Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2520: The Best Diet for 2025

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

The Best Diet for 2025 Taking the five most popular diets and ranking them based on the following criteria: Fat loss, muscle gain, longevity, and sustainability. (1:36) Mediterranean diet. (5:06) Keto diet. (12:13) Plant-based diet. (19:21) Paleo diet. (24:59) Intermittent fasting. (28:44) Why Mind Pump doesn’t believe in diets. (33:02) Questions:  What is the worst diet you have ever heard of? (34:23) Do I even need to be on a diet to lose weight? (36:11) What’s just one thing I can do with my diet that will have a really big impact? (37:56) Related Links/Products Mentioned Online Personal Training Course | Mind Pump Fitness Coaching ** Approved provider by NASM/AFAA (1.9 CEUs)! Grow your business and succeed in 2025. ** January Promotion: New Year’s Resolutions Special Offers (New to Weightlifting Bundle | Body Transformation Bundle | New Year Extreme Intensity Bundle | Body Transformation Bundle 2.0  ** Savings up to $350! ** Mind Pump #987: The Ketogenic Diet is Making You Fat Mind Pump # 2405: The 5 Intermittent Fasting Mistakes Causing Weight Gain Mind Pump # 2437: What Happens to Your Body When You Quit Ultra-Processed Foods for 30 Days Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

Get ready for Las Vegas style action at Bet MGM, the king of online casinos! Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service. There's no better way to bring the excitement and ambience of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today!

BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming

Ontario. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind there's only one place to go. Mind pump, with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about the best diet for 2025. We took the top five most popular diets of the year,

and we ranked them and broke them down. So now you know which one to pick. Now this episode is brought to you by Mind Pump Fitness Coaching. We have a coaching course. If you're a trainer or a coach, or an online coach, or you wanna become one, our course will teach you how to be more successful,

make more money, build a better business, and be more effective with your clients. And it just got approved, by the way, for CEUs, both by NASM and AFAA. In other words, you do our course, you get 1.9 CEUs for NASM. That means all you do is get your CPR cert

and your national certification from NASM remains valid. Okay, so it's an approved provider. Go check it out. Go to mindp fitness coaching.com This step by the way, we also have workout program bundles available this month So these are where we take multiple programs and put them together each one of the bundles I'm about to go through are $300 off or more here They are with a new to weightlifting bundle the body transformation bundle the new year New Year extreme intensity bundle and the body transformation bundle 2. new year extreme intensity bundle, and the body transformation bundle 2.0. All of them

$300 off or more and you can find them all at mapsjanuary.com. All right, here comes the show. It's 2025. We took the five most popular diets and we ranked them. We actually picked our favorite, broke them all down. So in today's episode, we're gonna pick the best diet out of the top five most popular diets of 20 25. I like this. What is the What's the criteria? So what's the thought process on like how we're gonna score this because there's a lot of different ways that we can look at All these different diets totally include sustainability or totally so what I picked was we're gonna rank each of them on And of course, we're gonna break them down, right, what they are, but we're gonna

rank each of them on fat loss, muscle gain, longevity, and then sustainability. Sustainability meaning how easily or well that we estimate somebody could stick to one of these diets. And they're each gonna get each of those categories, we've got a score of one to ten. One being obviously terrible, four being best. And at the end, we're all going to pick our favorite out of one of the five. For us personally or for people in general? Just for people in general. People in general. This should come from our coaching perspective, not our personal experience.

Totally. And again, for people who aren't familiar, like we trained people and coached people for well over two decades. So we have a lot of experience with different kinds of diets, different kinds of people. And I do want to preface this by saying that the best diet is typically individualized, okay? There's such a wide variance in how people react

and respond to different foods, different ways of eating and what you're, really what you're dealing with here isn't just the food, isn't just your physiology, isn't just your psychology and your emotional health around these things. It's all of those things combined which can make this very individual. So when you're considering how to change your diet, you can't just look at which one's gonna be the best for my goal, but also how am I gonna stick to this? Is this what I'm gonna enjoy? Does this work with my personality?

That kind of stuff. But based off of our experience, and most of our experience was in training lots of everyday people. The vast majority of our clients, let's say probably 95% plus of our clients were just everyday average people. The most common goal being fat loss.

The second most common goal being muscle gain and longevity. So that's kind of where we're basing all of this. So what I did is I went online and I looked up the most searched for and popular diets of the year. At the beginning of the year, the most common thing is that somebody has, I think 80%, last time I checked, 80% of people surveyed have a New Year's resolution.

