Future College attendees...I went to Penn State.

To Whom It May Concern,

When I think of Penn State Love, its not about JoePa, its about the people I met in my Kinesiology classes, the athletes I talked to in BBH freshman year, and all the wonderful experiences that I had as a Penn State Student-Athlete.  I chose to go to Penn State because it had the number one Kinesiology program in the country, they had a great javelin coach and it was far enough from home that I could not go home on the weekends.  Being from North Hampton, NH, and an only child, I wanted to have the full college experience without the undo influence of my parents on my decisions.

I chose to go to Penn State because of how friendly the track team was to me at Penn Relays, even when I had a broken leg.  I chose to take extra kinesiology classes because that's what I loved and I just wanted to learn more about why and how our bodies work the way they do.  I chose to volunteer for every professor that I had because I wanted to learn from their experience, for free.

My sophomore and junior year, I worked under my Sports Psychology professor, I just had to remind the rugby players to go get their concussion tests done.  When I worked under Dr. James Pawelczyk during the spring and summer of my junior year, I wrote a paper about the gold standard for body fat percentage and how it wasn't BMI, but DEXA scans and Bod Pod machines.  While I was writing this paper, I helped centrifuge blood and measure hematocrits, so that I could help him with research regarding the drug Octriotide and how it helps or does not help with orthostatic hypotension, which is typically experienced by women, or anyone returning from space.  I never worked for Dr. Kenney but he was Dr. P's friend and he did a lot of research regarding Gatorade heat tolerance tests and now his daughter is throwing javelin for Penn State.

My senior year, I was a teaching assistant for Lori Gravish in the practical applications of Kinesiology lab and I got to grade lab papers for younger Kinesiology students and most importantly, I made sure I did not grade any of my friend's papers because I did not want there to be any bias.  When I was a teaching assistant for Dr. R.S. Kretchmar, I helped revive the Zen Buddhism study and we brought a small group of students to a Zen Monastery in rural Pennsylvania.  While working for Dr. Kretchmar, I wrote a paper regarding the likelihood of athletes to experience flow in individual and team sports and referenced The Inner Game of Tennis, The Peaceful Warrior, Flow, and another book by Phil Jackson.

Alongside, all of these experiences as a student, I also volunteered in the student body weight room as well as the team sports weight room.  I served as a member of the student athlete athletic advisory board. I also volunteered with the GET 60 program sponsored by Gatorade for kids that were involved with the Second Mile program.  At the time that I volunteered, I had no idea of the level of abuse that had previously occurred in that program.

Volunteerism has just been a part of my life because I have always thought that if you give back more than you ever expect to receive, it will improve your life just as much as those around you.

Sincerely,

Heidi A. Goedecke

B.S. in Kinesiology, 2008

runhappyHeidi.com

Very Dissatisfied Customer with Team Beachbody

Dear Team Beachbody,

Although I appreciate the health and fitness industry as a qualified Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, a USA Track and Field Level I Coach, and a graduate in Kinesiology from Penn State University, being a part of forums with mostly individuals with no professional licensing who would post half-naked pictures of themselves in a public forum (i.e. Facebook) is a disgrace to the professionals who have licenses in the fitness industry.  If you want your company to represent the fitness industry in a better light, I would highly suggest increasing your professional standards for coaches and make them be licensed through other health and wellness professional organizations to prevent any litigation in the future.

I can understand using Shakeology, Tai Cheng and any of your low-impact exercises if the client was a prisoner and could only exercise in a jail cell.  However, if the coaches or clients have no legal issues pending, being outside with others is a much better use of their time than sitting at home.  Also, if a client cannot consume solid foods, so they have cancer or another disease because the nausea is too much, I understand the use of Shakeology to allow nutrients to come in, but doesn't Ensure do this already in nursing homes?  Or nurses in oncology clinics?  As a raw vegan for one year, I found that using a juicer and juicing greens was much more effective.  By encouraging people to workout two times a day with hardly any caloric intake, unless they are Marines in the field, this nutritional deficit puts the body in a state of starvation and reducing the ability to actually intake real food.  And for athletes, chocolate milk has been and will always be the best recovery drink so please stop charging more than three dollars for something that we can make within our own home with Hershey's chocolate syrup, Nesquik or Ovaltine.

Also, I had my mother try the Ultimate Reset, she is very sensitive to soy, dairy and wheat products and she was unable to use the miso soup required for the Ultimate Reset.  The cleanse that she did with Revitalive Health and Wellness in Newburyport, MA was much more effective in 2009 and although it required her to make her own meals from scratch, juice greens, do liver and gallbladder flushes, and have colon hydrotherapy.  When she finished this, she had less swollen ankles and looked more vibrant.  The soy products themselves (or maybe those that are not gluten free) make her body hurt so much that it is hard for her to move.  

If you wonder why I asked my mother to try your product, I asked her because she has tried all of the cleanses in the book and not many have worked for her.  The only things that have are diet and exercise and the consumption of Whole Foods.  She lost 11 pounds, but that's average weight loss on any diet and exercise program. 

So to people like me, who are relatively healthy people with a health, fitness and nutrition background whole foods is a long-term solution to your company's short-term fix.  It took me 30-45 days (not exactly sure) to recover from the side effects of your products.  I had trouble sleeping, had several terrible headaches causing me to throw-up violently three times, and I hate throwing up.  I am not anorexic or bulimic by choice, but your product made me feel that way.

My point is, I learned more about health and fitness, as a collegiate athlete at Penn State while studying Kinesiology, and unless you increase the health professional standards for your coaches, most clients would be better off reading a sports nutrition book, working out once a day for 30-60 minutes at a moderate intensity, eating three full meals a day (with snacks) and having chocolate milk after they work out (substitute another milk if you are sensitive to the proteins in milk, almonds, etc, since they may have been genetically modified).  To read more about the genetic modification of corn proteins, there is a great article in August's Elle.

Have a nice day, make your own food, have fun at the grocery store, and get outside! 

Sincerely,

Heidi A. Goedecke

Penn State, 2008

B.S. in Kinesiology