Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2827: The 90-Day Nutrition Strategy That Actually Works

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

When it comes to fitness, most people think training is the hard part… but it's actually nutrition that holds them back. In this episode, the guys break down why diets fail, why generic meal plans don't work, and the real reason people struggle to stay consistent. They dive into the psychology behind eating habits, how to build sustainable nutrition strategies, and why personalization is the key to long-term success. They also introduce a practical approach to building "anchor meals," navigating real-life challenges like travel and time constraints, and how to finally create a plan you can stick to for the long haul. If you've ever struggled with consistency, motivation, or knowing what to eat… this episode will change how you approach nutrition forever. AND if you still need help after this episode we have a deal for you ! ⬇ 50% Nutrition Call (Originally $99) - 45 minute call with a Mind Pump Trainer MindPumpNutrition.com Code: April50 expires Friday April 3rd   This episode is brought to you by Legion ⇨⇨go to buylegion.com/mindpump Code "MINDPUMP" for buy one, get one 50% off for new customers, and 20% cash back for returning customers!   00:00 Intro + Sponsors + Nutrition Coaching Offer 01:40 Why Nutrition Is Harder Than Training 05:00 Why Generic Meal Plans Fail 08:00 Reverse Dieting & Why People Get Stuck 10:30 Building Nutrition Around Your Lifestyle 13:00 The Power of "Anchor Meals" 18:00 The 4 Biggest Nutrition Challenges (Travel, Time, Stress, Missed Meals) 20:30 Real-World Strategies for Staying Consistent 22:30 Behavioral Psychology & Eating Habits 23:40 What You Get From a Nutrition Coaching Call 24:20 90-Day Plan Breakdown + How to Get Started  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most listened to podcast in the history of the world when it comes to fitness and entertainment and lifestyle. That's right. This is Mind Pump. All right, today's episode we talk about working on nutrition with a coach.

Here at Mind Pump, we have coaches that help people and they coach them with nutrition and personal training. And what we're offering right now is a call, a 45-minute call with a real mind-pump coach. And what you leave with is 90 days planned out, 90 days of macros, of calories, and strategies for you, individualized for you. Go to mind-pumpnutrition.com. Use the code April 50.

That makes it 50% off regularly priced at $99, but you get it for half off if you use that code. Now, this episode is brought to you by Legion. Legion is a supplement company that is expertise in fat loss and muscle gain, athletic performance. All products are third party tested. Everything that the bottle says is in the bottle is in the bottle. It's great.

It's the highest quality supplements you can get. That way you're not wasting your money. Anyway, go check them out, get a discount. Go to buy legion.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump. You can buy one, get one 50% off. And again, one more time. If you want to work with one of our coaches,

want to do that call with the coach to get the next 90 days planned out for you, go to mindpumpnutrition.com, use the code April 50 to make it 50% off. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstor.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. When it comes to fitness, the exercise part is actually the easy part.

it's the diet. That's the hardest part, which is why mind pump is now offering coaching nutrition calls with a mind pump coach. We're going to start doing that now. We're going to talk all about it. I would argue even more than just that.

It's the behavioral psychology that comes along with the nutrition. That's why it's a lot. Right? I mean, it's like there's layers. There's layers to this. Totally. Which is it's not as simple as like,

hey, here's the math equation or here, go follow this thing. Which is, I mean, admittedly, when I was a young trainer when we first started, that's what we did. Like, you get a client. You need on that. Yeah. Someone, I would assess them. I would go to my book and I would break down their weight and then estimate their activity level and then, you know, their height, all

those things. And it's just like, okay, and how many times we're working out and their goal. And it's like, okay, here's your macro breakdown. And then go from there and go like, what foods do you like? You know, like, okay, then here's your meals and this is what they look like, you know? Remember the meal plans that we used to spit out? I do. I do remember how ridiculous they were.

Generic. They were ridiculous, too. Diet's really hard. One and a half saltine cracker. Half an orange. Two almonds. You can't have a full thing of almond. Yeah.

Two. Half a table spoon of peanut butter. You know, here's the thing. Like, there's a lot of confusion around exercise and fitness. There's more confusion around diet. There's so much confusion. Yeah. Around what works, what doesn't work.

Is it, you know, eating this much protein? Is it an animal? Is it vegan? Is it, you know, keto? Is it paleo? So much more. response to all this. Like, what are the good, what's bad?

Is gluten bad? Like, what's the deal? Like, there's so much confusion. And so guidance around nutrition is so important. And, you know, historically, we've never really offered, you know, coaching or guidance on nutrition. We just didn't. And recently, over the last year and a half, we've moved into this direction.