And of those people, the vast majority of the most popular New Year's resolutions revolved around health and fitness, weight loss being the most popular one. So by far the most common news resolution that is affecting 80% of people has to do with getting in better shape essentially. So this is something that a lot of people are thinking about, so I think it's timely. Do you want to list the diets first and then we'll go into each one?

Yeah, let's do that. So Mediterranean diet is the first one. The keto diet would be the second one. The paleo diet would be the third one. Fourth, we have the plant-based diet and then intermittent fasting. So did I say paleo? I did say paleo. Yeah, I did. So intermittent fasting, paleo, plant-based, keto, and Mediterranean.

So we'll start with Mediterranean diet. Now that one's gotten quite a lot of media and attention, medical attention, for being very healthy. You're seeing studies around it, data around it. Now I, just a little side note, well let's break down what they say it is and then I'll give a little bit of my opinion on what an actual Mediterranean diet looks like, because my family's from the Mediterranean. But the Mediterranean diet, if you were to read up on it,

the focus is on vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, lots of olive oil. Then they tell you to moderately intake chicken, eggs, cheese, yogurt, red wine, of course, is included. And then they tell you to limit red meat, processed meats, processed sugar. You know that's kind of like let's avoid this or limit those types of things. What's the origin of that? Was it based like oh let's these are the most popular foods in the

Mediterranean and so therefore we're gonna make a diet around it? Like how did it get the name the Mediterranean diet? Part of the blue zone? Yeah, that's a good question because like I said, my family's from Sicily and the truth is they eat a lot of processed meats in particular. They eat a lot of pork. They eat red meat. So, and they don't eat all whole grains. I mean pasta is quite common and so is white rice

in certain areas. So I think that this might be what people believe a Mediterranean diet is supposed to be like. Just because it has olive oils and emphasis. Yeah. Well, no, I was under the impression that it was like they more fish based, a little bit on poultry, and a little bit on red meat.

It doesn't say no red meat. It's just minimal red meat, minimal poultry and a little bit on red meat. It doesn't say no red meat. It's just minimal red meat, minimal poultry, and then mostly fish. That's what I was under the impression Mediterranean kind of looked like. Yeah, fish will be in there, right? As the primary source. So I thought primary source was fish for protein and then came kind of poultry and then red meat. It's actually mostly vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, olive oil, and then moderate would be fish. I forgot to put that in there, chicken, fish, eggs. You know, some cheeses and red wines. Now this was based off, remember Ansel Keys

came up with this like low-fat hypothesis, and he said, oh people in the Mediterranean live a long time. Oh, that's where this is coming from. This is mostly low fat, except for your, your nuts and seeds are probably your main. And olive oil and stuff like that. Oh, that's right. That's your only source. Now, I mean, and again, um, I think that this, this Mediterranean diet was more of like a,

a diet creation. Nonetheless, there's been studies that have been done on this type of eating and it gets a lot of points in the medical community for things like heart health, cardiovascular health in particular, brain health and that kind of stuff. You know now let's go through the list of things right like what what we like about it what we don't like about it and then that kind of criteria that we broke down. Yeah. So for

fat loss let's talk a little bit about fat loss. I would give this an okay rating you know I would say it's probably. I'd give it a two or three at least. Yeah that's where I would say right's probably... I'd give it a two or three at least. Yeah, that's where I would say, right? Like maybe we could do like a 2.5 maybe? Okay. You know, put it somewhere in the middle. You're gonna keep track of it, Doug? Yeah, I am. Okay. Yeah, what do you think, Justin? Same? Same, yeah. I would give it about two and a half. What did I have next on there? Was it muscle gain? Muscle gain. Muscle gain. It's gonna be low on me. Here being two or less, because any diet that tells you to limit meat, in my opinion, has to be low scoring for building muscle.

Yes, yes, the protein's not gonna be high on this. Right, because that's already a challenge for the average person, and so if you put my client in a diet that tells you you should even limit that more than what they probably already naturally do, that tells me right away as a coach, it's going to be a huge challenge for us to hit our protein targets. And so any diet that's going to call for or limit you on your choices of protein-dense foods automatically is going to get scored a low number for me. So it's two for me. I agree. And we're also going to rank, this is also ranked in the context of each other, right,

compared to the other diets, and I can think of one of the ones that's lower than this in muscle building, but I agree with you, two is probably about right, because when you read up on what the Mediterranean diet's supposed to be, even other sources of protein, besides red meat, like chicken and eggs and fish, they say moderate. So I agree with you, I would say it's a two.

