V Shred Custom Diet and Training Plan for Him (Review)

The V Shred Custom Diet and Training Plan for Him is (supposedly) 100% customized to match your fitness goals, body stats, and unique needs — like allergies and prior injuries.

But will this eight-week plan really pick up where one-size-fits-all programs fall short? Will it help you reach your fitness goals in eight weeks?

Find out below!

About the Creator – Vince Sant

Would you believe that’s not a fake name?

Vince Sant is the founder of the V Shred fitness platform — home to more than a dozen routines designed to get you ripped quick — and the supplement brand Sculpt Nation. (That last part explains a lot about the obnoxious coupon codes and constant supplement recommendations.)

The world-renowned fitness model has 684,000 Instagram followers as of December 2021. Yet, despite his massive online following, Vince Sant is still somewhat of a mystery.

He claims to have helped 900,000 people in the first three years after launching V Shred. Beyond that, all we really know about the model-turned-trainer is that he supposedly has an ISSA personal trainer certification, hazel eyes, and tattoos.

What Is the V Shred Custom Diet and Training Plan for Him?

(Off-topic, but the promo page includes an image of Sant wearing a sleeveless hoodie, which says all you need to know. Are you hot? Cold? Stuck in 2010? Dressed to the nines and waiting in line outside of Club Karma in Seaside?)

V Shred’s Custom Diet & Training Plan for Him is literally described as a “shortcut to jaw-dropping results” (red flag #1).

A fitness model himself, Sant knows firsthand that most successful athletes, actors, and models have coaches and mentors rooting them on and offering guidance. He’s also adamant that most people are so close to hitting their fitness goals — but are just two degrees off-target.

Vince Sant wants to be your coach (red flag #2; our assigned coach was not Vince).

These 100% custom diet and training plans factor in your goals, body stats, training experience, and limitations to guarantee the best physique of your life in just two months.

This isn’t going to be a premade template like V Shred’s other products like the Big Arms Program for example.

Here’s how it works:

1. Fill out the questionnaire (we’ll reveal what’s in the survey soon!).
2. Receive your one-month plan within 48 hours.
3. Follow the plan exactly as your trainer — who 100% is not Sant — lays it out.
4. Check in with your trainer each week to hold you accountable.

Sant claims to have only 25 open spots remaining, stuffs the page with “Act Now” and “YES Vince! I’m Serious!” seven times, and says he puts tons of time and effort into creating each of these custom plants for clients (red flags #3, #4, and #5).

Are you sensing a bit of skepticism? Read on to learn why.

Custom Diet & Training Plan Details & Features

When hyping up this program, Vince Sant latches onto the price factor, namely how a personal trainer and nutritionist would cost $1,500/month while his version works out to about $3/day. But is the Custom Plan for Him the more affordable alternative to hiring these professionals?

Where Is My Custom V Shred Plan?

If you’ve already filled out the questionnaire and waited out the 48-hour period to receive your plan, you might wonder: OK, where’s the plan? Clicking the “Custom Diet and Training Plan” button in your “My Stuff” module will send you right back to that pre-filled questionnaire.

Hint: Right under your name in “My Stuff,” there’s a long blue button titled “View My Custom Plans.” (See image below.)

That’ll open up a dropdown menu with four downloadable PDFs:

• [Your Name] Nutrition
• [Your Coach’s Name] Bio
• Meal Plan Guide 8 Weeks
• [Your Name] Training

(You’d think the “Custom Plan Questionnaire” would open the questionnaire, and the “V Shred Custom Diet and Training Plan” would open the plan — as seen below. It does not.)

