Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1245: Why Meal Plans Suck

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the pitfalls of meal plans. The unpopular statement, why all meal plans suck. (2:58) The mistakes the guys made in their early days of personal training when it came to providing meal plans to their clients. (5:15) Why MOST people cannot stick to a meal plan. (11:52) Challenging the trainer to not go the lazy route. (15:46) Is following a meal plan long-term considered a disordered form of eating? (19:09) What restricted eating can promote. (20:26) It is NOT for me. (26:56) Real-life changes, so change your routine. (31:19) How the answers are NOT what will give you success, it’s how you GET to the answers that will give you success. (32:58) Tips to build long-term results and change behaviors. (36:30) Nutrition is individualized. (43:28) Related Links/Products Mentioned March Promotion: MAPS Powerlift ½ off! **Code “POWER50” at checkout** Food, We Need To Talk : NPR Pica | National Eating Disorders Association Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump TV - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Food, We Need To Talk (@foodweneedtotalk) • Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Saldas Defano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You know, us here at Mind Pump, we really enjoy the podcast space. There's some phenomenal podcasts out there outside of, of course, your favorite podcast, Mind Pump. And we found a new one that we really, really enjoy. In fact, one of the hosts, Yuna Jada, was actually a Mind Pump fan.

I've actually been on their podcast, but it's a very well done podcast that revolves around food and health. It's exceptional. In fact, one of the recent episodes, disordered eating and eating disorders is exceptional. So the podcast is called Food We Need To Talk.

The hosts are Yuna, Jada, and Dr. Eddie Phillips. And they talk about nutrition and exercise and all things health. It is an NPR podcast. So you know, it's super high quality, great sound, great production. They have an Instagram page. It's at food we need to talk. I think you're gonna enjoy it, make sure you go check them out.

In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about meal plans. Meal plans are probably the most basic, consistent, I would say popular way of trying to lose weight or change body composition. Unfortunately, meal plans totally suck. They just don't work. And we explain why in this episode, you should never follow a diet that is based off of meal plans.

So we talk about why people don't stick to them and why when people do stick to them, it's still not a good thing. We talk about how it commences people that healthy eating is not for them, how it doesn't set you up for real life. And it's like getting the answers without figuring out how to do the work,

without figuring out the process. Now before the episode starts, we are in March, one of our most popular newest maps programs, maps, power Lift, is 50% off. Now this is a program that centers around the three main big lifts, bench press, deadlift, and squat. If you wanna get really, really strong at those amazing exercises, this program is exceptional.

Of course, if you wanna compete in powerlifting and you've never done it before, or you've only done it once or twice, follow this program along within this program. We also have powerlifting coaching that teaches you about the sport of powerlifting. But again, if you don't even want to compete, you just want to get really strong at those lifts. This program will deliver. Again, it's 50% off.

Here's how you get that discount. Go to mapspowerlift.com, that's M-A-P-S-P-O-W-E-R-L-I-F-T.com and use the code Power50, that's P-O-W-E-R, 50 on no space for the discount. We need to talk about the dietary practice known as meal plans. I don't really know that we've addressed this in full length yet. This is something that I've noticed, there's just tons of different options out there online, just like you find workout plans that are sort of just floating around that certain people

are promoting. Meal plans, it's a big deal in our space. Let's talk about why meal plans suck. So totally. Thank you. First off, let's make a point. Which I think is a controversial statement or unpopular, especially coming from.

That's one of the worst dietary strategies you can have. Yeah, by far. So for people listening or don't quite understand what a meal plan is. It's not a specific macro breakdown. It's not a specific dietary Philosophy like keto or vegan or paleo. It can be all of those things What a meal plan is is is like this 8 a.m. I eat one cup of oatmeal, two whole legs, three ounces of cheese.

You know, at 10 a.m., my snack consists of one slice of whole wheat bread, you know, two ounces of turkey, whatever. It's a meal plan is when your food is literally planned out that way, where you follow a specific meal plan and then the way you live your life and do your day revolves around that rigid structure. Yes, you look at the, you know, oh, here's my meal for, this is my meal for now and it's

all set up and I don't even, I don't even think you need to define it that detailed. I think that it's just in general, it's a written plan for the day of what you need to eat and I still think that sucks. And it's something that every single person, my entire career, hire me and then they follow up with, would you write me a meal plan? Tell me what to eat exactly. And for trainers, no exactly, we're talking. And for many years, I'm glad we're going this. This is a Justin's idea, ironically. You know, he's, he knows this. Oh, come on, I'm out of this.

Right, right, but I mean, this is a really, actually really good conversation because, I think of the things that we talk about on the show, a lot of the motivation of what provided all this content was a lot of things that we think that we did wrong. Yeah. When in reality, we thought we were helping people provided all this content was a lot of things that we think that we did wrong. Yeah.