So two and a half for fat loss, two for muscle gain. Longevity. All right. What do we think about longevity? Three. Yeah. Yeah, it's high. Yeah, I would say it's a three or four, limiting processed foods. Now why wouldn't I, why am I not saying- It's pretty balanced too for the most part.

It is. Now why am I saying that a four or five? Why am I saying three or four instead of four or five? The whole red wine part of it that they're, you know, that's oversold like crazy. It's, it's. Yeah, for the Rizvertral and all this other. No, it's, it's what they're, what they're having trouble doing with these red wine, you know, health benefits or whatever is parsing out, uh, the community around red wine, cause there's health benefits to that, um, they're parsing out other healthy habits

that these people are engaging in. So I think if you just were to isolate alcohol, regardless of where it comes from. Take out the community aspect of it and the social. Totally, so that's why I'm not like a strong four or five. But I'd say probably three or four, maybe three and a half for me, is where I put it. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the last two,

longevity and sustainability, and this is a three, three for me. I'm looking at the last two, longevity and sustainability. And this is a three-three for me. So three on longevity. Just because I think if you did eat this way, you may not have the most optimal amount of muscle for building your physique or metabolically or whatever with that. But overall health, I think you're

going to have pretty solid, healthy, so good for longevity here, especially since it tells you to limit processed foods and you know how we feel about stuff like that. That's also why I give it about a three sustainability. I think it's sustainable. They're not eliminating entire food groups, which are diets that are, it eliminate entire food groups, will always get a low score from sustainability. So at least you can still have chicken and fish and stuff like that So I would put it up there with like a three Yeah, they could make it work I would definitely go a little higher in sustainability maybe three five and then three on longevity Yeah, I'm with you Justin because you know you can also you know based off of this like you're some really tasty enjoyable dishes

You could yeah, that you make you know with these you know with these foods I had I had decent success with clients that ran this diet So I've ran this diet with many clear there This was more popular when I first started than it was today even so I find it interesting that this popped up is the top Five because how diets are they I know right? I've heard less of it recently, but maybe it's it's it's getting popular again It was really popular with my early years as a trainer And so I had clients that ran this and I remember the first time learning about it and kind of looking over and I'm like, okay, I'm okay with this. I could work with this. You give me all those

foods. I could put it together. I personally don't have a big problem with this diet, but I do have challenges with the low protein intake. The red meat part, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you're not going to be so low a protein that's a problem, but you're not going to be optimizing protein for things like muscle gain, performance or fat loss. That's really my challenge, but aside from that, it's not too bad. All right.

Next is the ketogenic diet. This was, when we started the podcast 10 years ago, this was the diet. All the rage. This was everywhere. Podcast devoted just to this. Yes. It's still one of the top diets. It's still quite popular.

Now I remember when ketogenic style diets became mainstream popular. This was back in, I want to say the late 90s when Atkins came out with his book. He essentially was advocating for a ketogenic style diet. It was really popular in the late 90s because it was so opposite. It was counter to the low fat movement. Completely. In the 80s, late 70s, 80s especially,

most of the 90s, what was preached was low fat, low fat, low fat, low fat, and out comes this book that says eat as much fat as you want, just don't eat carbs, and you'll do well. And it was so opposite, and people got results from it, because at the end of the day, a lower calorie diet, it exploded in popularity.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the ketogenic diet almost exactly the same as the Atkins diet, except for the Atkins diet would advocate for high protein, the ketogenic diet is moderate protein, high fat. Both are high fat, Atkins was also high protein. Well, depends on who you ask. The original ketogenic diet was low protein.

Yeah, I was gonna say very low protein, moderate. Well, even low, in fact, the original ketogenic diet, which was used for epilepsy and other neurological issues, actually advocated for minimal protein. Very little. Yes. Yeah, almost none. Because they advocated for minimal protein. Very little. Yes. Yeah, almost none. Because they wanted just enough essential protein.

Now today, nobody does it that way, right? People who do a ketogenic diet, it looks like the Atkins diet. Yeah. Where it's like moderate proteins. Yeah, okay. It's high fat. Changed quite a bit, yeah.

It's very high fat. You're eating high fatty cuts of meat, fish, whole eggs, dairy, cheese, avocados, macadamia nuts, oils, butter, it's very high fat, moderate protein, extremely low carbohydrate, like, people are limited to under 50 grams of carbs. In fact, they would advocate for zero if you possibly could.