The Custom Plan Questionnaire

The Custom Plan questionnaire has about 40 questions that’ll help your V Shred trainer create a diet and training plan that matches your profile. Here’s a look at the questions you’ll see:

• Name
• Email
• Date of birth
• Country
• Height
• Weight
• Gender
• Daily activity level (moderate, light, heavy)
• Average time spent training
• Dietary preferences (i.e., paleo, vegetarian lactose-free)
• Any unmentioned diet preferences
• Preferred style of diet (i.e., carb cycling, intermittent fasting)
• Preference for a more simple or complex diet plan
• List of favorite foods
• List of least favorite foods
• List of foods you refuse to eat
• Food allergies
• Training goal (i.e., gain muscle, decrease body fat, improve health)
• Body part you’d like to improve the most
• Are you currently active?
• How much time you’re willing to commit to weekly training
• An overview of your current workout routine
• What’s holding you back from training?
• List of favorite exercises
• List of least favorite exercises
• Public or home gym access?
• What can V Shred do to help you reach your goals?
• How much sleep you get per week
• Your current stress levels (on a scale of 1–10)
• Is anyone in your family overweight?
• Are you overweight?
• If so, have you always been?
• Pre-existing injuries
• If so, what is it?
• Health conditions the team should take into account
• Which supplements you take
• Any comments you’d like to make
• How you heard about the Custom Plan
• Why you decided to buy the Custom Plan

The Terms & Conditions

Ah, there’s always fine print.

The questionnaire ends with 272-word (literally) terms & conditions that you must agree to before submitting the form.

Basically, you’re promising to discuss the plan with your doctor, acknowledging you might die, taking the blame if your diet plan includes an ingredient you’re allergic to yet eat it anyway, and agreeing to not hold V Shred liable for anything that goes wrong.

It’s pretty standard in a country where you can literally sue anyone for anything. But still, the blatant mention of “serious bodily injury” and “death” is a bit frightening.

Our Questionnaire Answers

The first thought we had when signing up for this program wasn’t “Are these custom plans good?” but rather “Are these plans really 100% custom-tailored to our questionnaire answers?”

What better way to judge how well our plan stacks up than to share some of our survey responses? Here’s the gist of our answers that we’ll refer to in the upcoming sections:

• Height: 6’0”
• Weight: 170 pounds
• Sex: Male
• Preferred Workout Schedule: 4 per week, up to an hour per day
• Diet Preferences: Intermittent fasting, simple diet, no kale
• Training Goals: Build muscle, maintain or lose body fat, focus on shoulders and chest
• Training Preferences: Bench press (favorite exercise), dislike for squats and deadlifts
• Gym Access: Yes
• Medical Concerns: Patellar tendonitis in one knee, high blood pressure
• Current Supplements: Whey protein, creatine

Now, onto the four resources that come standard with V Shred Custom Plans.

Bio

We’ll say it again because the Custom Plan sales page is incredibly misleading: Fitness model Vince Sant — co-founder of V Shred — is not your trainer, nor did he create your plan.

The bio is a one-page document introducing you to your real trainer, who we won’t name here. Without giving away his identity … our trainer had degrees in exercise science and physical therapy and is a certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS).

This is also where you’ll find your trainer’s email address; save it somewhere. V Shred puts the responsibility of checking in with your trainer solely on your shoulders.

Meal Plan Guide (8 Weeks)

The Meal Plan Guide is an eight-page guide answering the frequently asked questions about the custom plans. Here, you’ll learn:

• How often to weigh yourself (daily)
• What happens after the eight weeks (you can hire your trainer at an unspecified discounted rate)
• How the program is laid out (two four-week plans)
• What you should include in your weekly emails (stats from your weekly weigh-ins, progress pictures, body measurements, plan feedback, and questions)
• Whether you should drink alcohol (preferably not)
• How much water to drink (half of your body weight in ounces)
• Whether cheat meals are on the table (one, but only in week four if you can last three weeks without falling off your diet)
• What the macros do for the body
• What counts as a protein, carbohydrate, and fat substitute
• How to spice up chicken breasts to be tastier (i.e., lemon pepper or cajun)
• What to eat/drink in place of protein shakes (Greek yogurt, eggs, lean meat, etc.)

If you’ve read our previous V Shred reviews, you knew it was only a matter of time before we mentioned links or coupon codes to Sculpt Nation supplements.

Like clockwork, they’re here! Our trainer recommended a SculptNation fat-loss bundle (because, of course), muscle-building bundle, and protein powder along with a not-so-subtle 25% off coupon-bearing his name.

