Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2832: The Exact 90-Day Blueprint to Transform Your Body (Diet, Training & Cardio Broken Down Week by Week)

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Stop winging it. Sal, Adam & Justin lay out the exact week-by-week blueprint they used with real clients to produce dramatic results in 90 days — covering what to eat, how to train, and how to structure your cardio so nothing is left to guesswork. Whether your goal is fat loss, muscle gain, or both, this episode gives you a complete, no-fluff action plan you can start today. Hey, real quick if you've been looking for a structured program to run alongside everything we're talking about today, we just launched Maps Push Pull Legs. There's a men's version and a women's version programmed differently, because they should be. Right now it's 40% off, and if you grab it during the launch window you also get three days of live coaching with one of our coaches, plus a free supplement guide. Go to mapsPPL.com and use the code PPL at checkout. Today's episode is also brought to you by Vuori. If you haven't tried their stuff yet — seriously, what are you doing. It's the best athleisure wear on the market. It looks clean enough to wear to work, it holds up in the gym, and it lasts. We've got you the best discount you'll find anywhere — 20% off at vuoriclothing.com/mindpump. Go to >> vuoriclothing.com/mindpump No code to receive 20% off your first order. Mind Pump Store Mindpumpstore.com   0:00 Intro 2:15 Why 90 Days Is the Perfect Target (and Why 30-Day Challenges Are Useless) 3:42 Week 1–2: Track First, Change Nothing — The Setup Phase 5:05 The Most Common Diet Mistakes Coaches See When Clients Start Tracking 6:39 The One Dietary Change That Fixes Almost Everything: Hit Your Protein 8:52 Why 1g of Protein Per Pound of Target Body Weight Is Optimal 11:03 Weeks 3–8: Build the Habit — Whole Foods, Consistent Protein, Feed the Body 13:07 Weeks 9–12: Adjust Calories Based on Your Goal (Cut or Bulk) 14:02 The Training Plan: 3 Days a Week of Strength Training, Broken Into 3 Phases 16:33 Phase 1 (Weeks 1–4): High Reps, Practice the Movement, Build the Habit 17:10 Phase 2 (Weeks 5–8): Go Heavier, Drop to 8–10 Reps 17:45 Phase 3 (Weeks 9–12): Heavy Compound Lifts, Low Reps, See How Strong You've Gotten 18:47 Why Compound Lifts Beat Isolation Work Every Time 19:13 The Most Underrated Training Tip: Longer Rest Periods = More Muscle 21:31 Cardio: Ditch the Treadmill, Just Hit 10,000 Steps a Day      

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 downloaded Fitness Health and Entertainment Podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we're going to show you. We're going to teach you diet, exercise strategies, everything you need to know to make amazing progress in the next 90 days. By the way, this episode, with this episode, we're launching a brand new program.

PPL, you ask for it. You got it. By the way, there's two versions of this program, one for men and then one for women. The programming is different. Women have a more higher emphasis on lower body volume, glute training, shoulder volume, men, it's more traditional. Now, because it's a brand new program, we're launching it right now, and it's 40% off. If you go to Maps, ppl.p.com, use the code PPL. you get the price slashed by 40%.

Also, if you sign up within the first few days of the launch, you can attend live coaching by one of the mind pump coaches. They're going to do three days of coaching, breaking down things like nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, really to help you become more consistent and maximize your progress through the program. We also include a supplement schedule guide, which will be free with this program.

Again, you can get all of that included 40% off, Maps ppl.com. The code is PPL. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor. Viori Clothing. This is the best at leisureware company in the world. You know who they are. It looks great. It lasts a long time. They have stuff for work, stuff for going out. And of course, clothes for the gym. And by the way, we have the link on the internet with the biggest discount for Viori.

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That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, you've got 90 days. You got 90 days to make incredible progress. That's three months, 12 weeks. We're going to talk about it right now. We're going to tell you exactly what you need to do to make some dramatic changes to your body in 90 days. Let's go.

Set up is key. how you get these first couple weeks going. Oh, yeah. No, good point. Very good point. And 90 days is enough time to make some decent changes. Hell yes. I hate it when people are.

