The Bizzy Diet is a 21-day extreme weight loss program that supposedly sheds up to 25 pounds with its calorie-restricted diet, four supplements, and 15 total workouts — all in three weeks.
“Skeptical” would be an understatement here.
Will you really lose eight pounds in seven days — as some users claim? Or trim your body fat levels by double-digit percentage points within the next three weeks?
Learn more about the controversial Bizzy Diet 21-Day Fitness Plan below!
About the Creator – Cory Gregory
(BodyFit doesn’t name Gregory of MusclePharm fame as the creator… but a simple Google search turns up a slightly different version of the Bizzy Diet with his name plastered all over it.)
Cory Gregory is a co-founder of supplement empire MusclePharm and creator of the Bizzy Diet.
Aside from launching MusclePharm with NFL veteran Brad Pyatt in 2006, Gregory’s career as a fitness entrepreneur includes:
- Squatting 550 pounds and deadlifting 575 pounds — both while weighing 198 pounds
- 13+ cover slots on fitness magazines
- 45+ drug-free competitions, between powerlifting and bodybuilding
- Several certifications, including CrossFit Level 1
- Mentorship from legends like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Phillips
(We won’t mention how MusclePharm and its financial execs landed in hot water with the SEC in 2015. But if you want to learn about that debacle, you can read all about it here.)
What Is the Bizzy Diet 21-Day Fitness Plan?
The Bizzy Diet 21-Day Fitness Plan is basically a crash diet paired with a twice-a-week, high-rep, upper-lower split designed to shed an ungodly amount of weight (~8 pounds/week).
Yes, I used the phrase “crash diet” because it’s far from a science-backed approach to a reasonable fat loss like you might find in other programs like Shortcut to Shred by Jim Stoppani.
Each Bizzy Diet workout starts with a 20-minute HIIT session on the treadmill (ideally). Run at 70–80% intensity for 60 seconds, walk for 60 more, and repeat the cycle a total of ten times.
Next is the strength circuit. Complete the five-exercise circuit — 20–30 reps per exercise — twice with just a minute of rest in between rounds.
Back to the treadmill, Gregory calls for another ten-minute HIIT session following the same 60/60 split as earlier. Then, end the workout with another two run-throughs of the same circuit.
(We’ll talk about the diet and supplements later on. But for a taste of what’s to come — the daily calories are somewhere in the 1,300–1,400 range with four supplements taken twice a day.)
Bizzy Diet Details & Features
For the next three weeks, your schedule will consist of 120 minutes of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and 1,600+ reps per week. Or 360 minutes of HIIT and 4,800+ reps in 21 days.
Here are the workout details…
Workouts
The entire Bizzy Diet Fitness Plan alternates between the same two workouts — an Upper Body + Cardio day and a Lower Body + Cardio day to reach total body fitness.
What Equipment Do You Need?
Gregory recommends a treadmill for the twice-daily interval training (ugh).
If you “don’t have a treadmill” (wink wink) or you have a prior knee injury or shin splints, you can use an exercise bike, rower, elliptical, cross-trainer, or jump rope instead.
You’ll also need a bench, barbell, weight plates, and dumbbells. Or, use whatever you have and make exercise swaps as required (i.e., replace dumbbell lunges with barbell lunges).
Bowflex SelectTech 552 Version 2
Each dumbbell adjusts from 5 to 52.5 pounds. Rapidly switch from one exercise to the next. You don't need multiple dumbbells cluttering up your home gym.
Remember: Bizzy Diet is a circuit program with no rest (except for a lone 60 seconds between rounds). So, choose equipment that allows you to quickly add/remove weight plates.
The Weekly Schedule
The Bizzy Diet’s three-week training schedule is:
- Upper Body + Cardio
- Lower Body + Cardio
- Upper Body + Cardio
- Active Rest
- Lower Body + Cardio
- Active Rest
- Rest
Upper Body + Cardio
The Upper Body + Cardio workouts include one exercise per upper body muscle: chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps. Here’s a closer look at your upper-body days:
- HIIT: 60 seconds @ 70–80% & 60 seconds walking (10 sets)
- Medium-Grip Barbell Bench Press (2 x 20)
- Single-Arm Dumbbell Row (2 x 20 per arm)
- Military Press (2 x 20)
- Barbell Curl (2 x 20)
- Triceps Kickback (2 x 20)
- Rest – 60 seconds
- HIIT: 60 seconds @ 70–80% & 60 seconds walking (5 sets)
- Repeat just the circuit again twice
(We normally don’t share entire workouts like this. However, since it’s widely available for free on the Bodybuilding.com website, we figured, “ah, what the hell.”)