When in reality, we thought we were helping people and doing the right thing, but what we would end up seeing is this consistent and what I've openly shared on this show is, you know, I was ranked the top trainer and I was best and had all these trophies of being great. And you know, five years into my career and I remember best and had all these trophies of being great and five years into my career and I remember reflecting back and going, if I'm so great, why is it that less than 20% of my clients stick to their results?

Sure, I can get, I got a lot of people in shape. I definitely did a good job even as a young trainer. Short term success rate was high. Right, like if I stick to this, here's your meal plan, I definitely did a good job even as a young trainer. Short-term success rate was high. Right. If I stick to this, here's your meal plan. Here's your workout plan. Motivate you every day to do it. Push you hard through it.

And we've started day one and six weeks from there. I made great change in lots of people's lives and bodies. But what I would realize is that time would go by, months would pass, and those people would put all that weight back on, and it was just kind of this vicious cycle. And as a young trainer, I used to justify it because, well, that's what kept my business running, and that's on that valuable, they need me.

But what I wasn't doing, I wasn't fundamentally changing these people and setting them up for long-term success, I was just giving them the answers of what they needed to do to get their body to change instantly, but I wasn't changing behavior. From a long-term standpoint, we just were not effective, because to be even more clear, the three people you're listening to on this podcast right now, 100% used meal plans for at least the first few years. Oh yeah, of our careers. I leaned on it really hard.

And the thing is, is that you can get people to conform to what ideas you want them to move towards. You can convince them. Like I mean, that's half of it. Is first thing is like, okay, selling them on the idea that, you know, you could get to a certain place and you could lose this amount of pounds and, you know, whatever goals are coming in with, like, I have an answer for you. And so this is one of

those things. I have an answer for that. And it looks like this. And here's how I structured it all out for you. And, but the problem was, like you guys are saying, it just wasn't a long-term strategy that was effective. Right. And here is the formula. The formula was, here's your workout, here's your meal plan, a big chunk of what I did as a personal trainer in the first few years of being a trainer was creating meal plans for people.

And it gets even worse. Here's the bad part. When my client wouldn't progress or wouldn't get great results, it was the meal plan, oh, you're not doing your meal plan. The reason why you're not getting results is you're not doing the meal plan.

The reason why I did that was because the formula worked. If you just stuck to this formula, yeah, it was mathematically figured out. That's it. If you just stick to this formula, you're gonna get results. But then on the other end of that is, it was mathematically figured out. That's it. If you just stick to this formula, you're gonna get results. But then on the other end of that is, it's still not working.

Nobody's following it. Why is it working? Oh, it's the person's fault. Forget the formula that I'm giving them. It's the person's fault. They're just lazy. Yeah, they're lazy. They're not motivated enough.

They're not serious about their goals. I mean, I remember even doing this. Like you remember riding on the old plan or back then too, you know, early days, I don't think 24 had this one just and came on. I know, Sal, I remember this, but you could ride into Apex and it spit off a meal plan. And you guys remember like how weird and ridiculous it would be,

like four saltine crackers, a half an apple, you know, saying like three and a half egg whites. Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, it was the, it was the macronutrients were perfect for what this person needed to get to their results and that it would spit out the food that matched that and you were so about that that ice would spend the first day for sure presenting it

and then weeks afterwards of like convincing that they need to follow this to get to where they want to. One of the first, I remember this because I remember this because it hit me like a ton of bricks, right? So here I am. I'm training people, giving them meal plans. I'm probably a year and a half, two years, I don't know, early in my career, but long enough

to where I'd been trained, you know, I trained enough people. And I had this woman that I trained that was, I love training her because she was very objective. She presented herself very intelligently. So she could work around my false understandings of why people weren't getting results. Like most clients, I'd be like, oh, you're not getting results

because you're not following the meal plan. You need to be stuck to it and they'd be like, okay, I'll try harder. But she was really, really smart and she presented herself well So here she is working with me not getting results and I'm giving her the apex meal plan that it would spit out right and the way it would work Is it would literally try to spit out how to you know perfectly match? Yeah, the macros in the calendar have such a weird and yeah, and so so I'm talking

I'm like, you know, I'm like, oh, you're just not following your meal plan, you're not doing exactly what you're supposed to, and she pulled out the meal plan, she goes, so how many people do you know that eat four tablespoons of peanut butter throughout the day to try and hit their fat goals? I'm like, well, what's, and I'm thinking, at this point, I'm thinking, food is just a means to an end. It's just calories and macros, just do what it says.

