The Most Crucial Part of a Body Transformation

I had a fitness coaching call with a friend the other day.

Let’s call him Greg (not his real name).

Greg became a father within the last year and, like many men in his situation, has put on a little extra weight as he’s adjusted to the new lifestyle.

I wrote Greg a 3-day Full-Body program focusing on heavy compound movements and some lighter hypertrophy work.

We discussed calories and figured out a good place for him to start a calorie deficit.

Greg wants to lose fat, build some muscle, and basically look like a completely different dude come summer, which is just over six months away.

We plan to drop close to 30 pounds in 5 - 6 months.

It was cool seeing how excited Greg got about this.

“Is this really possible?” he asks about our plan for summer.

My answer is a confident yes.

And this “yes” got me thinking after our call wrapped up.

My complete lack of doubt struck me.

I am 100% sure that it will work if Greg can stick to this plan.

It’s a simple strategy:

Three days per week at the gym, aim to increase his step count and stick to the calorie deficit.

If he does it, he’ll transform his body in 6 months.

And this leads me to the holy grail of self-improvement — whether in business, career, health, or creativity: it will only work if you do.

I have complete faith in the program, but while I think Greg has got this in the bag and am rooting for him 100%, there is an element of doubt as to whether he’ll pull it off.

We (Mostly) Know What We Need To Do

Here’s the thing I’m getting at — we humans often go about solving our problems in a less efficient way.

We assume that we lack information, and when we want to improve our health, business, finances, or relationships, we focus on acquiring the information we need.

But our problem isn’t a lack of information.

Let’s say you want to lose fat and build muscle like Greg.

You could plug “Muscle building program” into Google, pick a result randomly from the millions that would come up, and if you followed the directions, you would get results.

The same can be said for starting an online business, a blog, finding clients, or literally any other endeavor you could think of.

Your effort will be better spent solving issues that get in your way rather than trying to figure out the perfect plan.

“What to do” isn’t the hard part.

It’s the “why you’re not doing it” that’ll get you.

Solve “why you’re not doing it,” and you’ll solve your problems and have a better chance of achieving your goals.

This principle applies to all areas of life, but let’s keep it focused on health.

Achieving and keeping a lean physique isn’t rocket science. It will happen if you can lift weights 2-4 times per week, get 6 - 10 k steps per day, and eat a primarily whole-food diet of reasonable portions.

Easy Peasy. 

But it doesn’t happen.

The United States is approaching a 50% obesity rate by 2030 — it’s fair to say that it doesn’t happen a lot.

It’s not that people don’t know that ice cream has a lot of calories or don’t believe that exercise is good for them.

Many people intend to eat healthier or make time for exercise, but they allow all those little obstructions to get in their way and block their progress.

Let’s discuss a few of these obstructions now.

Your Social Life

You have two choices when it comes to fitness and your social life.

Option A: No social life. Go into monk mode permanently.

Option B: Integrate your social life harmoniously with your fitness goals.

Very few people want to do Option A.

Those who manage Option B stay fit forever.

But many people who ultimately fail at permanent fitness fail because of Option B.

Their social life becomes a point of friction and eventually the reason why they abandon their fitness goals.

This happens when people learn to see social occasions as “cheat days” or moments to “bust out.”

You conflate having fun with being indulgent, and this association can seriously fuck you up. You’ll see losing fat or becoming healthier as a dull prison sentence.

You need to integrate your social life with your fitness goals. This means that how you behave in restaurants or at parties shouldn’t differ too much from how you behave at home.

If you eat lean protein and veggies at home but go straight to the cheeseburger and fries when going out to dinner, your progress is doomed.

I don’t mean that you can never enjoy a cheeseburger, but you need to avoid a significant discrepancy between your health habits at home and when you’re out with friends.

Harmony between your fitness goals and social life will look different for everyone, but it needs to exist. And it can’t exist if you treat every social occasion as an excuse to go wild with food and alcohol.

Your (lack of ) Routine

When I started coaching, I was surprised to learn what the most significant obstacle people had to healthy eating was.

It wasn’t emotional binge eating.

It wasn’t obviously terrible food choices.

It was a lack of organization.

Healthy food doesn’t just magically appear.

If you don’t have a routine for getting groceries and doing some food prep, you’re making it impossible to get in a groove with good nutrition.

It’s the same thing for the gym.

You can’t just have the intention to go 2-3 times per week.

You need to know when this is going to happen.

Your success with fitness will boil down to your success with your routine.

Choose times to go to the gym, get groceries, prepare food, and stick to it!

If you don’t, not having enough time will become a reason why you didn’t achieve your fitness goals.

Unrealistic Expectations

When you start working out, you’ll enter a “Newbie Gains” phase.

It’s a period of massive growth: your muscles are primed to grow because they’ve never been trained before.

You’ll get stronger every week, and you’ll be able to watch your biceps get bigger right before your eyes.

During this phase, imagining you’ll look like Thor in just a few months is easy.

But then reality sets in.

Your progress starts slowing down, you have days where you are not stronger (maybe even weaker) in the gym, and you start realizing that looking like Thor may not happen.

This is the point where many end their fitness journey.

To fix this, you must embrace the journey over just the results.

The most significant benefits of a fitness routine are not how you look; it’s about the energy and self-respect you create.

You also need to ensure that you have realistic expectations for your results. You are not going to look like Liver King unless you, too, spend over ten grand on steroids per month.

You'll bail on your fitness goals if you fall short of your expectations.

Transforming your body isn’t rocket science — and you probably have the information you need.

You’ll get the best results from defining and guarding against the bullshit that will prevent you from following through.

Some of that bullshit could be failing to create harmony between fitness and your social life, not creating a routine you can stick to, or having drastically unrealistic expectations.

Whether in fitness or any other area of your life, start by focusing on why you’re not doing what you know you should be.

If you can remove these obstacles, you’ll hit your targets.