So the irony of this is that this gets a four for fat loss for me. Yeah. I think this diet is. I agree. In comparison to all the ones we're about to talk about. Very effective in that realm. Yeah, not just what I've experienced with clients,

myself personally. I mean, when you eat, it seems to the average person counterintuitive because you're allowed to eat these high fat, high calorie type of foods. But it's amazing how satiating this diet is. It's hard to eat too many calories. It is. It is very hard. It kills your appetite.

So I'm going to score it a four on the fat loss, but a one or a two on the muscle gain. I agree with you. two on the muscle gain. I agree with you. I think for muscle gain, I, you know, based on the rest of the diets that we see here, I'll say a two, it's hard for muscle gain. Now I know people are going to bring up studies. You can gain just as much muscle on a ketogenic diet, et cetera, et cetera.

Look, here's the deal in my experience with people that I've worked with. Good luck. It is hard. It, the pumps are, you don't get great pumps at the gym. It's hard to get, to really hit the calories that you need, especially if you're trying to build. Hard to hit your protein targets with that much fat. With that much fat, it'll throw you out of ketosis.

Remember, a ketogenic diet is named ketogenic because you're supposed to be in ketosis. Eating too much protein with very high ketosis as well. And so it's, again, high fat, moderate protein at best. It's so easy to not eat enough calories. Yes. You know and so it's just yeah it's tough to stick with that and gain muscle. Yeah so I'm with you Adam. I'd say it too. I did keto for a long time and it was really for gut health issues. You also used to love for the cognitive benefits. I remember you enjoyed. I still do. I still do. When I

get, when I am able to get my blood ketones up by being on a ketogenic diet. It's great for inflammation for me. Inflammation. Oh my God, I love this diet when I'm like feeling super achy and like I need a change. Yeah, yeah, so, you know, 100%. Now for longevity, it's still not a,

it's not a great score. Depending on who you're talking about, on average, I would say it's a two and a half. And here's why. What you find when people go strict keto for too long, over time, you actually start to develop, no joke, insulin sensitivity issues. It's very, very strange. In fact, the most ardent, you know, the past,

in the past, some of the most ardent ketogenic diet advocates will now say it's a good idea to throw in some carbs at least once a week because it's a very strange effect that happens to the body. We're about almost, doesn't know how to react to carbohydrates and insulin sensitivity actually gets worse. I remember when, I think it was your wife was really, really low carb for a while and she tested,

like her blood sugar was high when she was pregnant and they had to, that's why. Yeah. She had gone for too long. Yeah. I'll give it two and a half on longevity. It's only a two for sustainability for me. Oh God. Yeah. I'll take two, two and a half on longevity and sustainability is a one or two. Yeah. Anything again on this list, I don't care what diet it is. If it limits an entire food group, it cannot possibly score over a two for me. Yeah. I don't care what diet it is. If it limits an entire food group, it cannot possibly over over over to. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know anybody who's going to stay keto forever unless there's a real medical or health. And what a terrible way to live understandable. If it's something medically you have to, and I've had clients where we've had to

do that. That makes sense. Of course. Uh, and, uh, and, and not being massively inflamed. And we have, we had people like Mikaela Peterson, who's been on there, who has to eat diets. Like this hers is even more strict, it's carnivore only. But for the rest of the world, people that are doing, most people that sign up to do this are doing it to get in shape. And so that's the perspective I'm thinking of

when I score this. And I just think that something that limits you to that, there's too many great foods that are carbohydrate based that you eliminate. It's great enough to eat healthy and eat, you know, different foods. Yeah, you're gonna make it even harder. It's really hard to select foods in this category. Oh, when I was keto and I was keto for, again, this was for gut health issues. This is, I was having a lot of trouble with gut health and this seemed to be the only thing that controlled symptoms until later I was able to treat SIBO

and stuff like that. But I remember I tried to go out to dinner or to lunch and it was, it sucked. It sucks to go out and eat when you're keto. What are we gonna go eat? Oh, let's go get steak. That's it. We're gonna go eat steak.

Nothing else I can eat. Like is there a place that has meat and vegetables? Cause that's all I can eat. Just olive oil and everything. Totally sucks. You know, back to longevity, I also, one of the things I want to comment on, there are polymorphisms. It's not the majority.