And she goes, look, I understand that you're counting calories and counting proteins and fats and carbs. She goes, but food is also life, it's life. She goes, you know, maybe I could do this for a short period of time, but who eats a sandwich with one slice of bread, two ounces of turt, whatever, because if I eat an extra one, I'm off. And if I eat the wrong slice, I'm too.

She goes, nobody eats like that forever. How could this possibly be something that's going to be six? She goes, if sure if I'm super anal, super meticulous, and I live like a freak for the rest of my life, she goes, but nobody's going to do that. And then she looked at me and she goes, do you eat this way? She's like, be honest with me. I was like, no, yeah. I've done meal plans before, and I went off of them

because I don't like that way of eating. It's unrealistic. And it hit me, and I remember thinking like, shit, I gotta figure this out. Like, what do I do? Because she's totally right. And like what Adam said, I am doing, I'm okay with short-term results so long

as I could use my motivational inspirational skills to get the person to stick to what I was doing. But that ran out at some point. At some point they became normal people and then it didn't work. Well, no doubt. The number one reason why meal plan suck is because people don't stick to them. So what is it about it that you think is that? Is it the... They didn't learn anything from it. Oh, well, yeah. That's a big one, but that's the biggest for me. Well, that's a big one, but, you know,

when you ask people, why don't you stick to this meal plan? Here's the main thing that I would hear, right? Ask yourself this life situation. Yeah, ask yourself this. Do you eat everything always the same all the time ever? No, nobody eats that way. There isn't, you know who eats that way?

Bodybuilders, physique competitors, bikini competitors, pre-contests. They don't even eat that way. And neurotic people. And very, very neurotic people. People don't stick to them because sticking to a structured meal plan all the time turns life into misery. It takes food and it boils all down to calories macros

and that's it. And now life is a- I also think there's other reasons too. I think it just, it requires a whole nother level of discipline too, like man to- Unnatural discipline. Yeah, exactly. It's already hard for someone who, they come in, right?

Let's take the average person. That is, they set a new year's resolution or they come in the gym and they wanna lose 20 or 30 pounds. There's a lot of things and behaviors that got them to the place where they're at to have added 30 extra pounds of their body that they now wanna lose, that as a trainer, you're trying to reverse or undo.

Exercising on a regular basis, probably not over-binging on food in alcohol or being sedentary, not weight training, probably. There's a lot of things they're not doing that they need to do. And obviously, a big factor in that is probably not eating the foods they should be eating to get to the where they want to be. And then you add in that you're going to give them this very specific meal plan that they have to also fit into. That is extremely difficult and tough to ask a majority of people to do.

And then to think that they're going to do it consistently. Like, most people that went to school, got a job, they show up every day to work, have some level of discipline that they can justify in their head like, okay, this is ridiculous. I'm gonna have to go to all these weird places to get this food and measure it all out and plan it a week in advance to make sure I got it all to make this happen. But hey, I want to get this, I have a wedding coming up where I can do it, I can make it happen. But the reality is like you don't always have a wedding in three months, you don't

always have a new, you know, some sort of, you know, event that's coming up that's really motivated you to do extreme things like this, that that is why I think a lot of people just, they fall off of it because it's such an extreme measure to get to their results, that even if you can do it, to get to that point or for a couple of months, it's not something you could potentially stick with.

Statistically speaking, I would say that between nine to 10 out of 10 people don't stick to a meal plan long term. I can almost, it's almost impossible right now for me to think of all my years of training, the clients, and none of them are actually popping up right now, that I actually had a meal plan and then stuck to it long term. It's got such a low success rate that if you're a trainer and this is your strategy of nutrition for your clients, you are losing an almost 100% fail rate strategy. It's a terrible strategy.

It's like when you're a trainer, you want to find strategies that have a high success rate. This one, the fail rate is through the roof. It's insane. Well, and I'm going to challenge even the trainer and I think it's a lazy move. It's a very lazy move on your part to print something off, hand it to them, try and get them to conform to this without really understanding the individual. Oh, totally. It happens all the time. It's trying to fit in something else that doesn't reflect their current lifestyle and have them completely adopt

an entirely new regimen. So I'm gonna agree with that, but I'm also gonna defend the trainer, right? So because I agree with you, it is a potentially lazy out for a trainer. I don't think that I was so much lazy when I was doing as I was more naive to like what I was like, I wasn't really asking me the right question.

Like because like, Sal was saying earlier, like this is mathematically, if they follow this plan, this is what will get them to the results to fast it. So in my head, I really thought that I was giving them the right answer. But what I've realized later on in my career, we talk about it at a nauseam on this show that

Behaviors are so much more important in the long term of someone holding you know getting their goals and then maintaining it for us Our life then the answer Macronutrient wise or the answer weight training wise or the answer cardio, like learning to add good behaviors in their life is so much more important than the exact right answer or the perfect workout or the perfect meal plan. I just didn't know that yet as a trainer. So I think a lot of trainers don't know better. I think they, maybe it seems lazy and maybe some of them do.

