Is Optavia a Scam Or Legit Business Opportunity? [$199 To Get Started…]

Welcome to my Unbiased Optavia review!

First, I congratulate you for taking the time and research Optavia. I will be providing you with my expert analysis and opinions.

By taking the time to read the reviews, you will be avoiding scams and get involved only with legitimate ways to make money online.

You may be thinking, “Is it possible to create Wealth & Health at the same time with this company?” and… “Is Optavia a scam or legit?”

I have researched and reviewed more than 100 network marketing companies so I have a vast knowledge of how they work. Therefore, I will be able to provide you with the most accurate and unbiased information.

I am not affiliated with Optavia in any way so you don’t need to be afraid that I would be promoting you their system. 

Let me just give you an objective analysis of Optavia.

Optavia Review – Quick Summary

Company Name: Optavia

Founded By: Dr. Wayne S. Andersen & Bradley T. Macdonald in 2016/2017. However, It Was Rebranded From Another Company That Was Founded in 2002/2003

Type: Weight Loss & Meal Replacements. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM-Company)

Price: $199 to Get Started + $100’s Extra for Each Program Or Package

Best for: Individuals Who Want to Lose Weight with Meal Replacements And They Enjoy Network Marketing

Summary: Optavia is a legitimate company providing meal replacements and weight loss products. The product prices are on the upper-scale. The business model is typical network marketing where you can make big money by recruiting lots of people…

Is Optavia Recommended? It depends. More on this further…

Optavia Scam Review: Should You Join?

First of all, Optavia is NOT a scam.

But there are a few reasons why I don’t fully recommend joining this program.

Watch my video below to learn those reasons.

I recommend watching the whole video until to the end because I teach you my best 4-step formula to earn money online that has changed my own life and 1,000’s of people’s lives all over the world.

That 4-step formula is PROVEN to work and that’s why I am 100% sure that you’ll succeed also if you decide to use it.

What Is Optavia?

Let me show you a few most important FACTS about Octavia.

  • Fact #1: It’s Rebranded From Another Compnay

You may have heard in the past of another network marketing company called Take Shape for Life. It operated using the pretty similar business model: They also sold meal replacements and other products in the health & wellness category.

Take Shape for Life was founded back in 2002/2003 but nowadays it was rebranded in 2016/2017 and nowadays it goes with the name Optavia. If you, for example, try to search anymore for an official Take Shape for Life homepage, you will be directed to Optavia Llc.

Simply put, it’s the same company but they are now using a little bit different branding.

The major difference between Take Shape for Life and Optavia is that Take Shape for Life was part of another company called Medifast. That company was founded already a couple of decades ago in 1980.

But Optavia is now an independent company and not part of Medifast.

Anyway, Optavia is a company with a long background and some leaders have been around already for a long time within the company.

  • Fact #2: Optavia Products – Meal Replacements

Optavia is supporting a healthy lifestyle. They help people to lose weight and achieve a healthier life. Therefore, they are selling meal replacements.

You have probably heard of meal replacements before and they are for example:

  • Nutritional Shakes
  • Soups
  • Bars
  • Healthy Pancakes 
  • Etc.

Their meal replacements are supposed to help you and their customers to achieve the health goals. I don’t personally use Optavia products but I use protein shakes regularly.

I know from my own and other people’s experience that protein shakes can be a great way to maintain a healthy lifestyle in an active life. If you are on-the-go and you quickly need some calories, it’s much better to drink a protein shake than grab a burger at the nearest McDonald’s, right? 😉

Optavia doesn’t only provide you with the meal replacement products but also with the coaching & community. A big part of the successful weight loss is 

  • Fact #3: Business Model – Multi-Level Marketing

Optavia uses the multi-level marketing business model that is also known as network marketing, MLM or direct selling.

Overall, network marketing companies have a pretty controversial reputation. Some people love them while others would never want to join them.

