Plexus Slim Review (2018 Update): Does It Really Work?

Wouldn’t you love to be able to lose weight and keep it off? Well, you’re certainly not alone.

Weight loss is an extremely common struggle in our modern society. It often seems that people make little headway in reaching their goals.

This is what makes companies like Plexus so appealing, as they offer a range of products that are supposed to make weight loss that much easier.

The company offers one famous product, Plexus Slim - also known as the 'pink drink'. This is meant to promote weight loss and is the reason for this Plexus Slim weight loss review. In it, we're taking a look at the drink itself, along with whether it actually works. 

Plexus recently updated its formula and changed some of the ingredients. This review has been updated as well to reflect those changes and the implications of all of the ingredients for weight loss. 

After all, there are so many different fad diets out there, like the 21 Day Fix, the 3 Day Diet, the Clean 9 Diet and even the approaches you find on The Biggest Loser.

With all of those fads, it makes sense to figure out whether a given weight loss approach is likely to work before you spend time and money on it.

Want the Short Answer? Skip Straight to the Conclusion!

Plexus Slim is often known as the 'pink drink' and is the most popular product from the company Plexus. The drink basically acts like a dietary supplement and is meant to help people lose weight. 

At one point, the drink was incredibly popular, resulting in news stories and various endorsements. There were even claims that the drink was 'life changing', helping people to lose weight when they couldn't any other way. 

But, there has also been controversy. The original version of the drink included the compound DMAA. This is a stimulant but was later associated with negative cardiovascular impacts.

The formula for Plexus Slim has changed since that point and many people continue to be passionate about the drink. This begs the question, can it really help with weight loss?

Broadly speaking, Plexus is a health and wellness company. Their marketing strongly focuses on ways to improve health and lose weight. 

Plexus also falls under the category of MLM. This means that people can sign up as Ambassadors and make money by directly selling the products. The idea has it's merits and offers some people a way to make money. 

But, it also creates considerable competition between Ambassadors. As a result, many will exaggerate the benefits of Plexus. Others may convince themselves that they see effects which aren't really happening. 

Companies like Plexus also tend to rely on marketing gimmicks and hype. 

This means the products often sound better than they are. Reviews should also be read with caution, as many reviewers will be biased to some degree. 

I do also want to point out that Plexus has many issues, which you can see on their BBB page. Now, BBB isn’t always a good indication of whether or not you should trust a company – but you should certainly pay attention to any that get many complaints. 

Based on this information, it seems that the main areas of issue are with the products and with billing. This doesn’t surprise me one bit. Likewise, these are the statistics for customer reviews on the same site:

Clearly, there are a lot of unhappy people.

One final note is that the company has even been in trouble with the FDA. Most likely, this was because their marketing made too many claims that could not be proven.

All of this offers more evidence that the company isn’t one to be trusted, which certainly doesn’t have good implications for their products.

The products on offer can be split into three general categories:

The personal care category isn't much of anything - just three general products. 

Nutrition is more comprehensive and mostly consists of various supplements. For example, Plexus XFactor is a multivitamin and antioxidant supplement, while Plexus EDGE promises energy and focus. The supplements will all use proprietary formulas. But, the overall style is still similar to countless other products and companies. 

For weight loss, there are a few key products. 

The first is P96, which is simply a protein shake. This comes in either chocolate or vanilla and uses whey protein. With 15 grams of protein per serving, the shakes are decent enough. But, there are many other such shakes out there with a similar nutritional profile. 

By far, the most significant product is Plexus Slim itself. 

This product is actually a little unusual. Essentially, it is a drink that you make by adding water – and you’re supposed to have it before meals. The marketing for it makes these claims:

To achieve this goal, the drink includes various herbal extract and other ingredients, along with flavors. We'll come back to the science of Plexus Slim a little later (or you can skip straight to that topic). 

Plexus Slim has also been updated fairly recently. This included some changes to their formula, along with the addition of extra flavors. The most significant difference was the addition of xylooligosaccharide, which is a prebiotic. 

The new version also contains mulberry extract and cellulose gum, along with fruit and vegetable juice. The company also dropped out guar gum, polydextrose and Luo-Han-Guo fruit extract. The end result is a slightly different choice in sweeteners, a different fruit extract and the xylooligosaccharide. 

Overall, the new and old versions mostly function the same, although Plexus Slim may now improve gut health as well.

In addition to Plexus Slim itself, there are a number of other products.Three of these seems to be specifically designed to work in conjunction with Plexus Slim and these are Boost, Accelerator + and Block.

Like the Plexus Slim drink, These supplements contain a range of nutrients and plant-based compounds, as the ingredients label for Accelerator + shows.

As a general rule, these are simply vitamin supplements with a few unusual additions (the stuff in the proprietary blend). Those additions might be unusual but I highly doubt that there is much science supporting their effectiveness.

As a side note, the company seems to be running with the idea that ‘more is better’ for at least some of the ingredients. For example, you have more than 8,000% the recommended daily dose for vitamin B12.

Now, in fairness, vitamin B12 is likely to be safe at this dose, although you should be careful if you have a health condition. It’s likely that all of the doses are entirely safe and may even be good for your health to a degree.