Maybe someone's listening right now and you do have the education, the knowledge, you know better, and yet you still choose a lazy route of just writing the same fucking food every day and just say follow this for six months. This is most online coaches, by the way. Most online nutrition coaches do this. Definitely, I throw a caveat out there to,

there are some good trainers that will actually, on a session by session basis, go over, redo it so it reflects more of like,, go over, redo it, so it reflects more of like their eating habit, change it and manipulate. So it's actually like an ongoing conversation that they have on paper, but it's still, so it's a little bit better, but at the same time,

like there's the majority of what I've seen, is like, and I was guilty of this too, I'm not putting myself like above that. I started out like that. Yeah, so I agree with you. It's a naive approach. This is the strategy that the, you know, Jenny Craig and those old, you know, diet systems,

this is what they follow. What they say is eat these pre-planned packaged meals and you'll be totally fine. The success rate of those things long-term is terrible. Well, actually, one of the reasons why I think Ginny Craig is so massive is because they tried to actually simplify this, right? The Ginny Craig is the point system, right?

So they did it in the way. I think Weight Watchers is the weight watcher. Oh, is it Weight Watchers? Weight Watchers is the point system? I don't know if they are now. If you meals, I think. Yeah, one package is the meals. Yeah, one point you would buy frozen meals that were...

You know, here's your... Then they just eat those. Then it's Weight Watchers, which is how to... A tremendous amount of success, too, is that they tried to answer this by, you know, not giving you exactly specific foods, but categorizing all these foods and giving a point system for people to do it. You know, but this also reminds me too of a key, so what about the people that do stick to it?

Well, I was just going to say, I remember, earlier I was trying to think of people who I know who stuck to a meal plan long term, and I did think of a couple people that I trained a while ago, and you know what's funny, if you are the kind of person that can stick to a perfect meal plan all the time long term, you have disorder eating. That's what it's, that's the thing about the anxiety around that. No, no, no, that is disorder eating too because you're following the structure all the time. You can't go off of it. The stress and anxiety surrounding that, the body images that drove that, that is a disordered form of eating. Very, very common in my space.

Oh yeah, if you, look at me, put it this way. If you're not a body builder, a physique competitor, whatever, getting ready for an event, if you're just an everyday person who's super obsessed with your fitness and you go talk to a psychologist that is an expert in disorder eating and you sit down with them and they say

and they start talking to you about your nutrition. And you tell them that you eat, this is what I have every day for breakfast and you start telling them, it's this many ounces, this much, how many grams or whatever, this is what I first snack, this way for Londoner, they say, do you eat that like that every single day?

Yes, every single day, I exactly this 100% this food psychologist is gonna say, okay, we got some stuff to work on. This is disorder eating. Not only that, Sal, but there's actually, when I think back of the clients that had some sort of nutrient deficiency, a lot of times it would come from the people that ate like this.

Because they're lacking this. The body is an amazing thing. A lot of times we do things that we're very unaware of the way we gravitate to certain foods. When your body is lacking salt, a lot of times you'll just gravitate towards a food that has got higher sodium, right? If your body wants needs fat,

a lot of times you just kind of gravitate towards that. It kind of gives you these subtle signals. Not a lot of people are naive or don't notice these type of these signals, but the body does it. When you take somebody who's extremely disciplined and can follow a meal plan, that is purely based around weight loss or building muscle

and that's all it's focused on. It's not focused on what is the body necessarily need macro or micro nutrient-wise. This is also where I would see a lot of the nutrient deficiencies revealed. It was actually more common that I would get somebody who was extremely regimen like this that actually was lacking in nutrients.

So they're not eating the foods that contain those foods? And they were on a restricted, they were on a calorie deficit, right? Somebody who over-consumes and eats one of the fuck they want is rarely ever deficient in foods. They're getting abundance of calories in food. Multiple sources. But what would be common is somebody

who is desperately trying to lose weight in a 900 to a 1500 calorie restricted diet. So you're already depriving the body of nutrients and then they're also focusing on a small variety of foods and they don't realize that they're actually really hurting themselves even more. Yeah, and this, and sometimes this is where weird food cravings come from. So, you know, like what you mentioned, Adam, was people having these, you know, if your

body's lacking a particular nutrient, oftentimes it will crave flavors or textures that historically have contained that particular nutrient. So if you're really low in vitamin C, you may find that you're craving, for example, the citrusy sweet flavor. Now that in modern times, maybe you have orange soda or coolate or whatever, but historically, if you found something with that flavor, it gave you that, or whatever, not particular nutrient.