Make a good dent for sure in 90 days. Yeah, I hate it when social media fitness influence like 30 days. Yeah, that's nothing. No, but three months, you can make some pretty decent changes the way you look and feel. So I think it's a reasonable target. But I like what you said, Adam, because you 100% need to set yourself up, properly. I think what's been of the biggest mistakes that someone would make going into

a 90 day let's say challenge or whatever or targeted focus is not knowing where they're starting. Not knowing and so for diet, that looks like tracking.

If you're trying to make a lot of progress in 90 days, you need to know what you're working with. Otherwise, you're going to be playing a lot of guesswork and trying to watch the mirror and the scale to see what's going on. And that'll waste a lot of time. Yeah. Well, the key to this too is when you, typically when someone gets started on like a 90-day kick or a goal that they set like this, they want to, and they decide, okay, I want to do this day one.

They want to right away start like the diet, start the workout. Eliminating everything. Yeah. And I really want the first week when I'm helping somebody through this, the same as it was the previous week, you know, as closely as possible. So in other words, what a typical week would. And that would include all bad eating or drinking habits. Don't change anything for the first. Yeah, because there's a, there's a very, the, one of the most powerful things of this week is just bringing awareness to what you were normally doing.

And as accurate as the more accurate this is, the more effective. Oh, yeah. The next 90 days will be. Oh, yeah. If you're like, I want to start today and we're telling you to track for a week or two, if you make any changes, it's not accurate. It needs to be what you normally do.

Because then we can see. When you look at your calories, when you look at your proteins, your fats, your carbohydrates, your fiber, when you're looking at those numbers, now you know, okay, this is my starting point. But if you make changes and then track, we have no idea. Well, and adherence is so much better because it's not so drastically different than what you're already doing. If you can figure out and assess exactly your patterns and then make some micro tweaks that will really, you know, be more advantageous for you, you know, you'll be able to ride that out a lot longer. No, let's talk about some of the most common things that I would find when I had somebody do this. Yeah, so let's pretend, right? So someone just tracked for, you know, seven days.

So they recorded, they got an app. What's your favorite app? I like Fat Secret. Okay. So Fat Secret or My Fitness pal, both are good apps. So they're entering in every day. What you do is you would enter everything you eat and drink in this app every single day. And so now at the end of the week, they know on a daily basis, here is what my calories,

are averaging my proteins, my fats, my carbohydrates, and my fibers. This is what I'm averaging. This is my starting point. And so what you were saying? Yeah, these are, I'll tell you the most common things that I would see. Almost always, we were under consuming protein, most people. High sugar, not enough fiber. A lot of your fat coming from saturated fat.

We'd have lower calorie days followed by huge, like kind of bench. days, yeah, swings. So it's like, you know, you have a day where you don't eat very much. Then also another day where you eat a thousand plus calories. And so these kind of these huge peaks in valleys and inconsistent days, just total calorie-wise, those are probably the most common things that I would see. And why this is so important is because if you try and tackle all of it, in my opinion, at once, you're less likely to be successful.

And so once I kind of get this picture. of, okay, this is where this client is at, I typically would want to focus on just one or two things in their diet that could really move the needle. And that almost always was the protein. That's right. Because it tended to start to make, even the other things that were really bad.

Like if I had somebody, let's say that hit all those things, which would happen sometimes, high sugar, high saturated fat, under-eating protein, inconsistent calories, getting them to just go after their protein target weight in grams of protein. So in other words, if you wanted to weigh 150 pounds, you'll get 150 grams of protein every day.

Just focusing on that every day consistently, started to make all those other things better. It's the best first thing to move. Yeah. Even if I didn't tell you, I want you to cut back on sugar or increase fiber or cut back on your saturated fat, I just said, okay, what we're going to do

for these first couple weeks is we're just going to really be consistent with every day hitting that 150 grams or 200 grams or whatever your target. body weight is in grams of protein every day, and then we'll reassess a couple weeks later. Yes, so 100%. I'd say probably 90% of everybody who's listening right now, who's never done this before, they're going to find that their daily protein is probably half or less of the, of the, what would be considered optimal. Now, why is one gram of protein per pound of target body weight? Optimal. Well, here's what the data shows. The data shows that when all of the things are controlled,

okay, so calories are controlled, exercise is controlled, everything else is the same. High protein builds more muscle and results typically a more fat loss. It also has a high satiety effect, meaning it does naturally tend to control appetite. On hormones, as far as its effect on hormones, it tends to blunt sugar spikes in the blood. Even if you eat sugar, even if you eat candy, if you eat after high protein meal, it blunts the response. So it improves insulin sensitivity,

which has far-reaching effects. So that first week you track, if your protein is below what we said, which it probably will be, unless you're somebody that always tracked, so you already know you're hitting that. Hit that, aim for it. and I would say do that and aim for it from whole natural foods, by the way.