And we now have, how many coaches do we have? 22. We have 22 coaches that work for Mind Pump now. And they're handpicked and they're really good. And they follow our philosophy. understanding. And a lot of what they do is they help people with nutrition. And what we wanted to do is have kind of some like some introductory. Like, okay, you can buy a workout program from us and they're great. But can we offer something to where you get on a call with a real coach and you

spend some time with them and you leave with a good starting point, like a good starting point understanding and strategy that could take you for the next, you know, three months or 12 weeks. Yeah, I mean, it requires a pretty long conversation to get all those details out and be able to actually construct a legit, focused plan for somebody. And I think that's why we haven't really just slapped on some generic advice on a lot of our maps programs because it's individualized. It requires a conversation. Well, that's, I mean, the workout program can be very direct and straightforward for most people.

I mean, even that has some modifications, but to individualize it a little bit. But diet's always individualized. But diet is very new. In fact, diet you can have two people, same weight, same body fat percentage, same amount of movement throughout the week, same goals. And their diets are completely different. And the strategy at which you approach their diet could look very different. And a lot of that has to do with the behavioral psychology, where they're currently starting from. Their history.

Yeah. Body dysmorphia, relationship. relationship with food, all this stuff. Even just the food you like. Yeah. It's so different. Well, that matters, yeah. Of course it matters.

Well, even that, like, that was, man, I remember when I completely shifted from that of from the trainer who would write meal plans to completely switching over to, no, I want you just to tell me what you eat first. And then I'll make modifications to that versus me saying, like, this is what's ideal. because I realized how unsuccessful riding a meal plan was. Maybe it was, I thought it was successful at first because if you had somebody who had adhere to it, they could see results. So you had someone ridiculous enough to follow the half of orange and two almond type of funny macro split things that would spit out from the computer. You know, and they were crazy, disciplined enough to actually do that stuff.

They could get to maybe their results, but then they inevitably always, because who's going to live that way for everyone? Like nobody's going to do that forever. Yeah. And who wants to live that way forever? And so quickly realized that I had to learn to build nutrition plans around somebody's current lifestyle and how they ate already and give them tools and layer those on, not just like, hey, go follow this thing. It's like, here's the one thing we're going to do, then this thing, then that thing.

Totally. And when you start to figure out the nutrition part, everything really does fall into place because it plays such a big role. in energy, strength, fat loss, of course, how you feel, digestion, all those different things. And so it just makes a huge impact, but it's also very difficult. You know, we have coaching where, you know, a lot of our coaches that trainers work with people regularly. Like, somebody will work with them for a year or two years or six months or nine months.

But what we wanted to do is have something kind of introductory. Like, okay, fine. Maybe you're not going to work with someone for a while, but can you meet with someone once, get on the phone and they can construct a good starting point, point and scaffold. A nice kind of plan for you that's individualized based off some of the stuff that we talked about that you can follow for the next 12 weeks and have an idea of where to go. I mean, this is really important for any goal, but like reverse dieting is where people get really confused. Yeah.

We talk about reverse dieting on the podcast. Oh, I would say that's, I know. I would say if I had to put a number on it, that's 80% of our clientele. Yeah. I'd say 80% of our clientele have listened to the podcast long enough, recognize that they are over-trained, underfed. They've been in, they're in a plateau for a really long time. How do we construct this?

Yes. So they know that they need to move that direction, but how do they specifically do it from where they're currently at is where they tend to get lost or uncertain. Yeah, because the strategy with averse dieting is, let's build some muscle and boost your metabolism, set you up for some fat loss later on in an effective way. And the question is always like,

how, okay, fine, eat more, how much more, when do I continue to change that? What should I expect? I don't want to gain a bunch of body fat. How long do I do this? Yeah. That's right. And so some structure, man, it makes a big, big difference. And so these are some of the things that the coach will go over with you when you meet with them.

Obviously, they're going to go over your goal. And this is very important. Obviously, for me to have a good idea of what direction we're going to go, I need to know what your fitness goal is. Are we looking at fat loss? Are we looking at strength gain? Are we looking at metabolism boost, athletic performance? Is it just for longevity? Yeah, like what's the main goal?

And that's kind of the starting point. And then you want to start to individualize based off of like biggest obstacles, which is different from person to person. Right. You know, you'll hear somebody say something like, oh, biggest obstacle for me is time. I don't have a lot of time. I'm very rushed.