There's a distro, have you guys heard of the distroder called Peacca? Peacca, yeah, where they eat a mud, or a clay, or paint, what? Just weird shit. I've never even heard of that. Yeah, this is something that will sometimes happen in pregnant women, and one of the causes of it

is like an iron deficiency. So they're so deficient in a key nutrient that they bought. You knew what that was too, Justin? I've never even heard of that. PICA. Yeah, pregnancy wise, we research that a bit? Did your mom eat a lot of paint chips? What's your answer?

That's what explains my brain. It explains a lot of things. No, actually, I didn't know about this. A lot of white paint. Amen. No, but it's strange because they'll have a nutrient deficiency and it'll drive and motivate them to eat foods that are weird like clay or paint or whatever, as if their body is seeking out this particular nutrient

and sticking on a regimented meal plant all the time definitely opens you up for it. It also opens you up for food and tolerances. If you're eating the same food all the time, all the time, and at any point during that period of time, you're inflamed. If you're constantly throwing chicken at your body, you're inflamed for some other reason, whether you have an infection, you're not getting enough sleep, too much stress,

maybe you work out too much, the odds that your body will develop a food intolerance to chicken are much higher, because that's all you're eating. It turns into a foreign invader. That's right. It also promotes the bench restraint. Oh, well, yeah, because you go off the meal plan,

you're off completely. Yes. And that's exactly what I would see with clients. Totally. They were on the meal plan. And when they were off, it was all rains on. They did have a great story about that. That's actually how I met.

Well, I didn't meet Courtney through this shoes of a client of mine at the time. And this is where I knew like I liked her even more, because just it was just a crazy thing, right? So I'm in this space where I'm like I'm changing lives. Everybody gets a meal plan. Everybody's doing my workouts. Everything is regimented. You know, to exactly the way I have I have I printed out spent like hours and hours on her You know specific meal plans. So it was like foods that somewhat was you know Like look close to what you would eat and I get this text later at night I'm like also how's you know the the meal plan going all this and then I get this text back

He's like fuck the meal plan ha ha ha like all sinister What I love her like what yeah exactly. I'm like wow like, fuck the meal plan, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,'s so structured, so regimented, so different from real life that the odds that you're going to go off of it are very high. And then when you do go off of it, you know, this is human psychology, right? When you create such a rigid, strict border around things that is unrealistic for you, the second you go off, because you've gone off, you've already broken the rules. Now you're fucking, I've already broken the rules. Let's just go absolute nuts and go crazy because I'm already off. And so you do see, it does encourage this all or on or off again mentality.

And this isn't more, this is most apparent in people who use, and they use meal plans because they should pre-contest, but this is most apparent in people who use meal plans the most, bodybuilders, physique competitors, bikini competitors, if you were to analyze the year round dietary habits of bodybuilders, physique competitors, bikini competitors, people who use meal plans for six to know, six to 12 weeks pre contest.

Here's what it typically will look like. It typically will look like shitty eating, super strict eating, shitty eating, super strict eating. I, it is not uncommon to see these people gain. I mean, I've seen, you know, 140 pound female competitors gain 30 pounds in the weeks after a competition because they had no, they didn't understand how to go off a meal plan. It was just off and it was completely off. And here's the next big, big problem with meal plans because that would happen for people

and because as a trainer, and I feel really bad for doing this, because as a trainer, I thought it was all about your dedication, your discipline, stick to your meal plan. When people finally gave up, the decision that they made was healthy eating just isn't for me. Well, this is what I think this is arguably the number one reason why meal plan suck is because of what it does to a majority.

It's already, we've already made the case that a majority of people can't stick to a meal plan. And even if they do stick to a meal plan, they eventually fall off. And what ends up happening is, you know, somebody who's now in their late 30s, 40s or 50s has done this enough times that eventually they get the attitude of fuck it.

Yeah, I don't want that's healthy eating. I don't work for that. Yeah, if if if being healthy and in shape means I have to, you know, say no to the girls on Sunday, I don't get to ever go to my favorite restaurant. I've got to be a weirdo and carry around this food all the time. I mean, they're force feeding myself. Shit, I don't want to eat or I'm respecting. Yeah.

Yeah, what they all end up doing is like, yes, not for me. I'd rather be a little bit overweight. And that, to me, that is the most dangerous or the most detrimental part of why meal plan suck is because of how many people it discourages. And I really think that's a lot of the motivation behind what we do and why we are constantly battling our peers and our space who we think are consistently speaking to the wrong people. They're speaking to the fitness fanatics already. And we're trying to reach the people that are discouraged about fitness because of this

exact reason, because not because they don't want anything to do with fitness, because they've probably tried it several times, and this is one of the things that has probably added to that is following this really strict diet that they can only do for a certain amount of time and then fail and then putting back weight on, that it's just not worth it. And their confidence goes way down.