Lower Body + Cardio
The Lower Body + Cardio workouts focus on the legs (three exercises) and the core (two moves). Below, you’ll find your twice-weekly lower-body session:
- HIIT: 60 seconds @ 70–80% & 60 seconds walking (10 sets)
- Bodyweight Squat (2 x 20)
- Dumbbell Lunge (2 x 15 per leg)
- Single-Leg Standing Deadlift Calf Raise (2 x 25 per leg)
- Weighted Crunch (2 x 30)
- Knees Tucked Crunch (2 x 30)
- Rest – 60 seconds
- HIIT: 60 seconds @ 70–80% & 60 seconds walking (5 sets)
- Repeat just the circuit again twice
Active Rest
Bizzy Diet’s “active rest” days are literally just brisk 60-minute runs or walks.
Rest
If you’ve tried other BodyFit programs, you’ve likely seen these suggestions … word for word … because it seems like whoever’s behind these workouts just copies and pastes this section.
Basically, you have the choice between light physical activity, meal prep, a bath, a massage, or an actual “I’m not doin’ s*** today” rest day.
Nutrition Plan
The Bizzy Diet diet (or just Bizzy Diet?) is meant to be easy-to-follow and straightforward, but the Nutrition Plan tab is still thin — to the point of being mostly unhelpful.
That’s odd, considering the Training Guidelines tab says, “every calorie and every ounce were planned.” In fact, about 75% of the diet plan is a list of nutritional tips that include:
- Making low-calorie substitutions, like swapping out chips for fruit (fair trade, huh)
- Choosing a meal frequency that best fits your energy levels and schedule
- Aiming to lose 0.5–1% of your body weight each week
- Having snacks packed and ready when hunger strikes
- Eating fruit or a snack an hour before training
- Prepping the meals you tend to cheat on
The rest of the guide suggests plugging your stats into the Bodybuilding.com Macro Calculator and selecting the options for “fat loss” and “lightly active” if your only activity is Bizzy Diet.
Oh, and eating 1g of protein per pound, 3–5 meals per day, and tons of vegetables.
Supplement Recommendations
We’re going to gloss over Bizzy Diet’s Supplement Recommendations because it’s ripped directly from other BodyFit programs. Or other programs “borrowed” it from Bizzy Diet.
If you’re curious, the suggested supplements are whey protein, multivitamins, fish or krill oil, pre-workout, creatine or kre-alkalyn, BCAAs, and protein bars.
You’ll see why we’re ignoring these suggestions in the next section.
Swolverine Whey Protein Isolate
This is one of our top recommended whey protein powders because of it's high protein content per serving, extreme deliciousness, and the fact that all Swolverine products are sourced from GMP-certified facilities
The Mysterious Bizzy Diet PDF
Literally, the second thing that pops up on Google when you search “Bizzy Diet” is this PDF, which features Cory Gregory on the cover and includes the same exact workout (almost).
(This version also seems to be 100% sponsored by MusclePharm.)
Here’s what you’ll find in this six-page guide:
Bizzy Diet Food List
The official, unofficial Bizzy Diet guide begins with a recommended food list that includes just three categories of foods:
- Meats, like eggs, jerky, tuna, and chicken
- Vegetables, like bamboo shoots, kale, cauliflower, and sauerkraut
- Condiments & seasonings, like spicy mustard and lemon pepper
It’s really not clear when you’re allowed to use condiments and seasonings or if it’s an unlimited sort of deal like some Beachbody programs.
Meal Schedule & Recommendations
This is where Cory Gregory maps out the daily Bizzy Diet meal plan. Here’s a closer look:
* All but one of the recommended supplements is a MusclePharm product that Bodybuilding.com no longer sells. The only one available is Combat Powder.
But notice how there’s no mention of the supplements added in BodyFit. Explain that.
Workouts
The guide ends with a wordy description of each workout.
The workouts are about 95% the same as the BodyFit version, except for a few differences in reps — calves and abs are 30–50 reps — and a wonky way of explaining the HIIT portions.
Gregory also recommends four BCAA capsules both before and after each session.
Will You Actually Lose Weight? We Did the Math.
The Bizzy Diet is an intermediate-level weight loss plan with a lesser focus on building strength, ideally to “tighten” you up and transform you into a ripped physique in three weeks.
How much will you lose if you follow the Bizzy Diet exactly as the PDF describes?
Diet
Based on the Bizzy Diet PDF, because the BodyFit version doesn’t offer much dietary guidance, an entire day’s worth of eating might consist of:
Note: This does not take into account any calories or nutrients from the supplements.
According to the Institute of Medicine, the average male has a TDEE of ~3,100 calories.
