Progress Plateau? Here's What's Actually Missing

October 19, 20269 min readEpisode 2363

You're training hard. You're eating "pretty well." And yet the scale, the barbell, or the finish-line clock just won't budge the way you expected. If that sounds familiar, you're experiencing a classic progress plateau — and in almost every case I've coached through, the missing piece isn't more effort. It's precision.

I'm Rob Polenik, and over the course of coaching 3,000+ clients — from first-time gym-goers to IFBB Pro competitors, world record holders, and D1 athletes — I've learned that the gap between "working hard" and "getting results" almost always comes down to a handful of overlooked details. Not motivation. Not willpower. Details.

In this post, I'm breaking down three real client case studies from a recent episode: a crit cyclist whose races fell apart in the final sprint, an elite powerlifter whose numbers swung wildly week to week, and a GLP-1 client who'd burned through every fad diet imaginable. Each one was doing real work. Each one had a specific, identifiable gap. By the end of this article, you'll know exactly what to look for in your own approach — and how to fix it.

The Crit Cyclist: When "Eating Healthy" Isn't Eating Consistent

This client was already competitive — climbing the rankings in criterium racing, a brutal 30-to-90-minute event built on repeated sprint efforts and sustained high-speed riding. He was already strength training outside of his cycling work. What he was missing was nutritional consistency and fuel optimization.

When we dug into his actual intake, the story didn't match his self-report. He believed he was consistently hitting roughly a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. In reality, some days he was eating 180 grams, and two or three days a week he was closer to 120. That variance matters enormously when you're asking your muscles to recover and adapt from both cycling stress and strength training stress.

The Real Problem: Underfueled Practices

The bigger issue, though, was carbohydrate intake. He wasn't walking into daily training sessions with glycogen stores topped off, which meant every single practice produced a mediocre training stimulus instead of a maximal one. And it showed up exactly where you'd expect — strong starts, fading hard in the back half of the race, and no gas left for the closing sprint.

He was also trying to "outfuel" an underfueled day by cramming gels and carbs during the race itself, which caused digestive discomfort and still couldn't close the gap. The fix wasn't more fueling on the bike — it was optimizing carbohydrate intake in daily meals and in the 3-to-5-hour and 1-hour windows leading into each race, so on-bike nutrition only had to top things off, not make up a deficit. This is a concept we go even deeper on in our breakdown of carb loading for peak performance.

The Elite Powerlifter: Inflexible Training Meets Untracked Nutrition

This client already had a 500+ dot total — elite by any measure — but was stuck in a frustrating cycle: squat 600 one week, get crushed by 550 the next. Chronic nagging injuries bounced from the groin to the shoulder to the bicep to the neck, never fully resolving.

The first issue was training rigidity. His program required roughly two hours in the gym per session, four days a week, which created real friction with his relationship and home responsibilities. When life got in the way, he'd skip a session or try to cram two days of volume into one — which meant his CNS, lower back, and energy substrates were never fully recovered heading into the next lift. A messy bench day was quietly wrecking his deadlift day.

Nutrition Without Numbers

The second issue was nutrition that sounded structured but wasn't. He reported "eating as much as I can every day," but couldn't give consistent numbers for calories or protein from one day to the next. "Most days" and "probably" aren't precise enough once you're chasing elite-level numbers — your genetics have already covered the easy gains.

The fix: we restructured training into flexible options — full 90-minute-to-2-hour sessions, abbreviated versions with built-in exercise cuts, home kettlebell workouts, and travel bodyweight routines — so missing a day no longer meant missing the stimulus entirely. On the nutrition side, we started tracking daily intake, redistributing calories and protein evenly throughout the day, and manipulating carb-versus-protein timing around training — pushing carbs up pre- and intra-workout while loading 60-80 grams of protein before bed. The nagging injuries started disappearing almost as a side effect of better recovery.

The GLP-1 Client: Missing Belief, Not Missing Willpower

This client had spent 20 years cycling through every diet fad imaginable — losing weight, regaining it, chasing the next promise. What was missing wasn't discipline. It was belief in a sustainable approach and the emotional support to stick with it.

