason I was most intrigued about this program! I have never been a big breakfast eater and don’t even like eating breakfast before mid morning, anyway, so I thought this could be sustainable for me. (Though I’ve heard from people who ARE big breakfast eaters that your body adjusts to this pretty quickly.)

Macro Tracking & Nutrition. Instead of counting calories, you only track the grams of “macros” you consume each day…that is, grams of fat, protein, and carbs. Your macro goals will be determined by your current weight, goal weight, and activity level (your coach helps you get these right).  Each day, you use the app My Fitness Pal to plan and track EVERYTHING you eat. The only real restriction is that you are instructed to eat whole foods only – if it came from the ground or had a mother, you can eat it! You’re also encouraged to go dairy free and gluten free and avoid alcohol (except on “treat day”) for your first 6 weeks.

Carb Cycling. The FASTer Way to Fat Loss has a specific lineup of low carb days, regular days, and low macro days. This is part of the “secret sauce” of the program that really turns your body into a fat burning machine.

Fitness. There are three levels of workouts to choose from within the Faster Way to Fat Loss program – low impact, at-home, and gym workouts. They’re mostly a mix of HIIT (high intensity interval training) and strength training, laid out intentionally to coordinate with your nutrition plan and maximize fat burning + muscle building.

FASTer Way to Fat Loss Honest Review: My Experience

If I’m being honest (which I am), I need to tell you that I was extremely skeptical of this program going in. I was very wary of the high price tag ($199!) and the raving reviews from influencers. I got a bit of a “pushy MLM” vibe from many of the influencers and coaches constantly pushing this program, which actually turned me off quite a bit. But the one thing they all had in common was amazing results. It wasn’t until I was able to chat with my real life friend Marisa about her actual experience with the program that I was willing to give it a try.

As for my goals coming into this program, my body was in major need of some TLC.  I gave birth to our third baby this past October, so going into this program I was almost 7 months postpartum and still exclusively breastfeeding.  I had returned to my pre-pregnancy weight, but that weight was still above a healthy weight for me.  I want to be clear that I was not (and am not!) “ashamed” of my body, but I had been pretty much ignoring my nutrition and knew that I needed to make some healthy changes…plus I especially wanted to deal with the stubborn extra inches around my middle.  I have done Beachbody’s 21 Day Fix program several times before and had great results (I’d still recommend that program for someone wanting to make a more basic healthy lifestyle change! You can read more about my 21 Day Fix experience here), but I was looking for something different. The idea of intermittent fasting was really intriguing to me, as well as really training my body to burn fat and build muscle by maximizing my nutrition.

As I went through the program, I took a bunch of notes on my entire experience – the good and the bad. FWTFL is a relatively new company (only a few years old) that is growing VERY quickly, so they are definitely experiencing some growing pains.  (In fact, the program got a significant overhaul for the round immediately following mine, so several of my “cons” have already been dealt with.)  In the interest of transparency, I’m sharing my full “pros and cons list” with you below! I hope it can help you make a decision on whether or not this program is worth the investment you.

NEGATIVES:

• When I went through the program, everyone was put in a large Facebook group and a “small accountability group” with your coach. However, those small groups aren’t very small – almost 50 people each! Also, coaches can have multiple groups going at one time (my coach had EIGHT groups at a time!) so they’re not necessarily able to get to know you or form much of a one-on-one relationship with you just due to the sheer number of participants they have under them at one time. They really market that “community” aspect of the program but that was by far my biggest disappointment.
• The large Facebook group (with ALL the participants signed up for the round – there were 1,800 in mine) was kind of a mess – there weren’t enough admins to be on top of answering questions so a lot of misinformation is spread, as well as contagious complaining. There were a few helpful things shared there but overall it was more confusing than helpful.
• There are definitely good and bad coaches. I didn’t sign up under a specific coach, so I was randomly put into a group. My coach was a nice woman, but she pretty much only posted one generic conversation starter per day plus one live video per week with some tips and ideas. She didn’t share ANY recipe ideas (I was most bummed about that!), and she also didn’t share anything helpful during our prep week and waited until Week 1 to share tips with us, which was frustrating. Our group kind of fizzled out pretty quickly and by the end there was no participation at all. However, a friend of mine who signed up at the same time as me said her small Facebook group was terrific – lots of participation, her coach shared tons of ideas and support, etc. It seems like if you don’t sign up under a specific coach, you’re at the mercy of random placement to determine whether you get a great or mediocre coach. UPDATE (11/11/19) – they keep flip-flopping on the structure of the groups in the community rounds. Some months there are more coaches to provide smaller group accountability and some months there is only the large Facebook group with “daily coach check-ins.” The lack of consistency round-to-round is definitely frustrating!  And even if you *are* in a small group, the quality of the group is completely determined by the kind of coach in charge. The bottom line is, if you can work well by yourself and take the information and apply it without personal encouragement or accountability, then I think you can still be successful. But if you struggle with accountability, I think the best way to get that is to sign up with a friend and go through it together.
• You’re encouraged to go gluten and dairy free for your initial round, however, there’s not much specific rationale as to why (you’re told they’re common “inflammation causing foods”) and many recipes and meal ideas shared by coaches and influencers are not gluten and dairy free. I chose to mostly eliminate gluten but continued to eat dairy in moderation.
• I personally wasn’t a fan of the workouts – they were just set lists with brief demonstration videos for each move. Also, for the warm-up and cool down for each workout, you’re told to “use a bike, treadmill, elliptical, stairmaster if you have it at home. Or consider going for a brisk walk.” I was doing the workouts in my basement with napping children in the house, so since I don’t own a treadmill and couldn’t leave the house to go for a walk, this was challenging for me. But they overhauled the program beginning in June and added a lot more workout videos and variety into the program, so it sounds like the workouts have greatly improved. And the friends I was doing the program with really loved the workouts – so it just depends on your preferences. UPDATE: with the program updates that rolled out in June, there are now complete workout videos for each workout day along with live workout videos. I’m bummed I missed out on those but I’m glad they added them for future customers.
• Basing everything on the My Fitness Pal app is confusing, especially at first. I hope they come out with their own app eventually (and I think they are working on one to be coming out this fall). For now, it’s clunky but it works. I recommend using the free 30 day trial of MFP “premium” to get you started, but that’s not necessary to continue once you get the hang of it. Post lots of screenshots and ask lots of questions in your small group at the beginning to make sure you get it right. After the first few days, it gets much easier. 
• Prep week was SO overwhelming, especially the meal planning part. I think they realized that was a big issue with the program, though, because they are now including an actual meal plan you can follow to start out with, rather than having to start from scratch on your own.
• There are LOTS of up-sells – cookbooks, a planner, and a hard sell to join their monthly membership program at the end of the program. For those of us on fixed budgets, the price tag for the program by itself was already big stretch! I hated feeling like I was being nickel-and-dimed after I’d already spent so much to begin with. (For the record, I didn’t buy any of the up-sells or sign up for the VIP membership.)