There's a small minority, but there is a small minority of people when they eat a high fat diet like this, it throws their blood lipids all over the place and they don't get great readings at all. Now this is, most people are not like this. If you're on a low calorie ketogenic diet, you tend to see improvements in blood lipids, but some people, get great readings at all. Now this is, most people are not like this. If you're on a low calorie ketogenic diet, you tend to see improvements in blood lipids,

but some people, their cholesterol numbers, their LDL goes all over the place, and it just isn't good. So that again contributes to that two and a half that we gave it for longevity. All right, next up is a plant-based diet. Now this runs the gamut from vegan to almost always vegan,

but you allow the occasional cheese in there. Like lacto-avo combo. Yeah, something like that. Plant-based means that like 80 to 90% of your diet is plant. All right, let's talk about where we go with fat loss with this. I think for fat loss, this is terrible. I think weight loss, but you're gonna lose muscle on it. Yeah, this is gonna be

maybe a two for me. And even so, like the clients that I had that would do this, maybe initially they see the weight loss and then we would rebound and come back. See how much muscle they lost or something like that. The protein is low, you're not getting the nutrients from animal sources that you need. Animal sources of food will give you nutrients you don't typically find or sometimes never find in plant-based, right?

So you'll tend to see vitamin D levels will be too low, iron, certain B vitamins. You get zero creatine in your diet. So when you look at the studies on creatine supplementation and improvements in cognition and health, most people will see a little bit of an improvement. Creatine's just an amazing supplement. Vegans, they get like a measurable-

Massive boost. Boost in their IQ because they're deficient. Plant-based and vegan type diets are higher, higher than other diets, definitely higher than the ones in this category for nutrient deficiencies, so not great. Well, to me, talking about, in the manner that we're talking about these diets, where we're scoring them, I think this really highlights why we've sounded like

we're so anti-doubt on it. Yeah. Because to me, both fat loss and muscle gain are under a terrible. There's just, it's a, it's a muscle gain. There's no benefit there. Yeah. It's the one. Yeah. It's the worst diet for so, so you know, that's what, and we, what do we deal with? Mostly most of the people that we help are, are in pursuit of building muscle or in pursuit of losing body fat And I I just think overall for those two main reasons

This is one of the worst diets in both those categories And so yeah, it's gonna score by far of the ones that we sold and by far of the ones that we have up here If I had clients on all of these the plant-based would be the worst one to work with, for sure. Longevity, it's also very low. Now I know that's not gonna sound like the- It's not what's been sold. Popular media. But I'm gonna tell you something right now,

having worked with many, many, many people who've gone down this path, when they go plant-based, what goes up is their processed food consumption. They go from eating- Deficiencies get worse. Yeah, you start, the average person, when you look at the average person's diet, it's already processed food dominant, but the few foods that are whole foods are like milk,

eggs, meat, and then they're like, I'm going plant-based. Now they're 100% processed foods. So, and now also nutrient deficiencies, and the data on this is clear, people who are vegan typically have higher rates of nutrient deficiencies, and a nutrient deficiency will screw your longevity up faster than almost anything. You lack a vitamin or a mineral, you have an increased depression, anxiety, cognitive function disorders, you name it because your body literally can't function properly. So two on longevity? I would give it a one. Oh a one even. Wow, a one even. Okay I'm gonna give it a high score though for

sustainability. I'm gonna give it a three and here's my argument because we've catered so much to vegans. So many restaurants, so many packaged foods, so there's so much marketed to and that are options that are processed foods for the vegan that I think that for the person who just, oh, I just gotta choose a vegan food, that is something that makes it more sustainable, although I don't think it's ideal. I feel like you're just trying to be nice, because I think the average person right now

that I know who's gone vegan, their fail rate is 100% for me. Well, that's, yeah, but that's everybody. That's every diet, right? We know that. Well, it was a little higher. There was only one person I trained ever in my entire career that went plant-based and vegan, stayed that way Well, it was a little higher. There was only one person I trained ever in my entire career

that went plant-based and vegan, stayed that way, but it was for moral reasons. So I mean, the biggest value of it for me is in the temporary window, you know? I could make some arguments there in terms of like being introduced to, you know, higher dense, you know, vegetable options and like fiber and those aren't on the category. So I don't really know where to So so it doesn't seem like we're just hammering this right I'm with Justin I'm trying to find yeah there no there is there and by the way There's times where I actually recommended this for a client for a short period of time many times It was clients that just neglected to eat a lot of vegetables And so switching them over and then allowing them to see how they felt and

then then teaching them that it wasn't because we eliminated these foods. It's because we introduced these foods that your body also wants and needs. I can see value in doing that. But the sustainability, what I think about sustainability is like their ability to keep doing it. Yeah, right. Like I think the ketogenic diet is really hard to do because they're so minimal choices.

But there's a lot of vegan choices today. Yeah, you go down the frozen food aisle. There are, but when you throw in nutrient deficiency. I feel like that gives it a two, though. That's longevity argument. That's the longevity argument. That's health argument. That's muscle and phlegm.