You can’t directly purchase network marketing products in your local supermarket or Walmart but you need to buy from their promoters, also known as distributors.

Recruiting new promoters to the system plays always a big role in the network marketing companies as I will explain you in a moment…

However, Multi-Level Marketing does NOT mean that a company would be a complete scam.

There are companies like Tupperware, Oriflame and other ones that have been around for decades and they’ve provided real value for millions of people all over the world. We still have some Tupperware products in our kitchen that my grandmother bought decades ago.

My grandma has died but those products last still…

Anyway, I am not here to promote Tupperware but I want to make a point that all MLM-companies are not scams even though some of them are.

Optavia is not a scam nor a pyramid scheme either. Let me explain you their system more in detail…

But before that, if you are not interested in the network marketing, I recommend taking a look at my Ultimate Guide to Make Money Online where I teach how you can make money without recruiting a single person nor joining any MLM company.

4 Main Components of Octavia 

Octavia business consists of 4 main components that I am going to explain to you in this chapter. These are the “pillars of the company” and designed to help their members to achieve the goals they desire.

  • #1 – Personal Health Coach

The person who refers you to Optavia, will become your personal health coach.

They call him a health coach even though he may know about the healthy lifestyle even much less than you. He is just a person who invited you to join or sold the system to you.

The highest health degree of most Personal Health Coaches is so-called “Google Health Degree“. It means in a humorous way that they’ve acquired their health knowledge on Google.

Of course, the company itself provides some training material as well.

Your personal health coach can also help you to build your Optavia business. I would highly recommend choosing your personal health coach carefully! If he’s a skillful person in business and health, he can in a great way influence in your results.

On the other hand, if you get not-so-good health coach, he can have a negative influence in your results. That’s why I recommend being picky!

By the way, if you want to get my 1-on-1 mentoring on making money online, you can get it for free as a Wealthy Affiliate member. Read more on my Make Money Online Guide and get started.

  • #2 – Habits of The Health System

This is a guide created by the founder of Optavia/Take Shape For Life, Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen.

It teaches you the foundation and the most important principles of a healthy lifestyle. The guide has a high focus on your eating habits and it also subtly promotes Optavia system and products.

  • #3 – Optavia Community Meetings

A positive thing about Optavia and other similar systems is the accountability.

If you are trying to lose weight or reach other significant goals in life, having an accountability partner will often help you significantly. Pursuing your goals alone may feel like a rough road but getting support from the community really helps.

I know this from my own experience because I have been part of the Wealthy Affiliate online business community for a couple of years and I have noticed how it really has changed my life and income. 

Optavia has different ways to keep you on track and stay part of a community: 

  • Meetings
  • Events
  • Phone calls 
  • Text Messages
  • Etc.

Therefore, there are good chances for you to get support in reaching your weight loss goals. Then the last but not least…

  • #4 – Fuelings = Meal Replacements

Optavia uses the word “Fuelings” describing meal replacements. They kinda “fuel” power and energy to your body. Food is a fuel for our body.

At the moment, they have more than 60 different fueling options.

They claim that Optavia fuelings (=meal replacements) have the following benefits:

  • High in Fiber (Good for Digesion)
  • Low in Sugar & Carbohydrates
  • High Quality Proteins to Maintain Your Muscle Mass
  • Daily Vitamins and Impoortant Minerals
  • Non-GMO
  • Gluten-Free

Optavia also claims that their fuelings are backed by scientifical research.

Optavia website inspires visitors to a healthier lifestyle.

Optavia Compensation Plan – How to Make Money with Octavia?

If you are considering joining Optavia, you are probably wondering how will you make money with it and how much can you possibly earn with it.

Those are legitimate questions and I am going to give you more details in this chapter.

There are two primary ways to make money with Optavia.

  1. Health Coach Income = Selling/promoting their products to other people.
  2. Business Coach Income = Recruiting new distributors to your downline.
  3. Business Leader Income = Building a team to your downline and leading it.