Using a GLP-1 medication to blunt hunger, we're currently running her at an average of roughly 1,500 calories a week — low for her size, but tolerable because of the appetite support. The real skill, though, is what happens on the way out of the medication: bringing calories back up slowly from 1,500 to 1,800 to 2,000 to 2,200 as the metabolism recalibrates, rather than flooding a downregulated system with excess calories it will store as fat. Strength training throughout this process preserves muscle tissue and keeps creating a demand for those calories to be used productively instead of stored. We cover the mechanics of these medications in more depth in our comparison of semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide for fat loss.

Just as important as the physical protocol was giving her a framework she could trust long-term — one that flexes with GLP-1 use, holidays, or training pushes without requiring a total diet overhaul every few months.

The One Thing All Three Had in Common

Across a cyclist, a powerlifter, and a GLP-1 client, the common thread was the same: nutrition optimization had stalled while effort stayed constant. Each person set a routine and expected it to keep producing better results indefinitely — without ever refining it. As I tell clients constantly, what you think you're doing and what you're actually doing are rarely the same thing until you track it. We've covered this exact disconnect in our episode on caloric consistency versus caloric averages, and it shows up in nearly every stalled case I see.

Key Takeaways


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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I know if my progress plateau is a nutrition issue or a training issue?
Start by tracking your actual food intake for two weeks — most people discover their real numbers differ significantly from what they believed. If calories and protein are genuinely consistent and optimized, the issue is more likely training structure, recovery, or program design.

Q: Why would my protein intake matter if I'm "close enough" most days?
Recovery and adaptation depend on consistent daily protein, not an average. Two or three low-protein days a week can meaningfully blunt the muscular adaptations you're training for, even if your weekly average looks fine on paper.

Q: What does carbohydrate timing actually do for endurance performance?
Carbs fuel both your training sessions and your event performance. Being under-fueled in daily practice produces a weaker training stimulus, which means a weaker adaptation — and being under-fueled pre-race forces you to try to catch up during the event, which rarely works well.

Q: How should I adjust calories when coming off a GLP-1 medication?
Increase calories gradually — small step-ups over weeks, not a jump back to full maintenance — while continuing strength training to preserve muscle and direct the extra calories toward recovery rather than fat storage.

Q: Why did my powerlifting numbers swing so much week to week?
Inconsistent training structure and untracked nutrition are the most common culprits. Overloading one session to compensate for a missed day creates a recovery debt that shows up as reduced performance in the next session, even if it targets a different lift.

Conclusion

If you've been putting in consistent effort but your results have stalled, the answer usually isn't to work harder — it's to get more precise. In every case study from this episode, the missing piece was hiding in plain sight: unconsidered variance in daily nutrition, a training structure that didn't match real life, or the belief and support needed to stay the course. Good can always become great, but only if you're willing to look honestly at what "good" actually consists of right now.


Take the Next Step

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Listen to the Episode

Want to hear these case studies in Rob's own words, including the exact numbers and adjustments made for each client? Listen to the full episode: 2363 - Not Getting the Progress You Expected... What's Missing? Client Case Studies

Episode transcript Machine-generated

This transcript was produced automatically by speech-recognition software (AssemblyAI) and has not been checked by a person. Expect mistakes, especially in names, numbers and technical terms. The recap above is the edited version.

If you've been putting in consistent effort to reach your goals, but progress has stalled, what is missing? That's what we're going to discuss in today's podcast. I want to go through 3 client examples today and discuss the struggles that they were facing, what was missing in their approach to reach their goals, and then how we're addressing those missing elements. Okay, the first person we're gonna look at is a crit cyclist. Uh, crit is short for criterium, I believe.

I'm 99.9% sure until I just said that out loud, then I was like, oh crap. Uh, but it's a crit cyclist. These are 30 to 90 minute, uh, bicycle races. They travel at really high speeds. They are on like a, like a loop track.

It's a public, like public roads and public spaces, so it's not like separate racetracks like NASCAR or something, but it would be similar to like the Indy 500 where there's a set course and then they go through loops. And it's pretty cool. It's very intense racing, 30 to 90 minutes, and it's a series of sprinting and then trying to sustain as much as you possibly can, then sprint again. You want to take advantage of the parts of the course that favor sprints, of course, and then trying to survive the other parts of the course. But that's what this client does, and they have been advancing in their ranking, kind of like their performance.