It's far more effective to do it that way than to try and get it from protein shakes. Now, I'm not opposed to protein shakes, but save those for the end of the day. So if your goal is 150 grams of protein a day and you get to the end of the day and you've ate all the food that you're going to eat and you add it up, you're like, oh no, I'm at 120 or 100. Throw a shake on it to hit that number. I only do it at the end of the day. I want to add to that piece of advice because I agree with it. I'll tell you what more often than not I had to do with the client. Because under-eating protein was so dramatically different or difficult or new for this client for most people,

I typically would allow like the protein shakes in there at the beginning just to hit just to hit our target. And then the next goal or layer is, okay, now we've got to do it from. Yeah, now let's see if we can do this from Whole Foods. Because a lot of times it's quite a bit of a leap for somebody who tracks for their first week and then realizes for the first time ever that what they thought was high protein was only about 70 grams of protein a day. And oh my God, their way under eating that. And then I go, I want you to eat, you know, all that through whole foods. And that becomes daunting to them because it's like double the amount of protein they were used to eating. So it's like, okay, we can include a shake, but

understand that the ultimate goal is to get where you're going. And honestly, why I like that is because it gives them little steps. And they'll see somebody who under eats protein grossly like most people do I find in this situation just by adding a shake every day at the end of the day or whatever time. They all of a sudden start seeing progress from their strength training that they're not used to because their body's getting more of what it needs. And then eventually we start to progress to where we try and eliminate that and may get it all through whole food. Yeah.

So the next, you know, between three, you know, to maybe eight weeks. What you're trying to do now is just hit protein. Now, this will work well for you if your protein was under, which most of you will be, when you first track, whether or not your goal is to build muscle or lose body fat or both. It works for everybody. Okay. So increasing the protein will help you if you're trying to lose body fat. It'll also help you if you're trying to build muscle.

And so that would be a great place to start from weeks, let's say, three to eight. After that, we're going to make another adjustment. Once you get towards the end of this, probably starting at week eight or nine, now we're going to adjust again. And here's where you make a calorie adjustment based on your goal. I want to lose more body fat or only gain more muscle. Now you increase or decrease your calories based on your goal. And that would be the next place, I'd say. Yeah, the one thing I would add to the three to eight weeks, because I think the weeks one and two, it's a lot of like tracking, calibrating, like, okay, figuring out how I'm going to eat that many grams of proteins.

they're probably having to do a shake whole time. Weeks three through eight are, in my opinion, the goal that you are giving them of like, I know that when I'm starting with somebody on a drink like this, three to eight, a lot of that is working towards these perfect days of all whole food all through protein. And I also know that tends to, if they can start stretching days in a row of all whole foods hitting their protein take, their calories kind of take care of themselves and land where they're supposed to be. And then the next thing I'm communicating regarding diet during these three to eight weeks is actually feed the body. Because we're strength training, right?

And we'll get to the strength training part. You're hungry. Yeah. If you're hungry, eat. Like, I actually want that. Regardless of where these calories are, regardless of the goal is, I want that body fed. And I want you to start listening to your body is now trying to build muscle. We're finally giving it protein like it's supposed to.

Your meals are starting to look more balanced. If you tell me you're hungry, go eat. just eat how we're eating, which is these protein-centric meals and their whole foods. That's kind of the conversation. And I find that if you do that for those first three to eight weeks, when we get to that final nine to 12 weeks, we're set up to really do whatever you want to do, which is if someone is aggressively trying to build, it's like, okay, add three, 500 calories. If someone's like, okay, I really want to lean out, now we cut calories from wherever that was.