They internalize it like it's all my fault. I can't do this, I'm not all my fault. I can't do this. I'm not a healthy person. I can't do it. It's so discouraging. I've had so many clients like that. It's been four or five times they've died it. It just doesn't work for me.

Oh yeah, it's like it's the old time. It's like trying to convince your kid to play a sport, but every single time they play the sport, you punch them in the face. After a certain period of time, that's not me. I don't wanna play basketball. Basketball sucks. Every time I play basketball sport, you know, you punch them in the face. You know, after a certain period of time, like, that's not me, I don't wanna play basketball. I'm like, every time I play basketball, I get a black eye, I don't wanna do it anymore.

I'm done, they've made up their mind, this is the association that they have, this is the association that people have with eating healthy. And it's absolutely true. You might even be, this might be you listening right now, or at least you know somebody, where you ask them, hey, you know, let's look at, you know, maybe changing nutrition, improving your health.

Now I tried that. I tried that so many times, just doesn't work for me. I don't want to do that. I'm cool. I want to live my life. How many times have you heard that? I just want to live my life and enjoy life. What a crazy statement for those of us who really understand how to live a

healthy life. It's such a wrong statement. You want to live and enjoy your life. You can't, the way that you live and enjoy life the most is by being healthy. And these people are because of their experience trying to be healthy by following a meal plan and doing the wrong way. To them, living and enjoying life is not doing any of that shit. And that's what they think being healthy is. So screw that. I'd rather be unhealthy.

Well, setting up a meal plan doesn't set you up for real life. Not at all. Not even close. Great point. It's your, this isn't real life. In real life, you're going to have birthdays, go to dinner on Friday nights, be at a friend's house, be in a hurry from point A to point B, missed your meal time.

I mean, in real life, there are so many variables and scenarios that are always ever changing and moving that if you rely on a blueprint that you have to stick to all the time, it's inevitable it's going to fall apart. It's inevitable you're gonna fall off of it. And what's gonna happen when you do that and what happens to most people is the honor off wagon thing is like,

oh shit, I fucked up. So Maze will go all the way out. And to go into take it even a step further, even if you're a super fitness performance fanatic, okay? As life goes on, your context of life changes, training goals change, nutrient requirements change, hormones change, I get older, sometimes I have more stress, sometimes I have less stress.

It's like doing the exact same workout all the time, all the time, all the time. It's going to, real life changes and so does your nutrition need to change. Even if you are the super motivated, anal, discipline, disorder eating, fitness fanatic, you can't possibly follow the same nutrition all the time. Your goals are going to change. Sometimes I can work out and I'm pushing a strength goal. Sometimes I'm pushing an endurance goal. Sometimes, you know, I got life is tough and I'm not able to make it to the gym as much

and now I'm working out for different reasons. Other times I'm working out for health, other times I'm working out for muscle, other times I'm working out to get lean. Things change so much. That's what life is. Really, the people that have the most success at life are not the ones that have controlled life to the point

where it's super hyper predictable every single day, but it's impossible. The successful people have the ones that adapt. And this is a non-adapting form of eating. It's actually the least adapting way to rigid. It's completely rigid. And so what ends up happening is, however successful you are in the short term following it,

at some point life makes it impossible for you to follow it or life makes whatever you're following, totally ineffective. So no matter which way you cut it, it's going to totally fail for you. And that leads to the last thing. And you actually hinted at this early on, Justin. You know, it's like, okay, you remember when you guys were in school and you had algebra

or whatever, and the teacher would give you a problem, and you had to show the work, you couldn't just give the answer. Yeah, to prove your answer. Yeah, now why is that important? Why do the math teacher want you to show the work? Because it's the process of figuring out how to get to the answer is as important or even more important than just having the answer. Well, meal plans is the answers without any of the work.

Here's your calories, here's your macros, follow this. Well, how do you get to that point? How do I get to knowing how my body needs to fuel itself? How do I get to the point where I know what I need to eat for whatever reason? I don't learn any of that as a person. As a whole, you know, teach a man to fish. It's that whole concept of, instead of just providing the fish,

you have to learn how, as a coach, to teach your clients how to then apply this going forward forever, you know, this is their life you're dealing with. Yeah, this was such a huge turning point for me. When I first became a trainer, I'm going to be totally honest. Part of my goal was to convince my client that they needed me forever. Later on in my career, I realized that if I treated my client and trained them in a way to where my goal was to get them to a point where

they didn't need me anymore, that's my goal. The irony of that, I became far more successful. My goal as a trainer later on became, how can I get this person to the point where they can do all this forever and they don't need me anymore. It's like the old martial arts movies where the Sensei teaches the student and at some point the Sensei says, there's a easier last day. You know, the kid is like, what do you mean? He's like, I've taught you everything,

the rest you now can do on your own or whatever. That's how I approach it and I became far, far more successful. And the only way you can do that is by teaching the client how to do the work. And if you're not a trainer and you're a personal listening right now, the answers are not what's gonna give you success, okay?

