08/27/2026
YOU CAN’T BUILD THE PHYSIQUE YOU WANT IF YOU KEEP CHANGING THE PLAN.
This is something I’ve encountered more than once as a trainer.
Someone comes to me and says:
“I want to lose fat, build muscle and actually look like I train.”
Great.
So we build a plan around that goal.
But here’s where people sometimes sabotage themselves.
They start seeing the scale and getting impatient. Someone tells them they should be cutting harder. Social media tells them they need to get shredded first. They start dropping calories, skipping meals, changing their nutrition or chasing faster weight loss without ever talking to their trainer.
Now the goal quietly changes from building an impressive physique to simply getting as light as possible.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
If your goal is muscle, at some point you have to give your body the resources to build muscle.
That means progressive training.
Protein.
Adequate nutrition.
Recovery.
Consistency.
And patience.
Sometimes the plan is to spend a period building quality muscle while controlling unnecessary fat gain, and THEN strategically cut down to reveal what you built.
Because getting smaller isn’t automatically the same as getting better.
And if you’re aggressively suppressing your appetite, chronically under-eating, or using medications or compounds that affect appetite or body weight, that is something your trainer needs to know. Your healthcare decisions belong between you and your medical provider—but your trainer needs accurate information to program your nutrition and training appropriately.
The biggest lesson?
Don’t hire a coach and then secretly coach yourself.
Ask questions.
Challenge the plan if you don’t understand it.
Tell your trainer when something doesn’t feel right.
But don’t completely change the strategy based on advice from five different people and then wonder why the original plan isn’t producing the intended result.
A good coach should be able to explain why you’re eating what you’re eating, why you’re training the way you’re training, and what phase comes next.
You don’t have to blindly trust anybody.
But once you understand the strategy and agree with the destination…
give the process enough time to work.
Build it first.
Then reveal it.