In simpler terms: the typical man needs to consume ~3,100 calories per day to maintain their current weight & exercise routine.
Now, let’s say you have a TDEE of 3,100.
If you continue your current exercise routine and replace your entire diet with Gregory’s plan, you could create a 1,723–1,785-calorie deficit per day. Or about 0.49–0.51 pounds of fat.
By the end of the 21-day Bizzy Diet, that’s 10.3–10.71 pounds of fat loss from diet alone.
Exercise
The calorie burn from exercise is a bit more complicated because it depends on so many more factors. As a reminder, each week on the Bizzy diet lines up:
- Four 20-minute HIIT sessions (60/60)
- Four 10-minute HIIT sessions (60/60)
- Four resistance training circuits (with four rounds per workout)
- One hour-long brisk walk or run
The BodyFit version also says that each workout lasts about an hour. So that leaves us with 120 minutes of HIIT, a 60-minute brisk walk or run, and 120 minutes of circuit training per week.
Research from 2015 ballparks 12.62 calories burned per minute with HIIT. (Disclaimer: this was for a 20/40 interval at maximum intensity.) Multiply that by 120 to get 1,514.4 calories burned.
Livestrong puts the calorie-burn for a 20-minute moderate-intensity resistance circuit at ~78. That’s another 468 calories burned per week through exercise.
In an hour-long 3 MPH brisk walk, you can burn ~100 calories per mile — or 300 calories total.
Once we add it all up, the Bizzy Diet can burn around 2,282.4 calories per week through exercise, which equals 0.65 pounds of fat.
By the end of this 21-day program, exercise will shred another 6,847.2 calories and 1.96 pounds of fat for a grand total of 12.26–12.67 pounds dropped between diet and exercise.
Again, this isn’t an exact number, and there’s no way to guarantee that you’ll lose this much weight (especially if you’re already lean) or that all the weight will be body fat.
We’d say between 8–16 pounds is a safer bet.
3 Mediocre Benefits of the Bizzy Diet 21-Day Fitness Plan
- If you’re willing to cut your caloric intake significantly, walk an hour per week, do interval training for two hours weekly, and power through four double-circuit workouts per week … you can lose about 12 pounds in three weeks.
- All you need are a barbell, weight plates, dumbbells, a bench, and maybe a treadmill. It’s doable with the average home gym.
- (It’s really getting hard to find benefits here, so please bear with us for this last one.) You’ll sweat a lot. Some guys judge the quality of their workouts based on how drenched they end it — so there’s that.
5 Negatives of the Bizzy Diet Fitness Plan
- The BodyFit diet plan encourages you to aim for steady, slight progress by dropping 0.5–1% of your total body weight each week. Bizzy Diet’s 12 or so pounds of weight loss fits that standard … if you currently weigh 400–800 pounds. The CDC recommends 1–2 pounds of steady, weekly weight loss to avoid shedding the pounds too quickly.
- You likely won’t lose 25 pounds in the Bizzy Diet’s three-week plan. But if you manage to pull it off with the extremely low daily calorie count, you’re likely to feel dehydrated and weak or even notice muscle loss. Those who are already lean won’t lose much either.
- The high-rep scheme and bodyweight exercises somewhat lessen the intensity of the Bizzy Diet. However, four rounds of a strength circuit (totaling 20 sets and 400+ reps) and 30 minutes of interval training four days per week are huge tasks.
- Unfortunately, while they may burn calories and work up a sweat, the 20-rep sets won’t improve your strength much. One 2015 study comparing low-weight (25–35 reps per set) and high-weight (8–12 reps) training found that low-load exercises were less effective for improving bench press 1RM. The low-weight group boosted their strength by 2% in eight weeks, while the high-weight group increased their bench by 6.5%.
- The fact that two Bizzy Diet 21-Day Fitness Plans exist is super confusing. The BodyFit version is sparse in the nutrition section, while the supplement tab copies other BodyFit programs. But the PDF version — also available on Bodybuilding.com — is a little too focused on MusclePharm products.
Wrapping Up This Bizzy Diet 21-Day Fitness Plan Review
The Bizzy Diet is one of the most confusing, unsustainable, most demanding programs we’ve seen on the BodyFit platform.
It’s no wonder so many people online “start” the program planning to update others with their progress and then completely disappear within a few days.
Not to mention the lack of progress stories and photos posted online for a program that’s been around for nearly a decade now.
For those with the stamina and willpower to lose 10–25 pounds in three weeks, no matter what it takes, the Bizzy Diet is definitely an option (though likely not the best one).
Otherwise, the cons outweigh the pros. Bizzy Diet is too much, too fast, and will feel overwhelming for both newbies and athletes.
Rating: 3.0/10