It's how you get to the answers. That's gonna give you success. It's the's how you get to the answers. That's gonna give you success It's the behavior that they get there now the the unfortunate part and I think we're in the challenging part for trainers is that The client thinks that's not what they want the client a lot of times tells the trainer that's why I'm paying you They expect it. That's why you're the coach. Yeah, I don't I don't want to think about this like that's why you're the coach, that's why you're the teacher. Yeah, I don't want to think about this. Like that's why I'm paying this top dollar is that I want to do my job every day. I want to come here and I want to be told by you what I need to do exercise wise, what I need to eat,

and that's what I'm paying for. So I do understand the challenge as a trainer because I remember the transition that I went through of realizing that I wasn't really helping them by giving this meal plan, but then also realizing that, shit, I'm in a service-based business, and this is what the person who's paying for me is telling me I need to do. That was probably a year-long transition for me to really figure out how do I figure this, how do I address this, how do I get these people to understand that I'm actually doing a disservice to them

by giving them a meal plan. When they're sitting here telling me, I don't wanna learn this shit. I don't wanna do stuff. I'm paying you to do that. That is where most of my growth as a nutrition coach really happened in that year long process of trying to figure it out.

And we talk a little bit about the show and I do wanna get into that in this episode because I know we're talking about why meal plans suck. Yeah, what are the alternatives? Well, yeah, I wanna talk about, okay, well, then what does it look like for one of us coaching a client and how did we evolve to this place? Because we most certainly didn't start there.

We agreed that for many years of our career, we probably failed lots of people by just putting them on meal plans. but at what point did we piece this together and then what were the things that we started to do to give people a long-term success? And the first and probably most, the biggest thing that I realized and it was like so counter intuitive was instead of telling people that they had to follow this plan, I was going to look for one thing about their eating habits that I saw a problem with and trying to dress that one thing and actually do it in a almost reverse psychology way.

If we have learned by this time, telling people they can't promotes the, you know, a restrict binge, then how do I get them to do what I want them to do without telling them they can't do something else? And that answer was, okay, what I'm going to do is look at their diet. And instead of seeing McDonald's on their talk about them saying they can't have that, which I know I as a trainer, I ideally probably don't want them eating that. I'm not gonna focus on that yet. I'm gonna look at something else in the diet that they're not getting, that they're not getting enough of.

And it's very easy. It's normally a lack of protein for my females or healthy fats, it's not getting enough fiber. So I look at something like that in the diet and I add to it. And I go, okay, or enough greens. That's really common to very few people are eating enough greens on a daily basis. So I look at something in there that they're not getting enough of.

And instead of saying, no, you can't have McDonald's. No, you can't have that ice cream. I say, listen, here's our first nutrition goal. This is the first thing that I want you to focus on. It's all I want you to do is every day, I want you to have a big bowl of vegetables. And guess what, I give them variety. Doesn't have to be specific. It doesn't have to be always asparagus

or always brussel sprouts. They're always broccoli. I want this much vegetables in a meal every single day. And then get them to start implementing that. And then coach around that and teach why I'm having them do that and then get them to see how that makes them feel because I know that just getting them to do it is one thing but getting them to connect the way it's making their body feel is what will make them really stick to. Yeah, step one as a trainer and coach

is realizing that you have a very long hard job ahead of you and realizing that part of your job is convincing your client that it's a long, hard, arduous road ahead of them. That's actually part of your job because Adam said, for example, the person will come up and you say, I want this, I want a meal plan, I want to work out, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds,

and I want to do it by this point. Okay, and again, remember, nobody said being a coach was an easy job. So if you're listening right now and you think, oh, that's so hard and that sucks, probably you shouldn't be a coach. It's a long, hard job. So part of my job was, how do I convince this person

that that's not what they actually want? So you gotta work on that. But but little by little it's the small Realistic steps that that person can take whatever that is and it's a slow process and it may be adding one thing It may be taking one little thing away It may be focusing on emotional eating. Let's just focus on that for now or maybe Don't be so obsessive about your about your food just for a little bit. One small step at a time that then becomes natural, becomes a part of their life, and then move from there. Yeah, one thing I really assessed was, and I know that Adam kind of brought this up a bit in terms of like

being able to understand the client even further by having them track and you know, and be able to kind of like focus in on their daily habits. Well, that was something that, I mean, I briefly did in the beginning of my training career and was trying to then gather that information quickly so then I could then apply it and spit out this meal plan for them that I thought was like a specific,

but I learned later to just you know, just start bringing that up in conversation, taking them shopping, understanding their habits, you know, them writing it down, they're going to not going to tell you everything. And that's just, that's just the reality. They're going to tell you their best day they've ever had eating, ever. And it's just, it's just not reality. And like even going into their houses and seeing, you know, all the different types of foods they have and all that, it was very enlightening for me.