POSITIVES:

• You get to eat SO. MUCH. FOOD. Honestly, I couldn’t believe the amount of food that I *had* to eat to hit my macros! And because you’re only eating in an 8 hour window, it feels like even more. It took me a while to figure out how to fit it all in without having to eat constantly. Rather than eat a separate breakfast, I eat a large lunch around noon and a large dinner around 6pm with a few snacks through the afternoon (usually a protein shake plus one more late afternoon snack). Sometimes I break my fast earlier if I’m home and feeling extra hungry so I end up with a breakfast lunch and dinner, but that’s the exception and not the norm for me. You can decide what works best for you! I never felt hungry or deprived (which was a dieting first for me), and I think that’s one of the best things about this program.
• There are simple modifications for breastfeeding moms, and I did not notice any change at all in my supply. I think this is a great program for nursing moms with an established supply.
• The intermittent fasting is flexible – as long as you have a 16 hour fasting window and an 8 hour eating window, you can time it to work best with your schedule. I usually fasted from 8pm-12pm, but there were days that I did 7-11, or even 9-1.
• The nutrition program can really stand alone. I only did workouts about twice a week, in addition to just trying to be active – going for walks, doing yard work, etc – and I still saw amazing results.
• Even though it’s a little bit overwhelming at first – especially for someone like me who was not used to counting calories or tracking my food intake – it only took a week or two for me to really get the hang of it.
• You get to eat lots of carbs on regular days! There are two “low carb” days per week, but the rest of the days I often struggle to get in as many carbs as I am supposed to.
• You get to eat lots of fat on low carb days! On the low carb days, you “make up” for the carb calories by eating more healthy fats. I love being able to eat lots of healthy fats on my low carb days – nuts, avocados, olive oil, coconut milk in my smoothies, steak…and fat bombs. Oh, the fat bombs. It sounds disgusting and weird but they are delicious treats that totally feel like a cheat!
• I learned SO much about food! Just by having to track my macros, I learned a ton about food – healthy carbs and fats, good sources of protein, and what types of food are really worth the “cheat” to indulge and what aren’t.
• The results. There are definitely a lot of logistical and organizational issues to be improved upon in this program, but the bottom line is, it works. I was seeing and feeling dramatic results almost immediately. Only two weeks in, friends were commenting on my appearance and asking if I’d lost weight!
• Even though they market the VIP membership pretty heavily (and there are certainly perks to continuing the membership, especially if you’re big into the fitness side of things), after you’ve been through one round you really have everything you need to continue on with more rounds of FWTFL on your own. That helped me to feel like the cost was worth it, because even though it was a large investment up front I now have the FWTFL “formula” and resources to continue this long-term.

FASTer Way to Fat Loss Honest Review: My Results

I never in a million years thought I’d be putting pictures of myself like this on the internet, but here goes! The sixth week of the program was the week we were going on a family beach vacation (and I took a break from the program for that) so these results are actually after only FIVE weeks of full-time participation in the FASTer Way to Fat Loss program.  Over the course of the program, I lost 12 pounds and 13.5 inches from my arms, chest, waist/stomach/hips, and thighs. I actually lost an additional 5 pounds in the two weeks before the official start date of the program after I’d started intermittent fasting on my own – so in total I’m down 17 pounds over two months! They actually discourage weighing in at all, though, and instead encourage you to base success on inches lost, how your clothes fit, and how you feel.  I would guess that if I’d been doing more of the workouts and building more muscle I actually would have lost fewer pounds, since muscle weighs more than fat. I’m hoping to start adding in some more of those strength training workouts to my routine soon! Regardless, I’m really happy with my results so far. I’m not to my goal yet, but I’m well on my way!