But aside from the protein shakes in the meal plan, this is the only mention of supplements in the entire program. Really, why ask if we’re currently taking supplements if you’re going to recommend generic fitness bundles from your own brand anyway?

Nutrition

Remember: we selected “gain muscle” as our only training goal, mentioned a desire to avoid gaining fat, and preferred intermittent fasting.

Based on the physical stats we plugged in, we’d need at least 2,099 calories per day to maintain weight while living a sedentary lifestyle (based on TDEE calculations). On the high end, with 3–5 days of moderate exercise per week, we’d need closer to 2,711 calories.

Macronutrient goals are a bit more complicated.

Then again, we made it clear in our survey that our goal is a more muscular, low-fat physique — like a bodybuilder (to a lesser extreme). A review published in 2004 suggests that both off-season and pre-competition bodybuilders split their calories as follows:

• 55–60% carbohydrates
• 25–30% protein
• 15–20% fat

With all of that in mind, how did our “custom” meal plan turn out?

The table below displays how our diet plan sizes up on the calorie and macro fronts:

Each day in our seven-day plan included breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks. While this might be a petty complaint, we also noticed that this “seven-day” plan is more like a three-day plan that repeats the same three daily plans throughout the week.

Meals included two eggs and four slices of turkey bacon (breakfast), 1.5 scoops of whey protein and almond milk (snack), and eight ounces of low-fat protein and vegetables (dinner).

At the end of the guide, our trainer included recipes and nutrition labels for custom dishes (like a breakfast smoothie), a handy shopping list, and a portion guide for measuring ingredients.

Our Meal Plan vs. Our Questionnaire

• Nowhere in the plan does it mention when we should eat each meal. The only reason that’s an issue is that we chose “intermittent fasting” as our preferred plan style.
• Even though we didn’t select “carb cycling” in our questionnaire, that’s clearly what this plan is — 54g, 156g, 213g, repeat. Research has yet to prove that carb cycling is any more effective for weight loss than traditional caloric deficits.
• The daily calorie counts are about even with what a 6’0”, 170-pound, lightly active male should eat to maintain body weight.
• The daily fat and carbohydrate intakes are concerningly off-balance. 77g of fat is generally considered the upper limit for a 2,000-calorie diet, while the unusually low carb counts (11% on some days) can make you feel tired or cause headaches.
• There’s no mention of one of the two supplements we admitted to using in our questionnaire — creatine.
• To build muscle, the ACSM recommends 0.5–0.8g of protein per pound of bodyweight. Even on the lower-protein days, this plan exceeds those numbers.

Training

Remember: we chose chest and shoulders as our focus, four days per week (an hour per day), the bench press as our favorite exercise, squats, and deadlifts as our least favorite, “gain muscle” as our goal and high blood pressure and patellar tendonitis as medical conditions.

So did our custom training plan for weeks 1‒4 actually match our goals and abilities?

Check out the table below to learn about the plan we received!

Our trainer left the “Instructions” and “Tips” boxes blank for all five workouts and added a vague “Cardio” to four of our five weekly workouts. Most exercises in our plan also included a hyperlink, which brings you to a YouTube video starring Sant demonstrating the said exercise.

Our Training Plan vs. Our Questionnaire

• We said we were willing to devote four days per week and up to an hour per day to training in our survey. Do you see the problem here? Our plan includes five workouts per week, four of which call for both resistance training and cardio.
• The training plan did hone in on our preferred muscle groups and favorite exercise decently well. Not only do we target the chest twice per week, but our trainer also included three separate bench variations — dumbbell, incline, and standard.
• While there’s no mention of rest periods or 1RM anywhere in our plan, the sets and reps per exercise sit close to the ACSM’s guidelines for strength and power (2–4 sets per exercise and 8–12 reps per set).
• Slightly off-topic … but scheduling triceps for the day after a chest workout may hurt your performance on arm day since the triceps act as synergists (or assist muscles) in the bench press. One study from 2019 recommends 48–72 hours of rest between sessions for maximum strength.
• Our custom plan is doable both at home and at a brick-and-mortar gym.
• We listed patellar tendonitis (knee) as a pre-existing injury. Yet, the program includes 48 lunges per leg and 45 goblet squats, both of which can aggravate this condition. The kicker is that our trainer never responded when we asked for alternative exercises.
• While our trainer still included squats and deadlifts (our specified least-favorite exercises), at least they were only once a week.