So then I actually, I started to tell them, like it's gonna probably take like a month for me to even understand, you know, where you're coming from and like, what these habits look like and how I can better coach you in terms of like, if you have a question of, you know, like, definitely we can find out what you're lacking in, whether it's fiber, whether it's vegetables,

where it's one of these things that I could help one thing. And then, even for some clients just snacking all the time and not realizing the amount of calories are getting from all these nuts, and just like one little hack, and it's one thing that we hone in on, and we've refined, and so it's just being able to then, you know, have them become aware.

And that's the game initially. It's just like, what's that awareness, you know, look like for them and how do they get there? Yeah, it trained the behavior, don't train the solution. Okay, so I'll give you an example of what that means. That sounds easy, but you think, what does that look like?

Okay, I'll give you an example. Let's say you have a client, and this is different from person to person, but let's just say you have a client or you yourself or this person, that you find yourself grabbing a snack and eating when you're doing something mindless, like watching TV, when you're stressed out,

maybe you catch yourself halfway through, like, oh crap, why am I in the box of chips or why am I snacking on this food right here and you stop halfway through to try and catch yourself? Maybe so if this is you, here's a great way to train the behavior and not the solution because the solution is don't snack anymore. Okay, well obviously no ship. How do I stop the behavior? Here's what you do.

Put some barriers between you and that habit. That's it. So what's a barrier? Here's an easy barrier. Don't have between you and that habit. That's it. So what's a barrier? Here's an easy barrier. Don't have the stuff in your house. That's a barrier. So the stuff isn't my house. So now, if I really want a snack,

I got to go drive to the store, which gives me enough time to think about what I'm going to do. So I'm not saying to myself, you can't snack. All I'm saying to myself is, if you want a snack, you got to drive to the store to do this. But it gives you enough time to become aware. Now, again, it sounds simple, still not easy, because believe it or not, you'll find yourself

in this situation ignoring even the barrier sometimes because you don't want to change that behavior. But it's okay, it's uncomfortable, and it's creating more awareness. And that's what we mean by pressing the behavior rather than solution. Well, along those lines, that's what makes a really good coach, too,

is that you are looking, and this is why it's so individualized. This is also why we have avoided doing nutrition. This is why, not because we lack the knowledge or the ability to help somebody out tremendously when it comes to food, is that we feel like riding meal plans or diets for people online is doing a disservice

to these people. I know what it takes to help somebody nutritionally out, and I know how individualized that is, because everybody has got different behaviors. This takes a lot of self-awareness on the client, and the listener right now is like, you have to really start to learn to evaluate where your bad habits are.

You know, do you notice that any time, this is why people, like, people tips that get mocked in the fitness space, like don't eat after eight, eight PM at night. We have all the research to show that it doesn't matter. What time do you eat? If you eat the same amount of calories, if you eat it at midnight, or, yeah,

but what maybe that advice came from a good place. Maybe that advice came from that. A lot of people, a majority of people realize that when they eat beyond 8 p.m., the choices they make are typically bad. Oh, yeah, late night eating behaviors are very different from morning eating behavior. Right, so that's pretty fucking good advice.

And this is what I hate about our space sometimes is we turn it into a science debate on, well, no, technically the way the metabolism works and the idiots that talk about insulin and it turns into this argument over who's more right about the science but what the real advice may have came from from the very beginning is that behaviorally speaking,

very few people make a decision at 10 o'clock at night to get off the couch from watching TV or climb out of bed, go down and they make themselves a bowl of Brussels sprouts. Maybe that's why that advice came out, you know, because what they do is they go downstairs and they grab a fucking ice cream sandwich or they grab a handful of nuts and throw it in their mouth. And instead of us fitness people arguing over the science behind how the metabolism works, maybe we should speak more to the behaviors of what most people are. And that's pretty fucking solid advice. And the bottom line, the absolute bottom line is that meal plans take zero of that,

any of that into account. Right, the meal plan literally is the answers with zero of the work. It is none of the behavior training and again, in our experience, you either completely fail by not following it or if you do follow it super strictly, you also fail because it just sort of you. It's the life of section of fat loss.

And with that, go to minepumpfree.com and download all of our guides and books. They're all totally free. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at minepump Justin. You can find me at minepumpsalon. Adam at minepumpatum. Thank you for listening to minepump.

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