First, you need to join as an Optavia distributor that costs $199. When you join you will also get the Health Coach Business Kit that covers the basic materials that you need to get started with their business.

Once you purchase that starter kit you will officially become a health Coach in Optavia. As you can see, there are no special requirements for Optavia health coaches so I recommend taking that into account if you’re listening to their health advice.

  • How to Make BIG Money with Optavia?

Even though Optavia is not a pyramid scheme, the only way to make a huge income with the company, is to recruit tons of people to your downline and start leading the team.As you climb up in the ranking, you will get more bonuses and rewards. The higher you climb, and the more people you recruit to your downline the more money you will earn.That’s also how pretty much all similar network marketing companies operate.

If you want to take a closer look at the details of Optavia compensation plan, you can read it here.In order to get tons of people to your downline, nowadays you need to know how to leverage the power of the Internet. Or at least it will be much easier to you because you can recruit people on “autopilot”.

If you want to learn how to get lots of referrals to your downline, I highly recommend reading my Step-By-Step Make Money Online Guide Here. You can use the same steps also even though you wouldn’t like to recruit anyone but just to promote your own or other people’s products.

Is Optavia Worth It? Should You Join The System?

Now even though I’m not going to give you direct “Yes!” or “No!” answer, I will help you to make a decision based on several factors.Before you decide joining Optavia, I recommend asking yourself:

  1. Do you enjoy their products? (If you haven’t tested the products yourself, I don’t recommend joining the business system yet.)
  2. Do you like recruiting people & selling? (You don’t need to like it at first but you need to do tons of recruiting and selling if you want to be successful with it.)
  3. Are you ready to commit for the long term? (If you want to become successful, you need to give yourself time. Rome wasn’t built in a day…)
  4. Do you know an effective strategy to make sales and recruit people? (If not, I recommend reading this step-by-step guide.)

These questions will help you in deciding whether or not Optavia is the right program for you.

Personally, I am not part of Optavia for a few reasons. One major reason is that I think that their products are quite overpriced. Let me explain you more in the next chapter…

If you think that you would like to make money online WITH OR WITHOUT Optavia, go ahead and read the step-by-step guide by clicking the button below.

It will help you to make money whether or not you eventually decide to join Optavia. If you don’t join then you can use it for making money with other companies but if you join, you can use the principles and steps that you learned for promoting Optavia.

Pros & Cons of Optavia

In this chapter, I will quickly go through with you the things that I like and dislike about Optavia. Let’s start with the things that I like:

PROS:

  • #1 – Long Company Background

As we discussed at the beginning of this article, Optavia has roots already in Medifast which was founded back in 1980.

Medifast has a A+ rating by Better Business Bureau which is the best possible rating and shows that the company is in a good standing.

  • #2 – They Promote A Healthy Lifestyle

I have always been and I will always be an avid supporter of a healthy lifestyle. Having energy for life starts from your physical body.

If you get your body healthy, it’s also easier to get your life in order and become successful. Therefore, I share a common goal with Optavia that is promoting health and fitness in making this world a little bit healthier place.

  • #3 – 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Optavia provides for their meal replacement products 30 day money-back guarantee which gives security for their clients. If you don’t like their products for any reason, you will get a refund.

This of course a positive thing and it’s also shows that Optavia believes in their own products because they are willing to give you a refund if you’re not satisfied.

CONS:

  • #1 – Expensive Products

This is pretty typical for multi-level marketing companies in the health and wellness industry.

They often have overpriced products so they are able to pay better commissions to their promoters. However, expensive products are one of the main reasons why I am not a big fan of Optavia.

Of course, they claim that they have the best products in the industry but that’s also what all the other companies are saying.

In the image below, you can have a look at some of their product kit prices. You can see that the 30-day kit costs more than $350.

Optavia Product Kits of 30 Days.

Then if you want to continue the meal replacement plan new need to buy it again every single month. The costs will quickly add up to thousands of dollars.