That means people have to drop out. The ability for people to keep doing it, and you're getting so much positive reinforcement from television, I think sustainability, it scores higher than a lot of these diets. I would give it a two at best. That's what I would give it, for sure. All right, last is the Paleo diet.

Now, Paleo is short for Paleolithic. And so this diet, sorry, it's not last, it's the second to last. The Paleo diet is based on, and again, this is not really based on real science, but this is just what the diet said. Right, because bugs would be in there if they were open.

I mean, we'd eat everything during the Paleolithic, whatever we could get our hands on. But essentially the theory was, you're gonna eat what cave people ate, which meant minimally processed, what they, they really didn't cook or process anything. And so it was relegated to meat, fruit, nuts, seeds,

vegetables, potatoes, maybe some hardcore paleo people, not even potatoes, but now I think they all agree, potatoes are okay, but there's no grains, no dairy, no processed anything. So it's meat, eggs, again, fish, fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetables, potatoes, birds, that kind of, so anything that runs, swims, or walks, fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, potatoes.

This is a solid diet. It is. This is a solid overall diet. I don't think it is ideal or optimal for any one of these categories, but right away to me, and I don't think it is ideal or optimal for any one of these categories, but like right away to me, and I don't want to get way ahead because we can go through each one, but it's like a three across the board for me. Yeah. It's like a three across the board. It's decent for fat loss, it's decent for

building muscle, it's decent for longevity, it's decent, but it's not the best or great at any of these one things, but I also don't have a lot of problems. I had a lot of clients I had on the paleo diet that were successful if you took potatoes out of this I would give a lower score but because potatoes like it like the old school Original paleo was like no potatoes. It was just seeds and nuts. Yeah, I can't forget my energy there. No, I mean I My bodybuilder ask diet looks very Like right. Yeah that rice. I eat a lot of sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes, red potatoes, yams. And then I also use,

I almost eat like this except for the rice. Yeah. I would give this a higher score for muscle gain. Paleo diets tend to be pretty high in protein. Yeah. Paleo people tend to eat. I can give it a four. I'll give it a four. It's not good for endurance, but you know. No, but you know. They found that on CrossFit. But the potato helps.

Yeah, that's right. This is why they changed it. So the original paleo diet didn't include potatoes because the argument was you have to boil them and really cook them and cave people didn't do that, which again, I don't know where they get their science from. And what they found in CrossFit athletes and other athletes like fruit doesn't do it for me, I need some starches.

So they started throwing in potato and sweet potato, and those are great sources. Great sources. Yeah, great. I mean, since we're on this diet, because I think of all the diets we're gonna go through today, this is probably gonna win with me as far as the better of scores.

This is also such an example of like, good coaches and trainers, here, like, if I have a client that wants to have some sort of structure I could I would build them a diet like this and include things like rice and quinoa Yeah, why and then I have like a beautiful because I've never met anybody's had a problem with white rice I don't think I've ever had a client that couldn't couldn't digest white Super rare so good such a great starchy carbohydrate Inexpensive easy to make, goes with everything.

And now you've got this incredible diet and it's customized to you and it's more realistic and more sustainable. So this is where all diets go wrong, is they limit something and it's like, dude, most people, I mean, how many people have you guys trained that are prone to white rice? No. I haven't met one. No, I don't think I had anybody. Right, it's such a, it's like a staple food

that there's no, other than you're trying to fit in this paleo thing. This plus rice is my diet. Yeah. Which is generally how I eat. So yeah, great scores across the board. Again, muscle gain of the diets we're gonna talk about is one of those things.

It wins there, yeah. Definitely. All right, last is intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting really has one hard rule, which is you eat in a window of four to eight hours. Okay. Now there's lots of different ways to do intermittent fasting. There's the one meal a day diet, right?

You don't eat all day. You have one big meal. Then there's a, you can only eat between noon and four or whatever. So generally speaking, it essentially means you eat within a eating window. And then there's really no other rules essentially with this. And people lose weight on this typically because they eat less calories because they're limited on when they can eat.