They've been getting better and better, and they want to continue to improve. And they reached out because they knew that nutrition was going to be an element that they were needing to look into. They were already doing some strength-based training outside of the cycle training, which is definitely going to help with overall strength for the sprints, endurance for just multiple races in the full year of however long they their season is. And then with nutrition, that was going to be the missing element. And what they were missing with their nutrition was just some consistency and optimization.

They were eating every day, but they were eating kind of how they felt. If they were hungry one day, they'd eat more. If they were not as hungry, they'd eat less. And if you ask them, you know, how much protein we're having, they would say, oh, about, you know, a gram per pound of body weight. But if you actually look at the numbers, that might be a lot lower than what they thought on random days.

So maybe they thought they were having maybe 180 grams of protein, but really if they looked at it, there were 2 or 3 days a week where they were maybe only having 120. And it's not the end of the world, it's not so significantly far off that, you know, this is a difference between them being last place and first place, but it is a difference. And especially over the competitive season, which would include aggressive offseason training where you're wanting to make improvements, and then in-season training to continue to make improvements and refine your approach, it's going to be important to sustain protein for recovery and adaptive response. You want to get faster and have better muscular performance via the stimulus that you're producing in your training on the bike, but then also in strength training. So in order for their muscles to meet that demand, to fulfill the adaptation stimulus, they would have to have consistent protein.

They're also going to need consistent calories. So that was another thing we looked at, is just trying to get their, their calories and their protein consistent. We wanted to decrease the variance that they were experiencing from day to day. The other element was they weren't optimizing their fueling. They weren't optimizing carbohydrate intake, and that's— their fats definitely play a role, but carbs is predominantly the main fuel source that we're gonna be looking for for this type of event.

And we want to have an appropriate amount and a daily intake of fats for sure, We've covered that. But as I said, the biggest thing that they were missing was carbohydrate intake. They weren't consistent with that day to day to day. And then that meant they were coming into each practice where their glycogen stores were less than optimized. And it correlated to exactly what they were struggling with in their races was they would often start strong.

Then around midway to 3 quarters into the race, they'd start to fade and their desire, their ability to have that final closing sprint just seemed to be less than optimal. It seemed that there was just something missing, like a drive, a fire, an ability to do that last sprinting effort just was gone. They were running on fumes at that point, and that correlated to the fact that they were coming into their practices and their races under-optimized in fuel. They didn't have the carb stores filled up leading into the day of the race. They didn't have the carb stores filled up leading into the actual race itself.

And there's a little bit of a difference there, is if we have carbs high and our glycogen stores, you know, near the top during all of our practices, we're going to get better stimulus, we're going to get better adaptation demand, especially when we have the calories and protein now optimized and consistent. So carbohydrate intake, even on non-race day events, is extremely important because it optimizes the performance in our practices, which then optimizes— I'm gonna have to end up saying that word about a billion times— but it gets the best result in regards to the stimulus that the training can elicit. If we have a crazy awesome hardcore training session, our body's going to have to meet that demand, whereas if we have a mediocre training session, it's only going to have a mediocre demand to meet. So our carbohydrate intake was extremely important every day for general practice adaptations. And then their race day, they weren't eating enough carbohydrates pre-bike, like before getting on the bike, before getting into the event.

And then they were trying to outfuel that deficit on the bike, which is going to cause digestive issues, even just kind of discomfort trying to jam in a bunch of, you know, gel packs and whatnot on the bike is just not optimal. We're really looking for the nutrition on the bike to be something that just like tops off our efforts, not makes up for the lack of the other efforts. When you think about daily carbohydrate intake and pre-race, say 3 to 5 hours leading into the race, then like 1 hour leading into the race, those meal times are extremely important. So that way when we're actually in the race, we don't have as much fueling to meet. And that would be the same thing I do with the running clients I work with.

I work with clients who, you know, run marathons and Ironmans and ultras and all the craziness. So this is something we're always working on, is what does our daily food look like? Calories, protein, our substrate of choice of what we're really kind of like pushing our performance based off of? And then do we have that consistent day to day to day to maximize our training stimulus and training adaptations? And then on the race events, you know, are we optimizing what we can do before we get into the race so there's less work to have to do during the race?

