Celebrity Trainer Harley Pasternak Reveals How He Transformed People — Without the Gym — on 'Revenge Body'

Celebrity Trainer Harley Pasternak says adapting healthy behaviors outside the gym is more effective than anything you can do in the gym

Photo: Fitbit

Harley Pasternak took a different approach to helping people undergo dramatic physical transformations than a lot of the other trainers did on Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian.

The celebrity trainer emphasized the importance of making lifestyle changes outside the gym as opposed to focusing on putting his Revenge Body participants through intense training sessions.

“There are 168 hours in the week. If you’re going to the gym Monday through Friday for an hour each day, there’s still 163 of the 168 hours you’re not in the gym, and it’s what you do in that time that’s far more important,” Pasternak tells PEOPLE. “You can come to the gym for a week and work your butt off and not lose any weight. I actually didn’t even allow the women I worked with on the show to come inside the gym until they succeeded in creating some healthy habits in their everyday life.”

Those habits included getting 12,000 steps a day, sleeping for at least seven hours a night, and unplugging from technology for at least one hour a day.

He also overhauled their diets by putting the transformation hopefuls on his Body Reset Diet, which involves having smoothies for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus two healthy snacks each day for five days.

“The number one reason people give [for not eating healthy] is, ‘I don’t have time to grill, steam, poach, chop, clean up.’ So what if I gave you a 60-second meal?” says Pasternak, who has his own line of Power Blenders. “For five days, they’re really resetting everything — metabolism, digestion. And we’re removing the main excuse they’ve given for not eating healthy, whether it’s time or not knowing how to cook. If they can get through these five days, then they will be successful.”

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After five days, Pasternak allowed the participants to substitute what he calls an “s” meal for one of the smoothies — a solid, single-dish meal of a salad, soup, scramble, stir-fry, sandwich or sushi. After another five days, they were allowed to have two “s” meals, plus a smoothie and two snacks a day.

“By the end of the body reset, which is really those 15 days, the women that I worked with were basically transformed without even setting foot in the gym,” says Pasternak, a fact he hopes will inspire viewers at home.

“Some people feel, ‘If I had a trainer I could do that.’ I’m trying to show people watching the show you don’t even need a gym, because the thing that got you to the point that you are now, the weight you gained, doesn’t have to do with not going to the gym; it has to do with what you’ve been doing outside the gym — you’ve been eating poorly, you haven’t been sleeping well and you’re sedentary,” he explains. “You get lean in life and you get strong in the gym.”

After the 15-day reset, Pasternak began working with the women in the gym to start toning their bodies.

“They were so enthused and so confident in the process that getting them to work hard [was easy by that point],” he says. “People who have results in the first week of a weight loss program are more likely to stick to it. It’s really getting people to believe in themselves.”

Pasternak says that Kardashian is the perfect embodiment of the type of transformation he tried to help the women he worked with achieve.

“Khloé is the voice of the show, and it really embodies her journey,” he says. “She’s inspired a lot of other women.”

Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian premieres Jan. 12 on E!