Especially if you want to buy the products also to your family members. Let’s say that you have a wife and one children. You may easily spend more than $1,000 every month just for Optavia meal replacements.

  • #2 – Meal Replacements Are Not a Sustainable Solution

As I told you above, I’m an avid supporter of for the last time and I regularly use protein shakes.However, I personally think that meal replacement should not be a long-term solution and they should not be your primary way of getting nutrition and energy.You need real food to fuel your body.I believe that a healthy lifestyle comes from 3 key components:

  1. Enough high quality sleep.
  2. Regular physical exercises 3-5 times per week.
  3. Healthy Nutrition.

Meal replacements are, in my opinion, just an “add-on” to that and they should never completely replace your normal food.

  • #3 – “Fake Coaches”

For me personally this is not a big issue but I know that for many people it is…

All distributors of Optavia are called Health Coaches whether or not they have any qualifications for that.

It may give them a false authority that they sometimes shouldn’t get.What if they have health coaches that are teaching controversial or “not-so-good” health advice to new members?This can have a negative influence on people’s health.Of course, Optavia educates their people and helps information on a healthy lifestyle but they still can’t fully Guarantee the qualifications of the all coaches.So, next time when a health coach comes to teach you about the nutrition, check if his only qualification is a “Google Health Degree”.

Is Optavia a Pyramid Scheme?

I noticed that many people were searching on Google, “Is Optavia a pyramid scheme?” The answer is: NO, Optavia is NOT a pyramid scheme.

I’ve seen that network marketing companies like Optavia are often related to the pyramid schemes because their compensation plan forms a pyramid.

However, an illegal pyramid scheme is a system that does not provide real products and value to their customers. Optavia is not like that because they have real products and the system is not only based on recruiting new members.

In addition, the company has a long history and if it would be an illegal pyramid scheme, it would have been shut down already a long time ago.

My Sincere Advice to You

Whether or not you decide joining Optavia, I want to share with you a few words of advice.I have helped +3,000 individuals to get started making money online so I know a thing or two about succeeding with this kind of businesses.If you want to succeed, you need to…

  1. Like the products and genuinely think that they provide great value.
  2. Be persistent and don’t give you when you face setbacks.
  3. Don’t believe in exaggerated promises. Success comes through hard work and effort.

Sometimes network marketers try to promise you a moon from the sky.

They tell how their company is going to change your health, wealth, and literally everything. Then they continue saying, “You just need to join and take action!”

Always take such advice with a little bit of grain of salt. Their main purpose is often trying to sell you their system. Anyway, if you are a hard-working person you can succeed with Optavia. But it won’t happen overnight.

If you want to make your path easier, I recommend reading My Ultimate Make Money Online Guide where I teach you the exact strategies to make money online even though you would be a beginner.

How Do I Make a Living Online?

I make my living online with affiliate marketing

A great thing with affiliate marketing compared to network marketing is that I don’t need to recruit anyone to make money. I make money by following a 4-step strategy that I teach you in my Money-Making Guide.

Making money online with affiliate marketing has enabled me to travel around the world and it can enable you as well! 🙂

Making money online is not a rocket-science and it’s completely possible to anyone.

That being said, success requires work and effort. There are no shortcuts to success but if you follow the PROVEN steps that have worked for me and 1,000’s of other people worldwide, you can get there a bit faster.

What kind of experiences do you have with Optavia and other similar companies?

Would you like to learn to make money online?

Let me know in the comments below!

If you have any questions, just leave a comment below and I will be more than happy to help you out.

By Roope Kiuttu

Hello! I am Roope "Robert" Kiuttu, the founder and owner of YourOnlineRevenue.com. I created this website back in 2015 to help you to make money online. You can ask me anything and I'll be happy to help you out. I help people daily to make more money online and I love seeing people succeeding. If you want to get my 1-on-1 support and help to make money online as well, get started HERE.

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