And that's going to help them have a much better performance towards the latter half of whatever the event is. Now if it's, you know, 30 minutes versus 90 minutes versus 4 hours, we're gonna be feeling a little bit differently, but the concepts are all the same. So that was what he was missing. So what we're doing about it is we're now tracking our food every day so that way he can have a little more awareness of how many calories and proteins are in the foods that he normally eats. Does he— when he thinks he eats a lot, is it a lot?

When he doesn't think— when he has a low day, is it too low? Do we have too much sporadicness throughout the day where he overeats some mornings but then misses some foods in the middle of the day and vice versa the next day? By tracking, we're raising our awareness of what our normal habits actually produce. Overwhelmingly, absolutely overwhelmingly, when you ask people what they think they do and then you track and see what they actually do, it's way different. People are going to report things different based on what they believe versus what we'll actually see.

When you ask most people, oh, I eat healthy, First of all, you have to ask them what they define as healthy. What does that mean to them? And then no one is ever as consistent as they think they are. And even when somebody says, like, I eat the same food every day, I doubt it. Because what they really mean is they eat around the same foods every day.

But they also discount or just miss or just kind of somehow don't register the days that they don't. So maybe they skip breakfast someday. But that only happens, you know, maybe once every 2 weeks. And then maybe there's a bad week where it happens twice in a week. Then they traveled for a month, like for, you know, a couple days during the month, and the breakfast was way off on that traveling day.

So if you ask them, oh, do you have breakfast every day? So they'll say yes, but in a 30-day month, they might've missed breakfast 10 days. So they're missing breakfast a third of the time just because it's a day here, a day there, a clump of days here, a clump of days there. People are not as consistent as they think they are. So tracking every day to gain awareness of whether what you think you're doing versus what you're actually doing, is there any difference there?

And the worst-case scenario is you track and say, hey, I was exactly right. Good for me. Do that. Give yourself that reward. If you're afraid to be wrong, quote unquote, if you're afraid that, oh man, you know what I believe I'm doing, I'm not actually doing.

Well, if you don't expose that, you never address it, you're always going to be held back by it. So I wouldn't like put your— bury your head in the sand and try not to see that. I would try to expose it, try to find it out. And I'm speaking from personal experiences. I do this as often as I can with anything I can find, whether that's nutrition, training, supplements, finances, relationship, whatever it might be, client communication, the way I run my business.

If there's something that I think, like if somebody said like, how are you doing on this? I'm like, oh, I think I'm doing good. I'm like, whoa, hold on a second. Do I think it or do I know it? That's the difference.

We want to know, not think. So it helps to collect data and actually track what we're doing. Then other than just daily tracking for calories, protein, and carbs, we are also playing around with the amount of carbohydrates he can tolerate, but leading into practices. And then when the practices are long enough, we can play with our fueling on the bike. But for the most part, what we're really trying to dial in right now is daily consistency with calories, protein, carbohydrates.

How much can we fluctuate those? What difference do we see? You know, so if we're averaging, say, 2,500 calories, if we bump that to 2,800, do we see improved performance? Do we feel sluggish? Do we have digestive issues?

What happens when we make that change? So that's what we're playing with, playing with protein the same way, carbs the same way. And then the meals leading into his events, we're playing with our carbohydrate intake. And that would also play with food choices, meaning the food volume. We might want to get more carbs in but not more food volume, so we have to pick more carb-dense foods so we're not just intaking more and more volumes of food that has to now sit in his belly and break down and digest.

We might find the better option for us is to increase his carbohydrates by 20% but bring his food volume down by 20%. So that's what we're playing with now. So that was a cool example to where somebody was already advanced in what they do, but by now diving into the nutrition and focusing on consistency and optimization, they're going to make even better progress. Another example we have is an elite powerlifter. They're already elite, already crushing things.

I think they have 500+ dots already, and they're doing a great job. The downside though is why they came to work with me was they were having some inconsistency in their performance is in the gym. So like one day they might be able to— I'm just making up numbers— say they can squat 600 one day, and the next day, like the next week, 550 feels like it's going to pin them to the floor. It's just they were experiencing this wide variety of, uh, kind of performance abilities, and they were getting chronic injuries. So their groin might hurt off and on for a week, 2 weeks here or there over the last 9 months.

