The diet Glen Powell followed to build his 7-week body for Top Gun Maverick

Glen Powell had to be in top shape for Top Gun: Maverick, so his diet and his training needed to match.

The Ultimate Performance Team and Nick Mitchell were given just seven weeks to transform Tom Cruise into a muscular and lean body for the Top Gun sequel.

U.P. is widely regarded as being the leading personal trainer in the world. CEO Nick has oversaw 25,000+ transformations of ordinary clients around the world.

Nick created a program for Glen to achieve the athletic appearance he desired. But getting Glen’s nutrition right was crucial in helping him reshape over the course of seven weeks.

Glen, like thousands of other executives with whom we work, didn’t have time to plan a complicated diet.

He didn’t employ an army of chefs to prepare every meal. On his Top Gun schedule, he was either filming, practicing, traveling from one location to another, or learning how to fly.

What Glen really needed was a simple and stripped-down diet plan to maximize the results of 3-4 personal training sessions per week.

Nick has created a bespoke diet plan based on the simple yet powerful principles that we use for every client at U.P.

Nick shares with you the secrets of Glen’s diet, which will help anyone achieve better results.

• The diet that Glen followed to lose weight
• How we managed Glenn’s diet around Top Gun filming schedule
• How Glen’s diet looks like
• What metrics did we track to give Glen a blockbuster abs
• Glen’s key supplements for achieving his best transformation results
• A sample meal plan Glen followed during his 7-week transformation

The Principles of GLEN’S TRANSFORMATION DIET

What nutritional principles did you encourage Glen to concentrate on?

Glen’s food was kept simple. Glen had a hectic and busy schedule. He spent long days filming on the set and his daily routine was often unpredictable. It was therefore not the best approach to track every bite of his food. He was instead given a protein and calorie target, with an emphasis on the principle of “eating from land.”

This means that you should only eat foods that are easy to kill, pick, or pluck. Finding a diet plan that you can follow and stick to is the most important part of dieting effectively, especially if you are limited in time. Glen was eating 2800 calories three to four times a day with an emphasis on proteins.

He was given a 200g protein goal. As long as his calories target was met, he could eat whatever he wanted in terms of carbohydrates and fats. Due to digestive issues, he avoided dairy products. On one day per week, he would reduce his calories to 2,000, focusing on animal proteins, like chicken breasts, and less than 100g carbohydrates. The remainder of his calories came from high-quality fats.

Glen used only a few supplements during his transformation to help him progress and give him an advantage.

A TAILORED DIET PLAN DESIGNED TO FIT GLEN’S TOP GUN SCHEDULE.

How did you maintain Glen’s diet during filming?

Glen was too busy for him to micromanage his own diet. We would have said to some clients “put your diet on U.P.” Transform App. “I’m going track my food and play with the calories”.

Glen was not Glen. It was “these are the principals.” Let’s discuss the food you have been eating over the past day or two.

As we warm up for our workout, I will give you some tips and guides. I train him four days a weeks, so four times per week I will look at his body. You can check if you’re on track.

What was Glen’s daily diet like?

Glen ate probably three to four times per day at most. It was all about the protein. Quality was always the priority. He liked to eat wild fish like cod, halibut and yellowfin, as well as lean chicken and beef.

The manipulation of carbohydrates would be more effective in controlling calories than the manipulation of fats. His sources of fat were avocados, olive oil, butter organic, coconut oil, nuts, and fats derived from protein sources. His carbohydrate sources are green vegetables like spinach and broccoli, basmati rice, sweet potato, oats, and organic butter.

It was all dependent on his eating habits or the food he could eat. He may have to eat at a set buffet. What will he eat? I can’t eat anything else. Or he ate the wrong food, or made mistakes. “Oh, this is a bad food. This is not good food!, “You ate it yesterday. Okay. We’re going a little tighter today.” “Oh, your getting in shape too quickly. We will increase the number of calories.” You’re moving too slowly. We will reduce the calories .”

You can easily reduce calories by saying, “Okay, we’ll take a prescription.” Another way is to say, “Okay, no carbohydrates for one day.” Let’s wait and see. It’s fluid. It’s important to keep it fluid. This goes back to what I said about the training: it’s all about trust.

Do you have mutual trust? Are you a partner? Are you Glen’s partner on this specific journey? If you have a good relationship, you will have the best level of communication and honesty. You can also mitigate problems and get to where you want much more quickly.

Find out how Glen trained for his Top Gun transformation, with a sample workout included.

TRACKING GLEN’S BODY CHANGE PROGRESS

What metrics or data did you track during Glen’s program to measure progress?

We would keep track of Glen’s performance and workouts. I want to see that the gym performance numbers improve every time. I’ll know if he isn’t overtraining if he doesn’t overeat. He is not pushing himself to hard. This is a crucial metric.

You will always ask him how he sleeps. You will look at his body weight. But who cares? He could have been 50kg or even 125kg. What matters is how he will look on camera.

The body fat percentage is the exact same thing. Body fat percentage could be used to track. We did it occasionally, but neither he nor I cared what his body-fat percentage was. It’s just a vanity measure. We only cared about how you looked. How do you look? What do you think? You know I’m going brutal.

How do you look in the’money shots?’ What is the way they are coming in? For us, it was all about the money shot. How will you look in the specific poses and positions we want to maximize on film? What was different about working with you compared to a regular client who is not an actor, was that you were going to be in Top Gun Maverick.

You will be taking off your top. You will be doing specific poses, such as catching an American Football, throwing the ball or celebrating a touchdown. It worked, because we have him on billboards all over the globe, doing those shots. It’s very satisfying.

GLEN’S SUPPLEMENTS

Have you used any supplements to help Glen achieve his body transformation goals?

We used a few supplements. We didn’t use many supplements because we did not want to complicate things. We used Estro Support. We used Estro Support, not necessarily to control estrogen levels – this is a supplement we give to women to maintain estrogen balance. But more as an anti inflammatory to keep his body looking as crisp and sharp as possible.

Amplify, which contains primarily leucine as its main ingredient, is something we have always used and will continue to use for intra-workout drinks. It’s something I use every time I train. Amplify is two scoops at each workout. It’s really just a post-workout drink of 10, 15, or 20 grams of creatine and glutamine. We would use our vegan protein instead of whey because he can’t eat whey. We kept things simple.

You will do anything to gain an advantage. We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t believe it would give us an advantage. You can also control exactly what your client eats. If you’re only with them an hour a day, three or four times a weeks, I will give them 60 grams of high quality protein plus some other things, because this gives me control.

GLEN POWELL DIET SAMPLE

Glen’s diet was based on the philosophy ‘Eating the land’. He ate a lot of whole, nutrient dense foods, including high-quality protein, plenty of green vegetables and healthy sources for carbs and fats.

During the first seven weeks of his training, he followed a diet plan that included an estimated 2800 calories. His macronutrients were 200g of protein, 300g of carbs and 88g of fat.

With 100g of carbohydrates, his daily calories would fall to 2,000.