Or an obstacle might be, boy, when I get home from work, this is when things go kind of crazy. Or I travel all the time. Or, you know, these are, these are, they're all quite individual. And so what our coaches are trained to do is look at your goal and your biggest obstacles and then kind of start to figure out how to work around those things for you. Well, this is, I think, the part that I'm what I meant by, I think, you start to realize, like, okay, this is someone's behaviors and patterns and the things

that they're most challenged with. If I just lay them out some plan that they have to completely reconstruct their lifestyle around that, it's almost inevitably going to fail. And so a good coach has the ability to go like, okay, what I'm hearing from this client is I'm never going to get them to not go out to eat at lunchtime or rarely ever are they ever going to prep their meal ready for that. So I need to know what are some options in our area and figure out like, okay, let's figure out what fits into that.

And helping them solve that so they have a go-to option. Now, of course, ideally we're always going to recommend a whole, foods and that you make your meals. But as a good coach, you have to recognize or be prepared for that client that that is going to be really difficult to. And it doesn't mean you have to completely fall off the wagon or you've failed. There's ways to work around that. And so adjusting that, that would be an obstacle example. That's right. There's also, let's look and see what's already working with your diet. You know, maybe you do start out the day great with a good high protein breakfast. Later on is when things fall apart. Well, let's focus on why that's working and let's

work around that. Or maybe you do a good job with avoiding certain foods. You just have challenges in other directions. So we're going to look at what's already working because that's also an important piece of information that we need to make this, to make you leave with the plan that's going to work for you. I'll give you an example of something you've probably heard me communicate on the podcast many times. This is why this is a tip that I communicate so often is in my experience, one of the things I've found is working for a lot of people or that people are pretty good at is preparing their dinner. Yeah. Great point.

People tend to like if. That's the one meal people. Yeah. If I could say there's a consistent positive theme in all challenged clients, right, getting to the results, most of them would be like, well, I do, I make dinner. You know, so we come home and we do that. And so a lot of the, one of the tips that you hear me communicate a lot is, hey, teaching that client to make, two dinners or double the size or four times the size and then that now becomes the breakfast with a couple eggs cracked over. It's like this huge unlock for people that have never thought of

it like that. And it's like you've already trained. This is already a behavior. You're doing well. You love meat. You enjoy making a dinner. Like you like the rice, sweet potatoes, white potatoes. Those are all like choices you love and you don't mind. We're already cooking and prepping. You're adding on to what they're already consistent with. Yeah. Instead of it being just one pound of ground beef, make two or three pounds of ground beef. And instead of it, one, two, two, cups of rice. Now you're making six cups of rice. And then now you've got this meal that can be ready for you in the morning time for you eat and you can crack two eggs over it, be ready to go in three minutes. Or that becomes lunch for the next day. And so that's an example of like what I have

commonly seen is something that seems to be working for a lot of people is they, they tend to have an easier time making a good choice for dinner. And so I've found ways to build that to help them be successful for breakfast. That's a great point. That's actually often how I meal prep. Most, lot of my meal prepping looks like a big dinner. Yep. And then the leftovers become two or three meals that I have the next day. And it's typically how. That's what our, so this is what our, people have asked this before.

You know, I hear you talk about how you meal prep on Sundays, right? So Sundays are my grill days. And I grill a lot of meat. That typically only lasts us, though, until about Wednesday. Yeah. Then Wednesday night, Katrina and I or Katrina tends to make a huge meal, you in. And that takes you for the next, you know, three to four days again. us there. And so that's a strategy

that has worked really well for us to be successful, prepare because obviously if I prepare on Sunday by Friday, that food's not very good. I'm not a big fan of eating something that's five days old or whatever like that. But it'll get me at least till Wednesday and then Wednesday if we cook

again a meal and then we just, and that's like that's why I love ground beef because you can make it in bulk and it's real easy. That tends to be kind of a ground beef meal. Or we, a lot of times we'll do tacos and I'll do taco salad and then I'll have that taco meat is what I had this morning. I don't know if you saw...

If you saw what... So what I did this morning, today, literally, was last night, Katrina and Max and I had, they had tacos. I had a big old taco salad. And then we had, we made bulk of ground turkey.

And then what I did was through beans that are already cooked from a can, added it to that with some rice, sprinkle some cheese over it. And then this morning, so that was my lunch. And then this morning, I cracked two eggs over it.

It becomes, it's like a breakfast. And so these are examples, just some examples of not only how I've applied it to myself, but how a trainer, when you get on calls and you learn from the client, like, what are the things that they're doing really well and working? It's like, okay, I can work with this. I can, so how you're doing this and it's like, becomes huge unlocks for people. And it's not asking them to do something so out of the ordinary for them. And then why that's so important is the success rate of them being consistent on those.