And then they were having a shoulder problem. But then when the shoulder problem went away, they had a left bicep problem. But when the left bicep problem went away, they had something wrong with their neck. It was just like, man, there was this one kind of annoying thing that stays. Then there's all these things that are bouncing around.

Their performance is hit or miss. So they wanted to reach out and, and basically figure out, you know, what's going on. When we first started talking, the first thing they brought up was their training. The first thing I asked them about was nutrition. So we found out that the training was inflexible.

So that was actually something we did need to change. Their training required at that time, the way their workouts were structured, was about 2— like 2 hours in the gym was a quick one for them where they felt like they had to kind of push it. They had to push themselves aerobically to be able to kind of get everything in, and that was not going to be optimal. So 2 hours is just not always possible, especially they have a significant other in life, they have a full-time job, and being able to fit 2 hours in in the evenings, 4 days a week, with having a relationship and balancing household chores and responsibilities, you know, in the evenings with their significant other. It just, it was, it was creating a lot of internal tension.

I don't think their spouse probably like really noticed it. Like they both report having a great relationship. They talk with each other and have great communication. However, the client was feeling that they just weren't maybe living up to their end of the bargain and they wanted to do better job of that. What this meant was in their training is if they were feeling kind of guilty and that week was a really tough week, they might skip their secondary bench day.

And that would give them a night where they can just go home, be home with a significant other, help with some household chores, maybe they have a date night. And that was great for a relationship balance, but it was coming at the expense of his training. So some weeks might have 3 workouts, some weeks might have 4. Some weeks he— on that one bench day, if he knew he might miss the second bench day. He was trying to add extra work into that first bench day from the second bench day, and then he was in the gym for 3.5 hours and way too much damage that his body wasn't recovering from.

So then the next deadlift workout was going to go to crap. So the training inflexibility definitely didn't help. So we modified the training since that was something that was missing. And then the other thing that was missing was nutrition for sure. They were eating every day.

They ate a lot. They reported that they were basically eating as much as they could every day. However, there weren't concrete numbers. They didn't really know how many grams of protein. They didn't really know how many calories.

They could sit there and kind of guesstimate and figure it out. But that would be like, hey, what did you eat yesterday? They would sit there, figure it out, and maybe it ended up being like 3,000 to 3,500 calories. I'd say, okay, but what about the day before? And what about the day before?

And what about the day before? And it was like, oh crap, I don't know. So they were like, most days I'm probably here. And I'm like, well, most isn't good enough and probably isn't good enough. If you have 500, like 500+ dots and you want to keep getting better, we're gonna have to get into the nitty-gritty.

We're gonna have to get into the details here. Your genetics and general, like, natural abilities are reaching their plateau. We're gonna need to take that next step. So that's where what was missing with their approach was the training was inflexible. It wasn't matching their lifestyle, and their nutrition just wasn't tracked and optimized well enough.

So for training, we made in-the-gym workouts. I structure them now to where they aren't any longer than 2 hours. Actually probably going to be 90 minutes if they follow the rest periods. Well, they're— that's actually funny. I just said they were probably— I know for a fact that they're going to be 90 minutes if they follow the rest times properly.

And everybody hee-haws a little bit and there's some change in transitions from exercises here and there. So they probably have between 90 minutes to 2 hours and that's at least 2 days a week. Then we have some options where they can do quick workouts where we broke down what we would normally do on, like, for example, a bench day and say, you know, here's everything we would normally do. If you need to cut a working set out of these movements, skip this movement, and then that's good enough for that day. So we have the full workouts, we have modified quick workouts.

They have some workout options they have at home. They have some heavy kettlebells at home, and I think like the one goes up to like 150 pounds or something. It's pretty freaking heavy. So they have some kettlebell workouts for at home, and then we have some travel workouts. So if they and the significant other go travel on the weekend, they have some ideas of what to do.

