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

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2:01Adam Schafer: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 asked 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.

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3:59Adam Schafer:All right, you've got 90 days. You've 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.

4:16Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. How do you get these first couple weeks going?

4:18Adam Schafer: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 on. Make a good dent for sure in 90 days. Yeah, I hate it when social media fitness influence is 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 one of the biggest mistakes someone would make going into a 90-day, let's say, challenge or whatever or targeted focus is not knowing where they're starting.

4:58Adam Schafer: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 play 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

5:20Sal Di Stefano:when you typically when someone gets started on like a 90-day kick or a goal that they set like this they want and they decide okay i want to do this day one they want to right away start like of the diet start the workout eliminating everything yeah and i and crazy and i really want the first week when i'm helping somebody through this uh 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.

5:58Adam Schafer:And as accurate as the more accurate this is, the more effective the next 90 days will be. So 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, the adherence is so much better because it's not so drastically different than what you're already doing.

6:33If you can figure out and assess exactly your patterns and then make some micro tweaks that will really be more advantageous for you, you'll be able to ride that out a lot longer.

6:44Sal Di Stefano:Now, 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?

6:50Adam Schafer:So someone just tracked for seven days. so they recorded they got an app what's your favorite app i like fat secret okay so fat

6:59Sal Di Stefano:secret or my fitness pal both are good apps so they're entering in every day what you do is you

7:03Adam Schafer:enter everything you eat and drink in this app um every single day and so now at the end of the week they know um on a daily basis here's 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

7:20Sal Di Stefano:you were saying yeah these are i'll tell you the most common things that i would see uh almost always we were under consuming protein most people uh high sugar not enough fiber uh a lot of your fat coming from saturated fat um we'd have uh lower calorie days followed by huge uh like kind of binge 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 and valleys and inconsistent days, just total calorie wise, those are probably the most common things that I would see.

8:02Sal Di Stefano: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 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 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 gonna 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, whatever your target body weight is in grams of protein every day.

9:17Sal Di Stefano:And then we'll reassess a couple of weeks later.

9:20Adam Schafer:Yeah, 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 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 in more fat loss. It also has a high satiety effect, meaning it does naturally tend to control appetite.

10:08Adam Schafer: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 it after a high protein meal, it blends it blunts the response so it improves insulin sensitivity which has uh far-reaching effects so uh that first week you track if your protein is below what we said which it probably will be unless you're somebody that already already always tracks so you already know you're hitting that hit that aim for it and i would say do that and 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.

10:53Adam Schafer: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.

11:07Sal Di Stefano: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 a 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 trying to do 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 they're 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 yeah is to get where you're going and honestly why i like that is because it gives them little steps and 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 uh 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 make it all through whole food yeah so so the next uh from you know

12:31Adam Schafer: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.

13:07Adam Schafer:And here's where you make a calorie adjustment based on your goal. I want to lose more body fat or I want to 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.

13:18Sal Di Stefano:I would, the one thing I would add to the three to eight weeks is 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 uh 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 you are giving them of like i know that in when i'm starting with somebody on a drink like this three to eight a lot of that is 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 intake, their calories kind of take care of themselves and land where they're supposed to be.

13:57Sal Di Stefano: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, eat. Yeah. If you're hungry, eat. 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 about 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 twelve 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 let's add three 500 yeah add three hundred 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 a body recomp or whatever they should have gotten themselves up to a good calorie place that we can adjust just by listening yeah just the prep and consistency is going to be really challenging and so to 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.

15:47Adam Schafer:Totally. Now let's talk about the workout. Okay. Uh, so what's the workout look like? We're going to focus on the strength training, uh, because strength training is, uh, easily the most important form of exercise when it comes to changing the way your body looks, uh, 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, you'll be working out in the gym and, uh, the way you're going to probably want to break this up is into three blocks or phases.

16:20Adam Schafer: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've 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 failure, meaning you can't do another rep, but you're going to get close to failure with each of your sets.

17:01Adam Schafer: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 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 what that looks like.

17:34Sal Di Stefano:I really like this first phase being focused on the higher rep for the reason that we tend to give a lot of the people that call in, which is approach your workouts as like practice. Instead of this, oh, I heard that if I do this to failure, and what about these drop sets and all these gimmicks to gain a little bit more results from your workout versus go into the gym, 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's like, this first phase is, it's all novel to me.

18:14Sal Di Stefano: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 strength 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.

18:42Adam Schafer: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 eight to 10 reps, so moderate reps. So instead of 13 reps or 14 reps, I'm going for eight or nine 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.

19:14Adam Schafer:It doesn't feel as exhausting, but it does feel 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. So most of the exercises you're going to do are going to be the ones that involve more than one joint.

19:52Adam Schafer: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.

20:23Adam Schafer:Get good and get strong at them. If you get really strong at squats, deadlifts, presses, rows overhead presses by the end of this program you're going to look very different i would argue

20:33Sal Di Stefano:if you have the time to spend in the gym more than 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 uh try almost chasing a sweat or fatigue so they feel like it's really challenging longer rest periods make strength

21:05Adam Schafer:training more effective yes people think get 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 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 allow you to lift heavier. Exactly. Okay. And it makes apply more intensity.