Still, I find the practice concerning because the company basically bombards people with a large range of nutrients and hopes that some of those actually help with weight loss.

Plexus has put some money into researching its products and trying to prove their effectiveness. The site Team Healthy Mom goes into details about this research and the findings. 

Simply put, the study did show that Plexus Slim contributed to more weight loss in an 8-week period than a placebo (5.4 lbs versus 3.1 lbs). The trend is appealing - but it wasn't statistically significant.

Additionally, Plexus Tri-Plex (Plexus Slim + 2 supplements), resulted in an average of 7.2 lbs weight loss compared to just 0.2 lbs for the associated placebo. The outcomes are encouraging - and suggest some weight loss impacts. Even so, there are limitations. 

This research means there is more evidence for Plexus Slim than you might expect. Even so, it's just one study and has many limitations. There's no way to know whether similar outcomes would apply to your situation. 

Plexus certainly does have a range of weight management products but, how well do they actually work? Well, the company seems to think that they work great:

Well… kind of:

Basically, this means that if you eat a healthy diet and exercise, these products will help you lose weight. Of course, if you do that you are actually going to lose weight with or without the products.

Also, do you notice how vague that language is?

These products will provide ‘extra support’. There is no indication of what ‘extra support’ actually means and it could mean pretty much anything. In fact, that entire claim could even be considered true if the products did nothing at all. After all, taking them would offer you some emotional support, especially if you believed they would actually do something.

To really look at how, and if, these products work, we have to look at what’s involved. Specifically, we’re going to look at the components of Plexus Slim.

Even though the company does have other products, they tend to have the same patterns with all of them. So, finding out whether Plexus Slim is scientifically supported should offer insight into the other products as well.

The basic ingredients label for the product looks like this: 

So, the active ingredients are as below:

So, let’s take a look at them.

The main purpose of the xylooligosaccharide is to promote good gut bacteria. The compound type is a prebiotic and does have a considerable amount of support behind it (1,2,3).

As such, the first benefit is simply health. Having a good balance of gut bacteria has been connected to many benefits, including decreasing the risk of depression. From the available research, xylooligosaccharide seems to fill this role well. 

There is also some evidence that healthy gut bacteria may promote weight loss. This is one reason why some people turn to kefir for weight loss. Even so, the same benefits apply to other sources of prebiotics and probiotics as well, including fermented foods. 

The site Mark's Daily Apple offers considerable detail into what prebiotics are, where you can find them and what benefits they offer. Likewise, Hello Glow talks about how prebiotics and probiotics can support weight loss.

Any benefit is likely to be strongest for people that don't consume enough prebiotics and those who have poor gut health. In contrast, if you're already getting sufficient prebiotics, the compound may not help much. After all, prebiotics are basically food for the bacteria in your gut. More of these compounds are unlikely to help if you're already getting enough.  

While there is some merit to the ingredient, it's unclear how significant any weight loss advantage would be. 

To start off with, green coffee bean extract is hardly unique. At one point in time, this was heavily hyped as a revolutionary tool for weight loss (frequently by Dr. Oz). However, the supplement has largely fallen out of favor since then, mostly because the science behind green coffee bean extract was never actually very good.

Now, at one point, it really did look like green coffee bean extract helped with weight loss. Specifically, this action was connected to the substance chlorogenic acid. This is a key component of coffee beans but is mostly removed during roasting, which is where the idea of green coffee beans comes from.

Green coffee bean extract was supposed to be effective because it inhibits an enzyme in the liver that plays a role in forming sugar. The chlorogenic acid has also been associated with activating metabolism and influencing how fast fat is absorbed.

There have been a few experimental studies into the effectiveness of green coffee bean extract for weight loss. However, there have been relatively few of them and they haven’t been well-designed. A review paper from 2011 noted that there isn’t enough evidence to show that green coffee bean extract is effective. Furthermore, most studies have been limited and many have also been funded by the industry (4).

One of the most interesting points about green coffee bean extract is a 2012 study that was the most heavily promoted piece of evidence for the effectiveness of the compound at the time.

If you look up the article now, this is what you will see:

This means that the authors pulled the article. In particular, the article was removed because the sponsors of the article ‘cannot assure the validity of the data’.

Honestly, the retraction of the article isn’t a surprise because the science behind it was pretty bad. The site Science Based Pharmacy offers more details about the whole scandal behind green coffee beans and what actually happened. 

Part of that issue is related to Dr. Oz, who was associated with the paper and heavily promoted it. Despite all the hype that surrounds him, Dr. Oz isn't especially trustworthy and there is growing controversy about how he misleads and manipulates his audience. 

In fairness, there is some evidence that green coffee bean extract supports weight loss but there certainly isn’t enough science out there to prove that effect. Additionally, the studies that have observed an effect tend to report a relatively small difference in weight (e.g. 5).

So, green coffee bean extract might or might not help you lose weight – but either way, it probably won’t make a big impact. Besides, there is one other thing worth mentioning. If green coffee bean extract did work, we’d know about it.

You see, green coffee bean extract was immensely popular at the time and a lot of people bought the supplements. As time went on, interest in the product waned dramatically (you can see this in the pattern from Google Trends).