And that's mostly bodyweight because we can't really predict what they're going to have available to them in a hotel. But they don't use that too, too often, maybe, maybe once a month on a travel weekend or whatnot. But that gave them more flexibility to where they don't have to be in the gym as long. They don't have to be in the gym as much. But by being able to be flexible, they're not going to miss as many elements by just missing a full workout day, or, or, and, and/or they're not going to have the issue they were having before where they're trying to fit too much into one day.

They were getting too big of a recovery debt that they weren't able to out-recover. And then that was part of what was causing the change of performance from week to week is, for example, if their routine was squat workout, then bench workout, deadlift workout, then bench workout, if they were doubling up or adding a bunch of extra work to that first bench day, they're Their deadlift day is going to be impacted because the CNS is going to be fatigued. Their— maybe their lower back is fatigued from bent-over rows if they were picking the wrong type of accessory movements in their second day, in their bench day. But they were basically coming into every workout then not optimally recovered. So even a non-related workout, like you would think, how would a bench day mess up your deadlift day?

It absolutely does because we only have so many energy substrates available. We only have so much sleep that we can recover and dig ourselves out of, like for nervous system stress and whatnot. So that was part of what was contributing to their issues, was just that inconsistency of the training. For nutrition, same thing we kind of did with the cyclist is we have to track every day for a little while, just see, you know, we have an idea of what our calorie range is, but let's see what it actually is. We're gonna track our protein as well and then start to refine our choices.

We might see, okay, what I normally have for breakfast, it's really good on calories but doesn't quite have enough protein. Let me swap some food choices around. Same thing for breakfast, same thing for dinner. Maybe dinner was really high in protein, but it didn't really actually have a lot of carbohydrates. So then the next morning they were waking up in like a glycogen debt and having to try to outeat that glycogen debt by the time they got to their workout.

So they were getting to the workout having barely recovered their energy substrates rather than actually coming in with optimal energy substrates. So that was something we look at. And then for them, we're also playing around with carb timing, but this is going to be kind of like pre-workout into intra-workout. Where we have a drink option. They have a friend who owns a supplement store so they can get some supplements cheap.

And we're using some carb powders and some protein powders to where we can start to say, hey, if you're behind on food, you know, eat, eat or drink, you know, this, this, this as you are driving to the workout. And that can help you as well. So for them, what was missing was training flexibility, a training structure that like match their life and their demands. And then what was missing was also the nutritional consistency and just being more, um, intentional with their calories per day, protein per day, and then timing their food. So that's another element that we're playing with is the distribution.

We're trying to make sure that their calories and protein are evenly distributed throughout the day so they don't have big gaps in, in their day where their recovery is going to be behind. And/or like they're, they're very lean person, they don't have to worry about body fat. But if they're just over-consuming food at one time and under-consuming at another, they're just not going to optimize their recovery and their adaptations. And then we're also playing around with their protein versus carb timing. We want to spike the carbs leading into and coming out of the workout and then push the protein really high at the other times.

By bringing the protein down during that training window, leading into training, it's actually allowing them to eat more carbohydrates, which is increasing their performance. And then we're spiking the protein after that and then really heavy before bed, so that way they get a really big influx of protein before bed. And right now, for example, they're getting 60 grams of protein in their meal before bed. It's like 60 to 80-ish grams of protein, and that's been helping a lot with alleviating some of those small little chronic issues, you know, the shoulder, the neck, the bicep, that kind of stuff. Is going away.

So that was really helpful for them, really cool to see that. The third example we'll go through is a client we're doing some GLP support. They have been wanting to lose weight and they tried every diet under the sun. They've been unhappy with their body composition for like 20 years, and they realized multiple times over that trying every diet fad and then trying the next fad, the next fad, the next fad just wasn't working. They would lose some weight, gain it all back, lose some weight, gain it all back.

And what they're really looking for now is a sustainable approach, but they want a sustainable approach with extreme outcomes. What I mean by this is they want the extreme end result that crazy fad diets promise, but they don't want to do it in a crazy fad way. They want to do it in a sustainable way, and those two usually don't mix. However, with the GLP, we have been able to do that in a sense to where we're using the GLP to blunt hunger cravings and to allow them to tolerate a lower caloric intake, a total caloric intake. So for example, we have like not high and low days where there's extreme variation.

