I will say this much: long post coming.
So... I wanted to get fit, over lockdown, I’d put on a few pounds and thought I wanted a bit of help with it.
Team RH said they could help teach nutrition but you still eat real food. Fantastic! So I learned I definitely needed more protein to support the exercise I do, that’s good, more fibre, more water, more movement. Healthy. But then they teach you to ignore your body’s signals.
They don’t monitor if you’re taking it too far. Before Xmas I felt I got too thin, so I started eating more (off of their plan) I felt better for it. I messaged them and said so and they said I had to go back to tracking every calorie even if I wasn’t happy with it as that’s the only way it works, fair enough...
I said I’ve reached my goal, what now? They added me into a group with a load of women with their bones sticking out who are then instructed to get their partners to use callipers on them and pinch their body
large each week to see if they are gaining body
large. If they do, 100 cals down, if they don’t, 100 cals up. The only way to avoid the body
large going up, is to do weights and build muscle and if that doesn’t work, you’re not trying hard enough...
As a feminist it didn’t sit right with me at all!
The women are all very lost and stressed and constantly asking if they look
large / need to diet more. There is minimal official help as the owner (Richie) admits this is 5% of his client base so they invest in the people losing
large as a priority.
The women are told to bulk, there is one woman held as the poster child for bulking who is eating something like 3400 calories a day (up and down 100 a week

) who is clearly just putting loads of weight on again who will then be expected to “cut” and reveal the muscle. But there is no instruction offered for anyone that doesn’t want to be a body builder. When I said I had had numerous panic attacks over using these callipers, especially as I have no training and it was telling me I was obese on the website you enter the data into, they (the coaches) just told me I need to practice more. How do you practice something you have no training in?! How can you say it’s safe for people who have prior disordered eating habits (I told them this from the start) to pinch bits of
large endlessly? I am really shocked and disgusted. I have reached out to others in the industry who have said that callipers work, if you want to be a body builder, but intuitive eating and learning about food is better mentally and unfortunately, in my option, team rh do not teach this outside of starve / bulk.