Spring Cleaning For Your Body with Sakara Life
We’ve sprung the clocks forward and Spring is officially on its way! We always talk about Spring cleaning for our closets, but it’s also a perfect time to “Spring clean” our bodies! What do I mean by Spring Cleaning our bodies? Simply, that it’s a good time to press reset on our diets and focus on eating clean, nutrition, delicious, whole foods; clean out the junk. I’ve talk about how I don’t believe in “diets” and I try to eat with moderation all year long, but I still like to do a bit of a “detox” every once in a while just to reboot my body.
I’ve been hearing a lot about Sakara Life in social media and the press lately and was interested to try it. Sakara Life is a delivery meal service that focuses on plant-based protein (aka, it’s vegan). All of their food is organic and they believe in putting good, nutrient rich food in your body and are against counting calories. Sounds cool, right? The kind people over at Sakara sent me a day’s worth of food to trial and the experience had me intrigued to try it for longer. So, in the spirit of spring cleaning my body, I decided to try Sakara Life meals for 2 weeks.
Before I give you my review, I should mention that the FULL Sakara Life program is 3 meals, 5 days a week.; but they give you the option of ordering 3 or 5 days and picking which meals you want. They don’t deliver on weekends because they believe weekends are meant to indulge. I didn’t do the full day work of meals: I ordered breakfast/lunch the first week and then breakfast/dinner the second week in order to make sure I was testing out all the different meal times. To make sure I was sticking with the “program’s” concept, the 3rd meal of the day I tried to make moderately-sized vegan meals. Here’s what I thought:
Taste: I was really surprised, but the meals taste really GOOD!The first lunch I had were “samosa’s” wrapped in a thin rice wrap (not fried) and they absolutely blew me away! The had a wonderful flavor and nice level of spice. Over the 2 weeks, I had my favorites and a couple I didn’t love, but I feel like that’s to be expected. Not everyone has the same taste preferences. My favorites were the Samosas, Margherita flatbread and the Aphrodite breakfast bar. The breakfast bar tasted like a crumbly scone topped with dried fruit, yum. All of the breakfasts were really sweet. I don’t tend to have sweet breakfasts normally, but I found I was looking forward to their breakfast every morning! And since with the Sakara program you’re not supposed to snack, I didn’t feel bad about having a really sweet breakfast because it was my “dessert” for the day, only it came in the morning 🙂
Cost: I’m reviewing taste and cost first, because for me, they’re the most important factors. Unfortunately cost is the one draw back of Sakara Life. It’s too expensive to be sustainable. The lowest cost option is advertised as $69/day, but that also includes tax. All and all, what I ordered came out to $30/meal (ouch!). The cost made it more upsetting for those couple of meals in the bunch that I didn’t LOVE – for $30/meal, I want to feel happy about it.
Size: The meals appear large because they come in large containers packed with salad greens, but the actual main portion of the meals were very small. Living an active lifestyle, it was impossible for me to not snack on the program. I tried not to the first day, but found I was starving the whole day and unable to concentration. Sakara Life recommends you don’t snack, but to listen to your body cues and eat whole food snacks if needed. If you order at least 2 meals a day they also send you a morning water, 2 teas/day, and a nighttime water. The tea was nice and did help curb hunger a bit.
Quality & Presentation: Two thumbs up! All the food seemed super fresh and came beautifully presented. A few of the pieces were even garnished with a flower, which I thought was a nice touch. We eat with our eyes, not just our mouths.
Delivery: Again two thumbs up! Sakara Life offers time slots of 2 hours and the delivery always came promptly within the time frame allotted. In NYC, they deliver on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, so you never get more than 2 days worth of food at a time, ensuring its freshness. The delivery people were also very upbeat and friendly, which was just an added plus.
Results: I definitely felt better and more energy with the Sakara meals! Although the meals were on the small size, it was a good reset for my stomach. I feel we’re constantly confronted with large meals and we forget to listen to our stomach and body cues and just eat mindlessly. I found that by attempting to eat only 3 meals a day, I really appreciated each meal and ate more mindfully.
Final thoughts – I really enjoyed experiencing Sakara Life and I learned that eating a plant-based diet did give me more energy. I felt refreshed from the experience and I’m glad I did it. If you’re interested in giving it a try sign up here: www.sakara.com and let me know your thoughts!
Kristin McGee is a celebrity yoga and Pilates instructor in New York City. She is currently teaching yoga with Peloton. She is the star of over 100 videos, seen in several magazines and tv shows and is a spokeswoman for many brands and causes she believes in. A proud mom to three, she sure keeps herself busy!
2 thoughts on “Spring Cleaning For Your Body with Sakara Life”
Great review! I’ve tried 3 weeks worth of Sakara meals before; and while the meals were definitely tasty, I ultimately got fed up with the fact that the 2nd and 3rd weeks’ deliveries arrived with meals in disarray – some of the meal packages exploded in the package (the plastic containers were basically split open). Sakara has great customer service; but until they change and improve the shipping methods, I can’t justify ordering (or spending) more often when I don’t know if all of my meals will arrive edible or not, haha.
I totally feel the same about an energy increase on a plant-based diet! I’ve been a Sakaralite for quite some time now and love, love, love their meals and creativity!