It's a, it's a small cycle, like a small calorie cycling, but it gives them a little bit of a freedom mentally on some days versus other days. But we're pushing their calories down. I think their caloric average of a weekly average is around 1,500 calories right now. And they're pretty big humans, so 1,500 is really low, but it's getting that fat to come off. And the way in which we're learning to structure our meals is the exact same way that they're going to use when they come away— come out of the GLP, and we got to start letting the hunger— like, the calories come up.

So we go from 1,500 maybe up to 1,800, then 2,000, then 2,200 as their metabolism recovers. From the GLP use that like brought the calories down. The body reallocated to figuring out how to survive on those calories, which it can't do yet. We have it too low for it to fully do that. But maybe they're like normal kind of maintenance calories would have been previously at say 2,400.

The body might have downregulated now and maybe it's like 1,800 to 2,000. And so when we start bringing calories up, the body's going to want to soak those in right away. So we have to be very careful in how we bring those calories up so that way we don't give it momentary excesses that can turn to body fat. We have to give it small little increases over time, let the body kind of burn through that, realize it's going to get more, burn through that, realize it's going to get more. And by keeping up with strength training, we're trying to minimize muscle tissue loss.

We're also keeping up some level of muscle tissue damage and system stress, which is going to promote the body to use increased calories and to address those demands rather than just storing body fat. So the overall structure right now is working really well. What was missing for them was a belief in an approach that didn't need to be constantly changed, meaning that, okay, I know this approach is going to give me results. Is it the fastest possible results compared to some fad crazy diet that I see promised to lose, you know, 30 pounds in 10 days? No, there are going to be promises, quote unquote, that they see on social media and fad diets that are going to say that they can achieve more.

They've already burned through dozens of those and realized that those promises are complete bullshit. So they have belief that the approach we're using now will work. It's going to get significant enough results that they're going to be happy. But it also balances their desire to not be changing their diet structure, you know, every month or every fad or every season of life. So this is giving a good approach for them.

And that's what was missing, was this belief in and the existence of a consistent approach that they could then just use and kind of modulate and modify as their needs modified, whether they were coming into a GLP, out of a GLP, whether they were in, you know, holiday season of life or a pushing season, maybe leading into the summer. So this is now a structure that they can use all the time and then just make small modifications depending on what their focus is. But they're not having to overhaul their diet approach at all times. They're not having to completely cut out full, you know, food categories where one season of life they're doing, you know, carnivore diet where it's all like proteins and animal fats and whatnot, and then the next season they're doing, you know, vegetarian because that was the thing that promised the next results. Or the next diet is like a a no-fat, high-carb diet, but only these type of carbs because these other type of carbs are the worst things in the world for you.

So that's what was missing, was just this, this belief that they didn't need to constantly chase the next best approach. Now, for them, the other thing that was missing was just having some emotional support in the journey. So a lot of the clients I work with, like over half our clients are personal trainers and So they do actually know how to modify training and nutrition for themselves. Some of the reasons why they'll work with us is they maybe don't know it to the degree or depth that we do. They also want to maybe hand off some of that and just be the athlete and just focus on crushing the stuff.

And while they're also trying to manage nutrition and training and everything else for all their clients, they don't want to have to put their own self, you know, in that position as well where they're trying to analyze their own progress along the way. And that can be very challenging. As somebody who manages their own myself, it can be very hard to— it can be very like mentally consuming to say, okay, I'm feeling XYZ, my nutrition is this way, my training is this way, am I seeing the results I want? If I am, great, but could I get more? If I'm not, bummer, what do I got to change?

And then you're sitting there analyzing the hell out of your nutrition, analyzing the hell out of your training, and and then supplements and all this other crazy stuff, and they just want to offload some of that and, and just let someone else control that chaos for them. The other reason is their aesthetics are part of how they make their money, so they want to make sure they look freaking amazing and look great on social media, drawing new clients. So having somebody who's helped, you know, people get natural and IFBB Pro cards as well as elite totals and world records, it, it's helpful to let them kind of control things so you can optimize the way you look, the way you feel, while you're also trying to run a business and make everybody else look and feel great too. Then accountability. That's another reason why people will like to work with a coach is just having somebody who gives a crap about what you're doing and getting to check in with them every week and say, you know, hey, this is how my week went.

