Nutrition Solutions is a prepared meal company based out of Tampa Florida. They have a number a rotating menu items from ingredients that are high quality, organic and hormone free. They project a fairly strong warrior mentality with the names of their meal plans being Barbarian, Spartan and Greek God, with the base version being the ‘Shred’ program and the high protein meals being the ‘Beast’ program.

I was just finishing with my online trainer at the end of 2021 and was looking for new ideas for workouts after Christmas when I happened upon an Instagram ad for their 2022 challenge. I had lost about 40lbs with my trainer and had good discipline in getting to the gym and keeping my nutrition on point so I wasn’t concerned too much about the learning curve.

Nutrition Solutions has a fairly enigmatic founder and CEO, Chris Cavallini, who also acts as the motivation coach and the outward image of all aspects of the challenge. He has a more militaristic approach (he is a veteran) to the group and is fairly direct and blunt on what you should be doing. He has a little ‘purple cobra’ vibe to him but he walks the talk as he keeps himself in excellent shape and shows off his physique pretty much in every promo video and reel he is in. There are a couple of admins who run the Facebook group but they remain behind the scenes while Chris is known to wade into a post or conversation and call out people if he thinks they are not being serious enough about getting taking care of themselves. He is clearly passionate about the message and often encourages others to ‘live with passion’.

They provide a lot of education materials as part of the challenge, both written and through live sessions. As their focus is on pre-packaged meals, they offer several different potential nutrition guides participants can use. To their credit, several of these don’t list out their own Nutrition Solutions products as part of them. They also provide a supplement guide, suggested reading list, a Spotify playlist and a few other suggested ‘hacks’ to ‘melt fat’ including ice baths, hydration suggestions and sauna routines. You also get recommendations for your photo shoots.

The Challenge runs once a year for six weeks starting in January. The first year I did it, 2022 you had a flexible date to start within a two week period and a flexible end date. For 2023 and 2024 there is one start date and one end date.

The workouts are different each week of the challenge and they are drip fed out to those signed up, sometimes pretty late in the day on Sunday. The past two years they have had each week ‘sponsored’ by a celebrity fitness person, Chris himself, Adam ‘the Edge’ Copeland, as well as some other fitness models. For 2024 it seems that these are a little more crafted from Chris and one fitness model. The types of workouts do vary quite a bit but generally they work each muscle group throughout the week at least once (Chest, Arms, Back, Core, Shoulders, Arms) and they build in some functional exercises (a little like what I imagine Crossfit is). They also typically have at least one day dedicated to cardio and one rest day a week (although sometimes this is active rest). The variety is a nice change although there is a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to do certain exercises and for most of these there is no description or video tutorial so I spent a lot of time on google. It was comforting that others had the same issues on understanding what workout to do and it was super helpful to have the Facebook group to compare notes on workouts.

Workouts were reasonable in length and usually don’t take more than an hour each time. Reps and sets are laid out in the plan each week complete with suggested time between sets. There seem to be more high rep exercises and supersets so you sort of get cardio in with strength training. Some of the functional days were rough as you are doing elliptical for five minutes, doing a bunch of burpees, then cycling through that a half dozen times.

For 2024, the first week of exercises seems to be pretty intense with a bunch of circuits for most of the muscle group workouts where you try and complete as many circuits as possible in the time allotted. Another bonus for 2024 is the requirement to start every day with 50 burpees. 42 days of 50 burpees; I hate burpees. First day slammed through 25 in less than 2 minutes but struggled for another five minutes to get the last 25.

Anyone can access the challenge at no cost. The first year I didn’t buy any product from them and I still placed in the money and they paid out. The judging is not super transparent so I assume they will give some preference to people who are actually using their products but the second place winner from 2022 also claims she didn’t buy anything from them that year.

They don’t publish the number of people who participate in the challenge but with just over 6,000 members of the Facebook group, there are likely a reasonable number of people you are competing against but not tens of thousands.

The prize money is listed at $30,000 for 2024 and this has increased over the years. The cash portion is $27,500 with the top winner earning $13,000 cash + four weeks of the Spartan Shred meal plan. There are a total of nine winners. One note, for 2022 and 2023 they altered the prize allocations to include more winners which diluted some of the prizes. The overall pot stayed the same but they basically spread the wealth a bit more. For 2024, they have a more formalized set of rules but still allows them some flexibility on allocating prizes. It only impacts you if you are just in it for the money.

You are required to take and submit photos and videos on the first and last days of the challenge. For the first day photos they encourage you to look a little sad and let things hang out in a ‘natural’ state. For the end day photo they provide a roadmap to getting your body to look ‘show-ready’; sauna, hydration and sodium protocol as well as spray tan and baby oil included. I will admit, my photos from the first year looked kind of amazing and were a huge ego boost. It is fleeting as you basically are dehydrated for the shoot and plump right back up after the recommend drinking of a full gallon of water following the shoot.

The workout guides could be a bit more user friendly and don’t come out nicely in pdf format (these are formatted more like word document outlines) and the lack of video and descriptions of how to do the movements requires a bit more personal effort. I set them up for both 2022 and 2023 in the trainerize app and plan on uploading the 2024 exercises when they are available as well.

Nutrition Solutions 2022 Challenge

Nutrition Solutions 2023 Challenge

Nutrition Solutions 2024 Challenge

While there are a few things about the Nutrition Solutions challenge that are lacking in terms of infrastructure, they try hard, mean well and attempt to provide a very comprehensive holistic approach to fitness. It was also amazing for my personal validation to have them recognize me as a winner in 2022 (ok third place but, still in the money!) as such, they will always have a special significance for me.