Which actually leads to this other part that our coaches do a really good job of doing is they help in this call. They help people put together what it called inker meals. So these are like five or six kind of go-to meals. Yes. And why is this important? Because here's the thing. Meal plans, there is a positive to meal plans. Now I don't like meal plans where I'm like, this is what you're eating for the next 12 weeks every single day.

Like that doesn't work. But the value with meal plans, oftentimes for people, people was, oh, this is what 45 grams of protein or 30 grams of protein, 50 grams of carbs and 20 grams of fat looks like. Like, you know, if I'm working within these parameters, what does a meal look like for these parameters for me, right? And so what they'll do on this call is they'll put together five or six anchor meals. And these are meals, these are your go-to meals.

These are meals that you can go to and know that it's balanced. It's going to fit within what my goals are. And I'm going to be able to work with these meals through the next 12 weeks. Especially for people like me that aren't so creative with eating food. I'm like, I just want a few staple meals that'll carry me. But I mean, then too, that gives you like a good consistent framework. So then you can kind of vary off of that down the road. But to have those and know exactly like portioning-wise and what works best for you to start off is great.

I don't know who coined Anchor Meals first, but I love that term. Yeah. Because this is what it looks like in my house is every month we have our big. Costco grocery shopping list. And then we have our like kind of weekly where we get like vegetables and fruit. Yeah. Small orders. And in the big Costco run is when Katrina and I normally talk to each other and go like,

hey, what do you want? And we don't use the term anchor meals, but I love anchor meals. You know, what are the four or five major meals that we're going to make? Because she's going to go buy that in bulk because she goes to Costco. Exactly. And so that sets us up for the entire month of like, okay, these are all the main rotation. It doesn't mean we don't have things outside.

of that, it's like if I have a good solid four to five go-to-five go-to-meals this month, and we like to rotate that. That's right. It's like this, all this month, we're eating these. And then the next month it might be a different four or five anchor meals. But that's the big Costco run that we do when we first start the month off. And then everything is kind of built around that. Boy, does it just

makes it easy. Simplified. And these are meals that you'll eat that you like, fit within what your fitness goals are. Like here, it's just some options, like some ideas. Like these are my, I have my anchor meals. And they typically look like this. There's ground beef and rice or ground beef and baked potato or tri-tip and sweet potato. I always have frozen broccoli. So we'll make a big batch of frozen broccoli that I can mix in with all of that.

Or it's also land chops and gluten-free pasta with pesto. That's like four options that every month I'm going to have a decent amount of times. They're delicious. I know what the macros and calories generally look like. They work for what my goals are. they're healthy, the rest of my family eats them. Yeah. And so what you're going to leave with,

and this can be very individualized, you guys. So it's not going to be what I said, because that's mine. Right. But what your coach is going to help you do in this call is put together these anchor meals so that you have a plan. Not having a plan with nutrition is very difficult. It's very difficult to navigate without a plan. Otherwise, in that case, you're left to your own devices.

You're left to eating out. That's when things go haywire. Yep. But when you have these kind of anchor setups, these meals that are your go-to, it makes a big difference with you being, consistent with good eating. And now there are four, this is what we've identified ourselves

as trainers and that our coaches have identified as the four kind of areas of stress or areas of challenge when it comes to nutrition. The first one is travel. Travel makes things very difficult. So, okay, what do I do when I travel?

Well, let's come up with some strategies and options for you when you travel. For example, you could double the size of protein, cut the source of carbohydrates down in half or only choose one source of carbohydrates. In other words, I might order a meal that is chicken, rice, and it comes with bread. Well, I'm going to only have the rice.

I'm going to cut out one of the carbs sources and I'll double the chicken type of deal. Other strategies are, all right, well, let's look at the areas you travel to and let's find... Research and come up as good options for you that is going to fit within what your fitness goals are. Let's set you up for breakfast. This is a tough one.

Sometimes travel, for me at least, when I travel, the most difficult meal tends to be breakfast. So are there shake options I can take with me in the morning? Or are there options at a hotel that I can set myself up with? And it makes a big difference. Well, I think this was the motivation behind the DoorDash guide that we created not that long ago was so many of our coaches and trainers found that this was one of the challenges that clients are flying, traveling.

We have a lot of clients that do business and have to fly a lot. And so how do we help them with a tool like DoorDash to give them good options? And so that was the real motivation originally was to serve our clients. And then we figured, oh, we may as well give it away as a free guide to our audience. And so that's how that happened. That happened because so many of our coaches, this is one of the number of the challenge. And so it's an easy way. And they just needed something that they can lean on to.