I still feel like it should be slowest or slower. Instead of fast. So fast. I mean, the whole time you're watching the clock and I mean, it's one of those things. It's great for awareness too about your own behaviors. So I mean, I would definitely score that. You know, and to again, so if this is something that's like an intermittent thing as it's named and you're bringing it in and you're doing a regular diet that you

have a little bit more flexibility with like I'm on board but again if it's something I'd probably low on the sustainability for me. I'm gonna give it a a four for fat loss a two for muscle gain. Yeah I mean you could sell me on that I was gonna go three and two yeah but you could sell me on that. Almost everybody initially loses weight. I just cuts her calories right away So black and white it's so black and white. It's so easy to follow. It's like I don't have a lot of rules I just have a window that literally reducing people to a window is mind-blowing how much that restricts calories Oh, yeah, I would I agree with you even longevity. I'd give it a pretty good score of a three and a half because

If you when you give the average person one rule, they tend to be able to stick to it better than we have. Simplicity wins, yeah. Several rules and here's the deal. Now I know people are like, what if they eat garbage? Of course that's bad, but when you look at the data, when your calories are low, what you eat within that calorie amount, a lot of the damage is taken care of because the calories are low. So this is why people on intermittent fasts, I lot of the damage is taken care of because the calories are low.

So this is why people on intermittent fasts, like I remember the one meal a day version of this, they just called it the warrior diet or one meal a day diet. People would eat the worst food, they'd be like, oh my God, I'm gonna eat a giant pizza plus a bowl of cereal. And they would have all these great benefits

with their blood lipids and all that stuff. Muscle gains gotta be low. Good luck trying to build muscle in a four hour. It's hard all day. It's hard to be up all day. You're not gonna squeeze all that protein in. And so, sustainability. So I'm flip-flopped on the way you're describing longevity

because I think sustainability is, for all the reasons you said, because it's simple, they can just follow a rule. Longevity to me is like, are you, health. Well, that's what I'm trying to say. What. Longevity to me is like, are you healthy? Yeah. Well, that's what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is when your calories are low, as fasting, one rule makes you just eat low calories,

then you tend to see health positives. You can eat a crappy food, but eat low calorie and you'll see benefits across the board. Generally. Yeah, generally. But then you start to see deficiencies after a while. So I can't give it a three and a see benefits across the board. Generally. Yeah, generally. But then you start to see deficiencies after a while. And so I can't give it a three and a half.

Maybe a three. Okay. Yeah, maybe a three on that for the longevity. And then sustainability, you know, this is a tough one because it's one rule. And so people like it as a result. And it's more flexible in terms of what you can eat. So that kind of makes me want to give it like a three

for sustainability. Yeah, yeah, no, I would have done two on longevity, three on sustainability, but you can you can push me to the... I'm kind of with you on that. I think it has like a shelf life in terms of like, you know, the longevity of it. If we had it's easy to do. If we had a category for spiritual health, which most people look at diets that way, fasting is the best because there is a- That's what it's based off of. That's what it's made for. Yeah, yeah. It's made for that. Now, of the diets, of the five that we went through,

I think we're probably all in agreement that paleo, as described, was the best one. It looks the best. If I had to give a diet, which I never did with my clients, I did in the early days when I was dumb, but really the diets became very individualized. Well, even if you said you can modify it,

I think that makes a lot of sense to use as your scaffolding. I think it's the close, all of us are the closest to that, even personally. Yes, yes. So not only rice in there, it's... Not only this is what we probably recommended or utilized with our own clients, it's what we, how we personally eat is something... Now, I think it is important to discuss this since we're here with this, it's just, I don't think any of us agree on any diets. I think that what you should- Especially for longevity. I give them all low scores.

So what I used to like to do with clients is I used to like to take them through all of these things. Yeah, you use a lot of information you use. Yeah, and I used to love to teach them and then I would get feedback from them, what they felt, what they noticed, what they liked, what they didn't like. And then from that, we would create what I thought was the best diet for them, right? It's like they would tell me, oh man, when I was on vegan, my energy felt better, this felt better, oh, my digestion, okay, it was probably the fiber and the greens we were getting,

so let's make sure we go after stuff like that. Man, when we were doing paleo, I felt like we were, I was just putting on muscle and I was building, Oh, that was because of all that high protein. We got to make sure we do that. I was like, yeah, but then when I was running the I one, I felt like I had the Mediterranean had more energy. Well, yeah, that's cause we're getting way more carbohydrates and stuff that were in there. So it's like teaching the client what they're noticing and feeling from each diet and why those, why they have worked or why they have so much popularity. And then learning how to build that around the individual is really what's going to be

sustainable. Otherwise, almost all diets fail. That's right. Almost all diets fall in that category of 80% of people fall off after a few months. Our first question is, what is the worst diet you have ever heard of? There's a lot of bad ones there's a lot of bad ones there's a cabbage diet and there's the pizza diet celery diet Okay, now let me ask you guys this so let's rephrase this