What do you think? And they're like, hey, you're doing a great job. Why don't we change this? Why don't we stay with this? You know, they'll kind of tell you that along the way.

And just knowing that someone cares, knowing that someone's going to check in on your numbers and see how you're doing, that's very helpful as well. And that's what this person was missing before, was they felt like they were going through the journey alone and they didn't have somebody to talk them off the ledge of jumping to the next diet and jumping to the next diet. So that's part of what they're enjoying about our communication is when they see a new approach, they'll say, hey, what are you— what's your pros and cons list for this approach? And then I'll give my opinion and say, hey, you know, here are some good things of it that maybe we can implement. Here are some crappy things we definitely wouldn't want to do.

And maybe sometimes the list is all crap. Sometimes it's mostly pros. It's usually a mix, and that's kind of fun because I get to, you know, kind of dust off my knowledge and learn new stuff. And then they get to kind of hear what would happen from that diet before they have to try it and, you know, realize all the negatives on their own and waste months of their time. But that— what was missing for them was the belief in a consistent approach that was sustainable in the long term.

And just knowing that somebody actually gave a crap and cared and was gonna help them along the journey. So in these examples, the most common thing that is missing is nutrition optimization, meaning people are going to be aware of what they're doing with their nutrition, but are they— once they have like a certain amount of calories, are they analyzing whether that's the most or the least or the best? When they have a certain amount of protein, are they analyzing whether that's the most, the least, or the best? Uh, you know, carb intake, fat intake, food choices, food density. Like, are they— once they have this routine, are they just like, you know, hitting like sustain and just letting that coast as they modify maybe their training, as they bounce around and go through the chaos of life?

They kind of set a routine and then think it's just gonna— this routine is gonna somehow continually produce increasingly refined and better results over time. Even though the nutrition isn't being consistently refined. So they're just setting it, like set it and forget it, but they want this thing to continue to make amazing improvements over time. It's like, well, how in the hell are you going to continue to get increasingly better outcomes from an approach that you're not increasingly making better?

So that is what I can help people with, and that's what was missing in most of these cases is if they, if they weren't paying attention to their daily food detailed enough, that was the first thing— calories, protein. In most of the cases, we do look at carbohydrates, make sure there's at least a baseline minimum for fats. But if somebody likes fats, we'll let that, you know, fluctuate based on what their food preferences are. So just getting that routine built and then refining that routine, like wanting to continually optimize it each month. Like, I do training programs for most clients A brand new training program every 4 weeks.

So week 1 is figure out what the hell you're supposed to be doing. Week 2 is getting more confidence with what you're doing. Week 3 and 4 are really pushing progressions to push the body to make adaptation. And then we switch things up. Sometimes we'll keep some big movements, we might switch some of the ancillary movements.

We just kind of reevaluate a little bit, say what got better, what can we improve, what can we shift. And we usually do that every 4 weeks. And what they're missing in their current life and the current approach is also refining everything else. So they also refining their supplements every 4 weeks, nutrition every 4 weeks. Are they looking at their sleep quality and say, okay, have I let my sleep quality get kind of lazy?

Am I really optimizing that still? Or maybe it's good, but can it be better? And that's a really good question that we could always be asking ourselves is, you know, maybe it's good, but could it be better? And that's often the thing that we're looking to do is to get them to good and then get them to great. And continually trying to refine good and making good better.

Okay, hopefully in this podcast you could hear some things that maybe you can try to implement if you are pushing for progress but things have plateaued. You might be asking yourself what is missing. If it was any of these elements, hopefully we gave you some ideas that you can implement and use that'll help get you that progress that you've been looking for. If you have any questions, if you want to ask us about our online coaching You can learn more from us on our website, www.c3method.com. The 3 is spelled out T-H-R-E-E, so c3method.com.

You can also probably comment on whatever platform you're listening or watching this on, and I'll, I'll get a notification there as well. So comment wherever you are, check out our website, whatever you need, we're happy to help. I appreciate you. Thank you for your time, and hopefully this was helpful.

TopicsCarbohydrates & Carb TimingMindset & HabitsTracking & Measuring ProgressGLP-1 Medications
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MS Human Nutrition · ACSM-CPT · NASM-CES · 25+ years coaching · 3,000+ clients