You’ve probably heard it before, but crushing your workouts will only get you so far. It’s your eating habits that will help get you the long-term results you’re after.

Unfortunately, nutrition is also the most difficult part of fitness for most people to understand and put into action! That’s why we created the V Shred Custom Coaching program: to help eliminate the guess work and have the experts do the heavy lifting of figuring out what and how much to eat — so you don’t have to!

If you’ve received your a V Shred Custom Diet Plan or are just considering buying one, here’s what to expect — and a step-by-step guide of how to turn that plan into actual meals!

What to Expect When You Get Your Plan

When you open up your meal plan, the first thing you will see is your meals for the entire week.

Most days will look like this:

• Breakfast
• Snack
• Lunch
• Snack
• Dinner

There might be another snack before bed, depending your goals. In addition to everything you need to eat at each meal, you will find the calorie/macro breakdown for each meal and your total daily calories/macros for the entire day at the bottom of the page.

Before we dig deep into the plan, let’s address the one question we almost always get right out of the gate. Why is my plan just one week? 

Here’s why: Unless you see something that you don’t like, or we determine the plan isn’t working for you and your goals, our plans are written to repeat the same meals for several weeks, — normally, right about a month.

That may sound weird, but there is a reason. You get better at your diet the same way you do with your workouts — by repeating them more than once. Sticking to the same meals for a few weeks helps you learn crucial meal preparation and portion control skills!

Once you are confident and seeing results, we’ll start mixing things up. But if you need more variety, reach out to Be it day one or day 90; your coach is always happy to make adjustments!

Now let’s dig into how to put your plan into action, in 5 steps.

Step 1: Look Over All Seven Days Of Your Plan 

Start with page one and go through each meal. Don’t just skim! Do a deep dive. Look for anything you may see as a problem; a food you hate, something you are allergic to, or a meal that just doesn’t feel right.

If something looks off, speak up! Let your coach know, and they will keep changing it until you are happy! Your plan is never set in stone.

That’s a big difference between our meal plans and ones from other online services. Our plans are meant to be truly customized. We keep making adjustments until you’re confident you can follow it without feeling overly restricted or overwhelmed.

Step 2: Make a Shopping List & Head to the Grocery Store 

After the meal schedule, you will find recipes and instructions. Skip past this section for now and go to the back of the meal plan and look at the shopping list! It is about three pages long and includes everything you need to follow our recipe suggestions and make your meals.

Because your meals come from recipes, this section may look a little weird. Like, who buys .38 cups of salsa, right? Or just one tablespoon of peanut butter?

But remember, you will be repeating this meal plan for four weeks, so you will be buying almost everything you need for an entire month of meals.

That’s another perk of meal planning: It is very budget-friendly! It may seem expensive during that first shopping trip, but once you get good at shopping, you can easily save enough money each month to pay for your meal plan.

We suggest printing this section and taking it to the store with you so you can buy everything you need to set yourself up for most of the month in a single trip. In some cases, you’ll only have to buy some of these things once every few months.

You will also see specific brand names called out on these shopping lists. You don’t need to buy the exact brands listed. Buy the brand you want or that you can afford.

Step 3: Practice Measuring Your Food

Our meal plans contain a range of pretty normal food: measurements: tablespoons, ounces, cups, etc. If you go to the last page of the meal plan, there’s a simple portion guide that helps you put those into some terms. For example, a cup of salad greens is about the size of a baseball.

However, we recommend investing in a food scale and tools like measuring cups and spoons for optimal accuracy. You can pick one up at most department/grocery chains or find them really cheap online. 

That may seem like overkill, but here’s why it’s so important. Compare these two servings of nuts. They’re both a size that would be easy to scoop out of a bag with your hand, but one contains an extra 235 calories.

That number of extra calories one time won’t make or break your results. But repeated on a regular basis for weeks or months, the calories will definitely add up!

The moral of the story: It’s hard to “eyeball” portions, especially when you’re not used to it. Use a food scale as often as you can, at least for a couple of months. Over time you can get pretty good at eyeballing, but it takes plenty of practice.

Step 4: Learn Your Swaps

Our V Shred coaches share a short guide with every meal plan that lists easy protein, carb, fat, and vegetable substitutions. These are interchangeable foods based on your wants, needs, and cravings, and will help keep you from getting bored with your plan.

For example, let’s say you see chicken on your plan a few times. If you already know that you are going to get sick of chicken after a couple of days, when you are out grocery shopping, pick up some items on the substitute list! You could have an equal portion of lean turkey, white fish, 3/4 of a cup of cottage cheese, or plenty of other options.

If you aren’t sure if you are substituting with the right foods or don’t see any substitutions you like, you can always reach out to your coach to ask. Our Facebook Group for Women or Facebook Group for Men are also packed with thousands of people who have had success in custom coaching, and they have tons of great ideas to keep you satisfied.

Step 5: Pick Your Meals

Now that you’ve looked at your plan and understand the shopping and substitutes list, it’s time to make your shopping list, and start prepping a few meals! If you need some ideas on making meal-prepping easier, Vince filmed a great video on meal-prep tips that can help you get started.