What's the worst diet you've actually ever had to try to work with? Where a client brought cuz I've never had a client with a cabbage diet or anything like that. Vegan. Vegan was up there. Vegan's the hardest. Always been the hardest. You know what I used to hate? I used to hate this, because we all managed the same gym at different times over there, the 24th Fitness

in South San Jose, and across the streets of the hospital. Oh, yes, I know what you're saying, the liquid only people? Yes, dude. I would get people coming in who needed to lose weight, and the doctor, and they weren't even good shakes. to lose weight and the doctor and they weren't even good shakes look at the ingredients they were terrible it's I had better stuff in there it was garbage and it was literally the doctors like oh I just drink this all day long this time I lose weight and I had to work with

these clients and my trainers had to work with these people yeah and I it was just and I now and I'm battling their doctors you never want to do as a trainer that was the worst I ever had to work with. Yeah, I can get behind that. I still think, I think the reason why that doesn't beat vegan for me still is because those people were told what to do, their doctors telling them, they had the shakes in the bars. It's what we had to work with.

It was like, I had, my job then at that point was, they're gonna follow the doctor saying, nutrition wise, I gotta go just train. You just do the exercise. When I used to get clients that would tell me, hey, I'm'm vegan I will only eat these things and then I got to figure it out and then you know what about this no don't eat that what about no it won't eat that oh don't like that. Oh my god it's just that was that was so difficult for me and that that's by choice right those people are choosing that diet what you're being told by your doctor, like yeah, that presents its own challenges and sucks.

So to me, vegan diet is the worst to work with. Do I even need to be on a diet to lose weight? No, but you do need to change your diet typically. Yeah, right. But you don't need to be on a diet. I mean, we just talked about a bunch of popular diets, but the truth is, if you start to make small changes and move towards better health, eating more protein, avoiding heavily processed foods,

paying attention to how food affects your digestion, not eating because you're stressed or because you're anxious or because whatever, but rather just because you're actually hungry. If you start to make small changes over time, then you'll have a sustainable, individualized style diet. Also consider this, whatever works for you now may not work for you all the time because your body changes, your lifestyle changes, and circumstances change.

So learning these things about yourself, super important. I wanna write, I wanna create a diet called the Eat More Diet. And the way it works is that it's just, it's like I started to teach my clients later on, which is I would track their food and see what they were doing on a normal, not being good. Show me your Snickers bars and ice cream and

McDonald's, all the above. And then from there, uh, the way I would coach them is I would add to their diet. I would go after food. So I would love to write a diet that's called like the Eat more diet. And it's based off of assessing where you're at. And then seeing, oh, you under eat fiber, go eat more of this. Oh, you don't get enough protein, go eat more of this. And teaching people to go after the foods that their body needs nutritionally, or to support whatever their goal is, whether it's performance or building muscle,

nutritionally or to support whatever their goal is, whether it's performance or building muscle, and teach them how to go after nutritious foods that are supporting their goals versus diets that are all, which are traditionally centered around restricting and taking away. Next question, what's just one thing I can do with my diet that will have a really big impact? Okay, so historically, yeah, historically,

this just the one thing that I could have my clients do that had the most benefit, the biggest impact would be just avoid heavily processed foods. Avoid ultra processed foods, foods that are in boxes and wrappers, lots of ingredients, stick to whole natural foods, and let's just start there. And on average, okay, on average, my clients would lose between 10 to 15 pounds of body fat

from that alone. Literally just that alone, and then we would do other things afterwards. But just doing that alone, it worked, and they would always come to me and say, I don't know why I'm losing weight, I feel like I'm eating so much food. And that's because those ultra processed foods

that make you overeat, when you cut them out, you automatically cut your calories, you automatically increase things like protein intake just from doing that alone. Yeah, I would either say that or high protein. Because people going after high protein, it's really hard to overeat when you're hitting high protein foods.

But the processed foods, I think, we're all on the same page. Eliminating that is like the biggest factor. And it gives them still lots of flexibility on what they can choose to eat and everything, just on the same page. Eliminating that is like the biggest factor. And it gives them still lots of flexibility on what they can choose to eat and everything, just eliminating the processed foods. But that or go after high protein, those two things tend to be number one,

number two tips for me. In fact, those two tips by themselves and no other tips. Will handle most of everything. Will handle like 80 to 90% of your results for most people. 100%. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump.

Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefan Oh, and Adam's at Mind Pump. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com.

The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers

But at a fraction of the price the RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mind pump media.com If you enjoy this show Please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.