It's like, okay, I'm in this city now. Pull up DoorDash. What's around me? Okay, look at the guide. Okay, here's something like that. And again, this is individualized because this is a call you're going to make with your coach. So they're going to work with you specifically. another one, this is probably the most common one,

is this short on time. What are some quick meals that I can put together and eat when I'm in a rush? Breakfast is a big one. What's a fast, quick, high protein or breakfast that works with my goals? What about lunchtime? Oftentimes I'm in meetings or oftentimes I'm, you know, I got 10 minutes to eat.

What does that look like? What are good short on time options for me so I don't go off the rails? when I'm trying to eat in a way that, you know, accomplishes my goals. This is helpful, yeah, because, I mean, that's usually where most people slip. Totally.

When they're, like, reaching, there's nothing there, you know, immediately all that's around you are, like, snack options and you're processed food. This is where it goes back to kind of what I was sharing with what, how Katrina and I do it is. I mean, she works a lot. I work a lot. We're busy.

We have a kid. So we're on, we are on the go and we move a lot. And so what has worked really well is that, that dedicating that Sunday afternoon or evening towards, you know, prepping for the first three days and then Wednesday. That way it's like I'm only really carving off two days where I have to focus on that and then the rest of the time I can fill in the gaps and cooking it.

Well, so this, I'll just, again, this is a personal one. So this is all individualized. Again, you're on a call with a coach for yourself. But just in my example, so I have like a, I have a 16-year-old daughter. She plays sports. The morning, trying to get her to spend extra time to make breakfast is like, good luck. If you have teenagers, you know what that's like. But she's also pretty focused on her fitness.

She's pretty focused on being good or being able to perform at her sport. And so we've come up with a great option for her in the morning. What it looks like is those high protein yogurts. And so she'll have a couple of those throw some berries in there. And she's like, this could be breakfast. I'm like, yeah, you got 35 grams of protein with some berries. You've just started your day off with a good breakfast rather than skipping breakfast or getting a pastry or something like that. So another one is stress eating.

This is a big one. Like, what about strategies around stress eating? How do I identify when I'm in that place, what the types of foods I want to reach for? Can I avoid eating with stress when I'm stressed? Or what are better options? You know, when I'm stressed out, I tend to like to eat sweets. Are there good options that I can put together that fit within my fitness goals that will kind of satisfy what I'm looking for?

And again, the coach is going to individualize this around the things that you're challenged with. Some of that, too, is just a good coaching on the call, too, that you'll get from them is, is, if a client expresses that they get poor sleep and all that, sometimes just communicating them, the awareness around that. And we've talked about this on the podcast before is like, hey, be prepared for the day that you know you get poor sleep. The cravings are going to be harder than before. And a lot of times, me just communicating to my client and letting them know that that is something to be aware of helps them with that. It's like, when you know it's coming, like, oh, man, I got. portion today. Today is going to be that day or that thing that I have a hard time to kicks in. And so having stuff prepared or even again, just being aware of it and no,

it's like, okay, I can, I'm not going to do it today because I know that I want it so bad. And tomorrow that'll pass and it won't be that way. That awareness and that coaching from somebody who hears that from a client who expresses that is huge. That's right. And then the last one, one of the more common ones again is, what if I miss a meal? Okay. I'm supposed to be reverse dieting. I'm supposed to eat 2,200 calories. I just missed lunch. What do I do now? Do I just go eat a huge meal? Do I plan it out later? Do I make up for it tomorrow? Do I just chalk it up? What does this look like for me? And so again, strategies around these challenges, which are individualized, which again, the coach will be helping you with on this call. And here's what

you're going to leave with with this call. So it's a 45-minute call. It's with a real coach. It's not AI. It's a real mind-pump coach that we, again, we handpick. And after you leave the that call, here's what you're left with. You have a calorie and macro structure with individualized advice for the next 90 days. That's what you're going to leave with. You're going to leave with a 90 day plan of how can I do this reverse diet, cut, bulk, athletic performance, longevity, whatever your goal is, you're going to leave with a 90 day plan on how you can eat to help you accomplish your goals. Now, here's what we did for this is we made these calls 50% off. So the normal price, if you want to meet with a coach for 45 minutes to get all this,

it's $99. But if you go to mindpumpnutrition.com, use the code April 50, it's 50% off. So it thinks like $48.50 is what it'll cost you for this call with a Mind Pump coach. And again, you'll leave with the next 90 days planned out for you. 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 Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle 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 Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at Mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.