Hopefully you are feeling confident and ready to start eating and feeling better!

But if you are still confused after looking everything over, it’s normal. Please don’t hesitate to talk to your coach! You are never bothering them, and there is no such thing as a “dumb” question.

Each week, look for a “check-in” emails from your V Shred coach. If you have any questions or feel like you’re struggling, this is the best way to get help from experts who know how to give it.

Now, time to go start taking control of your nutrition. We know you can do it!

The post Getting Started With Your V Shred Custom Meal Plan appeared first on V Shred.

We love showing off our amazing client transformations, but we also like introducing you to the team members behind the scenes that work hard to help them achieve such jaw dropping results!

We have compassionate fitness and nutrition coaches from all over the world that work remotely, putting together custom plans and work with our clients one-on-one to help them reach their individual goals!

Many people assume that trainers are just born fit and healthy! But in reality, many had lifelong struggles with being overweight, too skinny, etc.

Today we are introducing you to Jenny, one of our trainers who had to work hard to get the healthy and strong body she has today!

Jenny lives in Tennessee with her two young kids and husband Vinny, who is also one of our trainers here at V Shred!! If you missed learning more about Vinny – click here!

We asked Jenny to sit down and chat with us about her fitness journey, what led her to become a trainer, and her experience working with us here at V Shred.

If they put pictures of people in the dictionary and you looked up the definition of an athlete, fit, strong, or “tiny but mighty,” – you would no doubt find a pic of our V Shred trainer Jenny!

Standing at only 4-foot-11 … Jenny may be small, but she is strong and fit!

Jenny is a 3rd degree black belt champion, former bikini bodybuilding competitor, fitness class guru, and hits the gym hard!

But it wasn’t always like this. Growing up, Jenny was not athletic at all and was super small and weak!

“I had to take another class to graduate high school, and it was women’s bodybuilding. The first day of class, we did a bench press to see what we could lift, and I couldn’t lift the 45-pound bar. Everyone laughed at me. I was like, oh no, they’re not gonna laugh at me!! I worked my butt off that one semester, and I started gaining a little muscle. I did everything our teacher told us to do, and by the end of that one semester, I benched 95 pounds, and no one laughed. I was benching more than the athletic girls,” says Jenny.

That moment sparked Jenny’s initial interest in her own health, but it wasn’t until she signed up for an aerobics class in college that she realized that she wanted to start teaching others.

“I was like, I don’t know why, but I want to be her (the instructor.) I’m going to do this,” remembers Jenny.

While studying to get her music degree, Jenny decided to get some fitness certifications and consult with a mentor in the industry who taught her the ropes.

Jenny started out as a group fitness instructor and loved it so much that after graduating college, she made becoming a personal trainer her full-time career.

While it was not the original plan, Jenny says she can’t imagine doing anything other than being a health and fitness coach. She loves knowing she is helping people not only make physical transformations but internal ones as well!

“I have a (V Shred) client that’s been with me for two years this month, and she’s lost 80 pounds, but more than that, she has gained so much confidence. She got promoted at her job, so it’s overflowed into every other area of her life.”

Before working with V Shred, Jenny strictly taught group fitness and worked with clients in person.

But she wanted to help MORE people without having to spend even more time away from her young children. So she decided it would be best to transition to being a virtual trainer.

At first, Jenny wasn’t sure how she’d feel about not working with clients in person and was clueless about finding her online clientele. Ironically, the same day she bought a computer and sat down to get started, she saw that V Shred was hiring trainers!!

“I looked into it and realized it (V Shred) is exactly what I believe and what I’d been doing with clients already. It was a program that I believe in because it’s a lifestyle for people,” says Jenny!

Jenny applied and took the job as a V Shred trainer! That was 3 years ago, and she has never looked back!

She loves working for V Shred so much that she even convinced her husband Vinny to become one of our coaches!

“We’re very competitive with each other! So we try to compare transformations and, and who’s doing better,” laughs Jenny.

Jenny loves working with clients of all ages and backgrounds but says that her favorite is helping busy moms! As a working mom of two young kids, Jenny says she can relate to their struggles!

“Now that I’m in the chaos of trying to fit in my schedule work and handling the kids, I feel like I’m more equipped to help other women do that too. Just teaching them that this is a lifestyle and not a quick fix and knowing that with V Shred, they don’t have to work out hours and hours,” says Jenny.

Jenny has a long list of credentials and could work for any company out there. She and her husband could even have their own fitness empire if they wanted. But Jenny chooses to be on our V Shred trainer team!

Why? Because Jenny says that she believes in what we do and wants to be part of our mission to help MILLIONS of people achieve greatness through living a healthy and fit lifestyle!

“V Shred is perfect! You don’t have to spend hours at the gym to get results. You can workout for 20 minutes, and it’s effective and efficient.” says Jenny!

To learn more about Jenny and hear her key pieces of advice for anyone struggling to lose weight (but especially all the moms out there) — you can watch our full interview at the top of this blog!

And if you want to learn more about working with Jenny or another one of our V Shred trainers, you can get more info on our one-on-one programs HERE!

The post V Shred Trainer Spotlight: Meet Jenny appeared first on V Shred.