I was able to sign-up for real appeal through a UHC health insurance plan. As for something that's provided free of charge, this was a neat little program. However, here are the reasons I believe it only deserves 3 stars. For those starting the program, it's broken into 2 halves. Each half is 6 months long, for a total of 52 weeks. What they don't tell you ahead of time is that the second half is very different from the first.
In the first half of the program, you have a coach, who is very involved and tries to make sure that each member succeeds in their weightloss goal. While there are several different "flavors" of coaches, with slight differences in approach, they are there for you each step of the way. There is a weekly hour-long session to discuss your progress, tackle challenges and set goals. Have a conflict with something that's going on; no worries, you can just schedule a make-up session or have a 1-1 session with your coach. Each weekly session introduces a new topic and usually ends with a cheesy, but informative video. A couple sessions in, you get a success kit which includes food scale, bathroom scale, a resistance band, recipe book and exercise DVDs. A few months in you also get a free blender. Just from the perspective of free stuff you get I think the program is worth it.
Now as for the second 6 months. First of all, the weekly sessions change to monthly sessions. They are still only 1 hour long, so you are very limited in what you can discuss during one of those. From having 15-20 people in a group, you now could see as many as 50-100 people. Obviously the coach is unable to ensure everyone's success. Also, if you work even normal hours, you can forget about being able to make it to a session. While in the first part of the program you had a lot of session options, you only have about 5 make-up sessions available. All of those are between hours of 10am and 5pm. If you work, get ready to try and catch a session during your lunch break. The sessions become less personal and the material from the first part of the program just gets reused. There are same goals, same "action" cards, same targets, etc. The second half of the program really feels like an afterthought or a way to make money by doing very little. Unless you can make yourself keep up what you were doing in part 1, you are likely to slip and fall back on your bad habits.

5 stars because of the low reviews. In actuality, 4 stars simply because the app is insufficient for tracking and I have to use My Fitness Pal to track foods, and my Apple Watch to track workouts. The food base on Real Appeal isn't stellar, but once getting over that annoyance and finding My Fitness Pal, it was fine. Some minor silliness in the layout and usability, but not enough to cry about.

I started this initially when I had so much going on, I really didn't have the brain space for it. I received my kit but needed to wait to actually make changes. Things got to the point in my health where it became a do or die situation and I signed up to start over.

I did not receive a new kit, which was fine. I had talked to customer service, and like anywhere, sometimes you get someone who is having a bad day, and sometimes you get someone who's super helpful. Anyway, my kit was still current, plus I found out they don't bill insurance until after several coaching sessions, so my insurance was not double billed.

I am in Week 15, have lost over 44 pounds and am encouraged by my coach, the videos, and the reading assignments. This is a "whole body" program and I'm pleased with the cognitive behavioral focus. Like anything, you get out of it what you put in. I've lost weight for other reasons and people, but true lasting weight loss comes when you do it for YOU. I am on a journey and have about 50 more pounds to go. I believe this program will get me there.

By the way, I've been in Weight Watchers several times and honestly, this is so much better. Actually focusing on calorie intake and nutrition instead of "points" or whatever, plus the focus on this being a life style change and not a "diet" has been the key for me.

Lastly, the "fitness coach" on the included DVD's is super easy on the eyes in addition to being fun and encouraging for cardio, strength, stretch, and abs. Actually, of ALL the excercise recordings I've tried, these are my favorite!

I use the items included in the kit almost daily. My portion plate was printed off center (which bugs me horribly) but I still get the idea. The bright colors and divisions stick in your head so you can "see" it when you use regular plates. Food scale is awesome, although I need a flashlight or bright light to see whether it's on grams, ounces, or pounds. Also you just have a limited amount of time to weigh stuff before it clears which can be frustrating. It's still very useful once you figure things out. Scale is great, smoothie blender is just like the nutro blenders, and books and materials are colorful and filled with great information that supports the coaching sessions.

I really recommend Real Appeal. Plus they get extra points for somehow making insurance companies see that being proactive will save them money in the future. I never understood why insurance would cover so many things like smoking cessation but not cover weight loss. It seems they were more willing to pay for serious health issues cause by weight, but not the thing that would ultimately save them money. Until now. So thank you to United Healthcare and Real Appeal. I believe you are saving my life. (Plus I'm looking so good!)

I got Real Appeal free via my insurance company so that is a big pro. I'm always looking for counseling and coaching for food and weight loss. It is a huge problem for me. Note: to date the most help has been from EMDR counseling but that is costly and not well supported by my insurance, so I keep using what I can afford. Real Appeal for me was quite affordable, being free via my insurance, so I signed up for it while I saved up for EMDR. Unfortunately I had to have dental surgery this year so that took all my HSA savings and I'm still unable to go to EMDR.