Emails

Side note: We didn’t follow up with our trainer weekly as recommended, which might explain why he suddenly stopped responding after a few emails.

After receiving the custom plan, we reached out to our trainer with a few questions. (Our messages are bolded; the V-Shred trainer’s responses are italicized.)

I noticed there are pull-ups and dips on there. I can’t do 25 in a row. What should I do?

For those two exercises, take as many sets as you need to get to the full amount! (He also mentioned that we’d be receiving a V Shred survey in the next few weeks.)

Also, it has cardio marked on Day 2, 3, 4, and 5. What kind of cardio should I do?

Whichever cardio that you prefer, I am not picky! (He listed off a few of his personal favorites, but we won’t include those here.)

OK, how long should I do it each time? Also, the goblet squats and lunges are really hurting my knees. Should I do something else? Is it OK to not go down so far?

[No response received.]

Again, it’s possible our lack of weekly check-ins led to us being ghosted like the content in V Shred University. However, for a program listed at $149 with a promise of unlimited emails, it’s not a great look.

4 Solid Benefits of the V Shred Custom Plan

1. The entire concept is pretty neat, especially for us plebs who can’t afford to hire a personal trainer or a nutritionist. For the record, personal trainers charge $39–$100/hour, while an appointment with a nutritionist is closer to $70–$100.
2. Having a trainer to email can hold you accountable and motivate you to stick to the plan, at least for four weeks.
3. The meals in the diet plan are relatively simple (at our request!) and hover around the TDEE for the stats we provided. The workouts also generally line up with a goal of building muscle, though we never did receive a response to our last cardio question.
4. The routine we received is compatible with a standard gym and some higher-end home gyms. It’s also full of more traditional exercises that we’ve all experienced at some point.

6 Negatives of V Shred’s Custom Diet & Training Plan

1. Our trainer stopped responding after a few messages. Granted, we didn’t follow up weekly as the program requires, but the questions he ghosted us on were pretty big deals (i.e., what to replace goblet squats and lunges with if they’re hurting the knees and how long to perform cardio each day).
2. Four days a week, our workouts included “cardio” — no clarification on which type (HIIT vs. steady-state), how long, or using which equipment. Our trainer said the choice was up to us, but he didn’t go any further than that.
3. The sales page is wildly misleading. We can almost guarantee there aren’t just 25 spots left. Vince Sant also isn’t your coach, nor is he creating these plans for you. V Shred assigns you one of their trainers who’s not named Vince.
4. It seems like quite a few of our survey responses were flat-out ignored. We requested a four-day-a-week plan with sub-hour-long workouts … and received a five-day plan. We chose intermittent fasting … and received a diet plan that doesn’t mention meal times but does follow a carb-cycling pattern (which we didn’t select as our preference).
5. The only reference to supplements in the entire program is our trainer telling us about his favorite supplements, which — of course — are Sculpt Nation fat-loss bundles, muscle-building bundles, and protein powders.
6. The placement of the custom plans in the V Shred “My Stuff” module is unnecessarily complicated. If you don’t know to look for the blue button, you might miss it.

Wrapping Up This V Shred Custom Diet & Training Plan Review

We had high hopes for V Shred’s Custom Diet & Training Plan before writing this review.

While V Shred’s reputation is 50/50, the entire concept of having a trainer you could contact and a plan customized to you, all with a one-time payment of $149 was impressive.

However, like many V Shred programs, the Custom Plan misses the mark.

The meals were simple, our trainer was available to us early on, the exercise routine matched our goals (for the most part), and the calorie counts were well-calculated.

But some details of our plan left us wondering whether anyone really analyzed our survey responses — and our attempts to get answers to our questions eventually left us on reading.

It’s also pretty clear that buying this program doesn’t make Vince Sant your trainer or double as a “shortcut” to your dream physique. Overall, the program is overhyped and disappointing.

Rating: 4.0/10