And if we did a good job in weeks three through eight on the person who started this, journey with like a say like eventually like some sort of a fat loss or leaning or like your body recomp or whatever they should have gotten themselves up to a good calorie place that we can adjust just by listening to the prep and consistency is going to be really challenging and so to be able to keep hitting that for the three to eight week marks is going to be huge that's right and that's the hardest part about this is just being consistent with it is can you consistently prepare your meals and eat whole foods and and try and have every day your protein intake come from that. And it doesn't mean if you have a day or two

that you had to use a shake or not, like, oh, the whole program's out the window or you fail. It's just that optimally, that's what we're shooting for. We're shooting for as many 100% days in a row that we can. And the better job you do with that, the more success you'll have with this blueprint that we're laying out. Totally. Now let's talk about the workout. Okay. So what's the workout look like? We're going to focus on the strength training because strength training is easily the most important form of exercise when it comes to changing the way your body looks, both just shape but also body composition. It's a very effective form of exercise.

Most of you are going to want to do about three days a week of strength training, okay? Most of you, three days a week will be working out in the gym. And the way you're going to probably want to break this up is into three blocks or phases. And the phases don't have to have different exercises. They can. but for most of you, you're going to do better off by looking at the weight and the rep ranges. And you're going to be messing with the rep ranges.

So in the beginning, it's a good idea to start with a higher rep range. I'm trying to hit 12 to 15 reps. I'm going to pick a weight that is challenging. So if you hit 14 reps or 13 reps on your exercise, it's something that you might have been able to do 14 or 15 reps. In other words, intensity is very important. Okay. So you're not going to train to absolute 4. failure, meaning you can't do another rep, but you're going to get close to failure with each

of your sets. And we're going to start here at about 12, around 12 to 15 reps. And we're going to start here because we want good technique, good form, and we're trying to build a little bit of strength stamina as we move into the later. Well, it's good, too, because then you'll be able to see when the breakdown occurs, which is good feedback for when you really start to kind of build up that load. So now when you get the lower rep ranges, it's like, okay, I know that, you know, my form, I start getting fatigued around here, but adding that in, that extra bit of stress, it's like, okay, I have a better gauge of, like, what that looks like.

I really like this first phase being focused on the high rep for the reason that we, we tend to give a lot of the people that call in, which is, you know, approach your workouts as like practice. Instead of this, you know, oh, I heard that if I do this to failure and what about these drop sets and all these, all these gimmicks to gain, you know, a little bit more result. from your workout versus go into the gym, you know, your handful of movements you're supposed to do for the day, do enough reps, 10 to 15 rep range, where you're doing it enough times that you can get good at it.

You could practice it. And that's kind of what you're thinking about as you get to it. It's like, this first phase is, it's all novel to me. I wasn't consistent before this. I'm just now starting to dial my diet in. I'm now doing all these movements

consistently three days a week. I'm just going to practice these movements right now. I'm just going to get good at them. And just feeding the body properly, paired with a good signal of strain training, is going to start to recalibrate that body, start to build muscle, start to move in the right direction. And so approach those workouts with that mentality, with this, I'm getting good at these movements. You're building momentum, really. That's right.

Then you get into weeks five to nine, and now you're going to go heavier. You're going to add weight to the bar, to the dumbbells. And now your rep ranges are going to be lower. Now we're looking between 8 to 10 reps, moderate reps. So instead of 13 reps or 14 reps, I'm going for 8 or 9 reps, and I've got heavier weight on the bar. You don't need to change the exercises. In fact, most people would be better off keeping the exercises pretty much the same throughout this entire program. I'm just going heavier now.

And the feel is different. The intensity feels very different. It doesn't feel as exhausting, but it just feels heavier and harder as I'm going through the lifts. And then the last phase, which is after week nine, now I'm going heavy and I'm adding more weight and I'm sticking to about six reps. And this is where I can have fun. And by this point, your protein intake is high. Everything's feeling good. And if you're in a cut, this will help preserve muscle.

If you're in a bulk, this is going to help build muscle. And now I'm trying to see how strong I can get in these low rep ranges. Now, it's important to focus on mostly compound lifts. Okay, so most of the exercises you're going to do are going to be the ones that involve more than one joint. These are your deadlifts and your squats and your bench presses and your rows and your overhead presses. And you can sprinkle in some isolation exercises, but the bulk and the majority of your workout should be compound lifts. They're just more effective, more bang for your buck. They're going to give you way better results for the same time spent.