Pounds and inches aside, I just feel…good.  I didn’t have any significant health issues before, but I would have the occasional bloating or indigestion or sometimes a general “blah” feeling after meals. When I’m tight with my nutrition and fasting, though, I feel balanced and energized with no digestion issues whatsoever. It used to be that I hit an energy-dip in the mid afternoon, too – sometimes enough that I felt like I couldn’t make it through the day without laying down on the couch for a quick nap. Surprisingly, I haven’t felt that at ALL since I started FWTFL!  I’m not sure whether it’s the intermittent fasting, the nutrition, or both, but I’m certainly not complaining.

UPDATE – SEPTEMBER 2019: I’ve continued with intermittent fasting along with some of the general principals I learned from the program. I often (but not always) do low carb days on Mondays and Tuesdays, and generally eat a healthier and more macro-balanced diet the rest of the week. I continued to lose weight and inches through the summer (though at a slower rate) and now have lost a total of 25 pounds since late April! My weight loss has pretty much stopped over the past month but I’m encouraged to be maintaining a healthy weight without feeling stuck in a strict and limiting diet regimen.

FASTer Way to Fat Loss Honest Review: My Recommendations

So, do I recommend the FASTer Way to Fat Loss? Yes – but with some conditions. First of all, you have to have the time, energy, and commitment to devote to a few weeks of pretty intensive meal planning, grocery shopping, and meal prep. Once you get the hang of it, the amount of time and prep significantly decreases, but there is a steep learning curve. Secondly, you need to be willing to eat at home most of the time, especially in your first weeks, since it can be difficult to track and plan macros from restaurant food.  Occasionally guessing at macros or going with what’s listed in My Fitness Pal for generic foods can get you close enough, so a once-or-twice-a-week meal out isn’t going to derail you, but if you’re a frequent business traveler or someone else who relies on restaurant food or take out regularly, you might find this program to be challenging. Lastly, I think this is one of those programs you really have to commit to jumping into 100% from the start. You won’t hit your macros perfectly every day (there’s a reason the FWTFL motto is “progress, not perfection”) but you have to be committed to working at it. I found that my motivation increased as I saw and felt results, which helped me to see more results, which upped my motivation…and so on!

My biggest recommendation for success with this program is to do this program with a real-life friend or two! I signed up at the same time as two other girlfriends and the support and encouragement from them was absolutely invaluable. I think that helped me more than any Facebook group or coach ever could. We shared recipes, whined and complained to each other, answered questions, and just generally cheered each other on through the whole thing. If you have a girlfriend who is thinking about it, sign up for the same start date! It doesn’t matter if you’re in the same small group (in fact, it’s kind of nice if you’re NOT so you can get different perspectives from different coaches and then share those tips/recipes/ideas with each other) – but walking through the FASTer Way to Fat Loss program with a real-life friend is a great way to do it.

The bottom line is, this program works. Not only have I lost a significant number of pounds and inches, I look and feel better – period. I learned a lot about nutrition and how to fuel my body with good foods. I’ve walked away with a lot of great meal ideas and strategies, and plan to continue with the FWTFL program as a lifestyle for the foreseeable future! I do have a few complaints about the organization of the program and the way they run their business, but ultimately, because of my results and the way I’ve been able to change my lifestyle long-term, I do feel it was worth the $199 investment.

Not quite ready to commit to signing up, but interested in learning more? Scroll down on this page to receive the FREE Starter Kit. It explains some more about the science behind the program as well as a sample meal plan and cookbook. You could also buy the book by FWTFL creator Amanda Tress, but be aware that the book doesn’t contain the actual plan – you have to sign up for the program to get that info.

The next FASTer Way to Fat Loss start date is November 11 (they only start groups every couple of weeks), so if you’re thinking of trying it out, sign up soon! If you found this review helpful and decide to jump in and give the FASTer Way to Fat Loss a try, feel free to sign up using my referral link here.  (Please know that this post was NOT sponsored in any way and I shared my completely honest and unbiased opinions here with you, as always!) 

If you do sign up for the FASTer Way to Fat Loss, I share lots of my everyday FWTFL meal ideas on Instagram stories (I have a bunch saved to my highlights), so be sure you’re following along there.  I also compiled all my personal favorite meals and snacks into a 5 page Google Doc, along with a great big list of my favorite FWTFL-friendly things to buy at Trader Joe’s. If you sign up for a round of FWTFL with my referral link, shoot me an email (meredith@unoriginalmom.com) and I’ll send it to you!

Do you have questions about the program or my experiences? I’ll answer them as honestly and openly as I can! Leave a comment and I’ll reply.

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