Real Appeal did help for like 3 months. It was cool that since it was supported by my work health insurance, I could take my lunch hour to attend. It's pretty basic information, but I like having regular attention - it helps me do better on my program. Unfortunately I live in Arizona and the time change affected my ability to go to my weekly session. It changed time to an hour earlier due to daylight savings time, a fact that I had not anticipated when I scheduled. At the time they did offer help to reschedule it to a different time but I thought, well it will work because I only have a conflict once a month at that time. But other meetings started interfering at the regular time as well, so I was going to make-up sessions often.

The good thing about the make up sessions were seeing how all the other counsellors behave. The class sizes are insanely high and there is no real personal counseling. I think only one of the counsellors I observed having a lot of empathy. Mostly it is too large of classes for anyone to get to know you. That said, on my side, I never reached out for private counseling - which is available, but that is mostly because none of the counsellors stood out to me as someone I would want to work with. This is partly because the class sizes are so high like I said.

I had been hoping to bound with cohorts on the journey and also get in some support that way but the relationship is basically one counsellor to 50 people or more in a class. Granted I'm halfway through the year now and the classes are getting smaller.

The basic information is sound, based on studies, and useful, especially for people who don't know a lot about dieting, losing weight, or exercise. I didn't find anything very objectionable in the information itself, and yes, I did find the packet of the scale, the kitchen scale and the blender quite nice, although I do have a blender already and identical scale (I put the one sent upstairs) but the battery in the scale ran out very early. I liked the shape of the blender cup but it wasn't any better overall than my magic bullet.

I may be the only person in the classes that hates the videos with a passion. In all fairness I do prefer to get information via reading and I know that is unusual, but still I was willing to look at the videos in the hopes of learning. I feel bad to say i hate the actors and the way the videos are run. I think most people like them, but I hated them so badly and found them so irritating that sometimes I would turn off the sound. I would've preferred a lecture, and then support from the counsellor and the individuals in the class to making goals. With the irritating videos included, the class time got full and there was even less time for personal attention and help with goals.

They also wanted me to put my food calories in on their website as well as myfitnesspal, after some weeks of doing double duty there I realized they weren't actually paying attention to my numbers, so I stopped.

I'm debating whether to continue the program. I was actually doing better last year on my own. The focus on the calorie sweet spot in the Real Appeal program derailed my own plan which was focusing on upping my fruits, vegetables, and other highly healthy foods and doing sugar abstinence. When I was doing that I lost 20 pounds. At the beginning of Real Appeal I lost 5 more, then I lost focus, went on a sugar binge and gained the weight back. With the lack of personal attention, I am wondering if I might do as well to just go out on my own again, with a focus on eating healthy. I have regained my sugar abstinence and I usually lose weight right away with that.

I feel like my time and effort would be better spent trying to save money for EMDR which can bring a real breakthrough in the mental patterns around my eating. EMDR is evidence based. Real Appeal claims to be somewhat based on studies as well, but I don't know if this particular packaging of principles has been subjected to any real rigorous study for results. Using the ideas of it, without having to watch the horrid videos and waste an half hour not getting any help or support might serve me better, and then I could combine my own program, get support on other websites and from friends/family, like I did prior.

In general, insurance company or health programs that offer counseling or couching do tend to employ some very well meaning and nice people who may be helpful, but without a lot of training. You get what you pay for with free counseling I'm afraid. I wouldn't necessarily discourage people from trying Real Appeal especially if they get it for free. It would also be useful for anyone with limited dieting knowledge, people who like learning from videos, and also just to stick in and attend for a while and get the info and free stuff to get a good start on changing your relationship with food.

Now I do want to sit here and dis those videos one more time. What was really wrong with them? I think for me, they were not real. They seemed very fakey to me. Maybe the folks making them were for real but something in the writing and production kept the actors from being real, or maybe it was just the wrong actors for this type of production, or maybe a bit of both. I could be wrong about this and if the majority of people like the videos keep them.

I hope the founders of Real Appeal seriously gather data on what works and doesn't work for the majority of people in the program. How many are making it and what did they like. How many are dropping out and why? And continue to improve it. Please. And if not the founders of Real Appeal, someone out there. This may actually tie in to the need for real health care reform, because as long as the founders run off with money they may not actually care if we get long term health benefits from the program. And that is the Real Tragedy of Real Appeal.