Now, if you want to spend two or three times as much time in the gym, you could try some of those other exercises, I don't know why you would. You're not going to be as effective and you're going to spend twice as much time in the gym. Get those, focus on those compound lifts. Get good and get strong at them. If you get really strong at squats, dead lifts, presses, presses, presses, by the end of this program, you're going to look very different. I would argue if you have the time to spend in the gym more than the typical person, then what would serve you more than doing these other exercises is actually giving yourself longer rest periods between sets. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I see people do when they get into a strength training routine is this getting through the exercises too fast, almost chasing a sweat or fatigue so they feel like it's really challenging.

Longer rest periods make strength training more effective. Yes. People think it's stronger. People believe rest periods are necessary so I can rest because I need the rest. and once I feel like I can go again, I should go again. No, that's not the case. Longer rest periods, okay? So three-minute rest periods, four-minute rest periods,

you're stronger on the next set. It's more effective for building muscle. That's what we want. We want to send a muscle building signal. We're trying to speed through the workout. What Adam is saying is not to make the workout easier for you. It's to allow you to lift heavier. Exactly.

Okay, and it makes apply more intensity. It works. It's far more effective. now a lot of people might be bored by this because they're so used to doing circuits and group classes and stuff like that. It's not what we're doing here. You want your body to look different. You want to see radical change. Build some muscle. Build some shape. Build some skull. I mean, if you're listening to this and you've never tried this before, I challenge you to pay attention to a lift that you're very familiar with that you've done before, ideally like a compound lift

that you've done, and see what your rest period is at. Typically, a lot of people are resting like 90 seconds, to under three minutes. It's normally in that range. And if you fall in that range that I'm saying right now, and you've never rested for four minutes before between sets, I urge you to just, and to just do it and see how much more weight you can potentially put on the bar. Or reps you can do.

And so it's wild. It is wild. And this is why you'll see, you always know when a power lifter is working out. Because the power lifter will take these long breaks. Five, eight minutes. Yeah, yeah. Bring a lawn chair out.

Oh, yeah. You'll see him sit down. They're messing around with their knee. wraps are doing all chocking up they're messing with their shoes and all i mean they're just they'll be waiting way between sets before they go do these sets and allowing themselves to fully recover and go after that and that's part of how they get really strong and so many people have been taught to do this like high intensity low rest period keep it moving do more exercises more stuff you would be far better serve to do less exercises, longer rest periods, and load the bar with more weight than you

would be to get more exercises done. You're just going to get better results. Now, as far as cardio is concerned, a little bit of cardio is perfectly fine, but most of you would be well suited. Just trying to track your steps, an easy step counter on your phone or a pedometer, very inexpensive, and just, you know, 10,000 steps today. Eight to 10,000 a day. If you hit that, you're doing great in combination with the strength training, in combination with the diet advice, start this now in 90 days, you're going to look and feel radically different. Another way to do steps that I like to do, because you broke this up in like these, you know, these three phases or whatever over the course that time is every one of those is doing an

increase of about 2,000 steps. So depending on wherever anybody is out, six to eight to 10. Yeah. So just where most the average American only moves about 4,000 steps. And so it's like as you move through each of the phases that we just talked about, like the phases of weeks one to two, weeks three to eight, then weeks nine to 12. It's like, I'm bumping you two thousand walking steps a day every time all the way through that. And you can depending on, if you're someone who's really low, maybe you can afford to go two to three thousand steps.

If you're already somebody who's at the eight, nine thousand, maybe it's just two thousand steps. But the goal is to just create more movement and activity through your day doing that in conjunction with the diet and the training. Look out. That's right. And by the way, we have a brand new Maps workout program called Maps PPL, push, pull legs. It's a three-day-a-week strength training program. Day one is push muscles, then you've got pull muscles, then legs.

This is also the first time we've taken a program and made a men and women's version. So the programming is slightly different for women, more lower body focus and glute focus than the men's version. So if you want to get this program, again, it's 40% off. What you do is go to Maps ppl.com. The code is PPL that gets you 40% off. Plus you get the bonus supplement schedule guide. plus you get the three days of coaching with a Mind Pump coach.

It's all included. Again, it's Maps. PPL.com, the code PPL, 40% off and all that of the stuff is included. Also, you can find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump media. We'll see you there. 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 Superbundle 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.