One of the biggest things I’ve seen over 17 years of training people is that the people who struggle the most are often the ones who are constantly ready to complain about the results they didn’t get from the work they didn’t do.

They’ll say all the right things when they start.

They have all the motivation in the world.

They tell you they’re going to do whatever it takes.

And after doing this long enough, you can sometimes hear it in the ones who make it sound too good to be true.

Something isn’t quite right.

They start strong.

For the first week or two, they’re making their sessions, they’re excited, and they’re telling me they can already feel a huge difference.

Then we hit the first hurdle.

Food.

If they’re trying to lose weight and I ask how their diet went that week, I can almost guarantee I’ll hear some variation of:

“I eat pretty good for the most part. Could be better.”

Or I’ll ask:

“How did the food go this week?”

And they’ll say:

“Pretty good.”

Usually while looking anywhere in the room except directly at me.

So I give them a very simple first assignment:

Write down everything you eat.

It’s a basic way to start developing the habit of tracking food.

I’ll be honest, though.

After 17 years of doing this, I’ve also learned that it’s a pretty effective weed-out tool.

Very few people actually do it on the first try.

Then come the excuses.

“It’s really hard.”

“It takes so much time.”

“I hate tracking.”

“I’ve always had a hard time planning.”

“I hate weighing my food.”

“I hate weighing myself. It messes with me mentally.”

Whatever version of the excuse you want to insert here, the underlying problem is usually the same.

They aren’t ready for the accountability.

Because there’s something very different about thinking you’re eating pretty well and actually writing down everything you eat, looking at it at the end of the day and the end of the week, and then having someone look at it with you and say:

“Here’s the problem.”

You’re eating too much.

You’re eating things you told yourself you weren’t.

You’re not doing what you thought you were doing.

And now there’s evidence.

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Then We Get to the Workouts

They may make their sessions with me consistently for a few weeks.

But I’m also trusting them to do some work on their own.

Depending on their fitness level and training history, I might give them something very simple.

Maybe:

Walk a mile on the treadmill at a slight incline and record your time.

Or, if they’re more experienced:

Do these couple things on these days, keep doing what you’re doing on the others, and track it.

Again, pretty simple.

Then comes pitfall number two.

I ask:

“How did the workouts go this week?”

And suddenly the vague answers start showing up again.

“I was too busy.”

“I missed a few days.”

“I had a horrible migraine that day.”

“I did a few things.”

A few things.

Which things?

Nobody knows.

Or at least nobody is volunteering that information.

Then the motivation weeks start to die off.

Maybe it’s week five.

We miss a session because of a ridiculous excuse.

It’s funny how everyone suddenly has a family emergency or food poisoning when it comes time to text and cancel a training session.

Then they’re too busy the next week.

Now they’ve missed two in a row.

And by around the two-month mark, I can usually feel the frustration setting in.

They aren’t getting the results they wanted.

Their motivation is dropping.

And they’re approaching one of the most important moments in the entire process.

Because now they’re standing at the edge of an old pattern.

Maybe they quit training for a while.

Maybe they tell me it’s a financial thing.

Maybe they want to try another gym.

Maybe they want to try doing it on their own.

Maybe they just want me to give them “some workouts to do.”

Whatever form it takes, they’re getting ready to make the same decision they’ve probably made before.

And this is where I start talking about the Formula.

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A + B = C

I don’t want to turn this into a math equation and pretend the human body is that simple.

There are obviously more variables.

But if we want to strip it down to something simple enough to actually understand, let’s say:

A + B = C

Consistency in your workouts + consistency in your diet = the results you’re going to get toward your goal.

It’s that simple.

Not easy.

Simple.

And when someone comes to me frustrated because they’re not getting the result they want, the first thing I want to do is look at the data surrounding A and B.

That’s where the hard conversation usually begins.

Because sometimes the answer is:

“This is your fault, and you’re not ready to own it.”

You didn’t track your diet consistently.

So we don’t actually know how much you’re eating.

You didn’t record your workouts consistently.

So we don’t actually know how much work you’re doing.

You gave me a bunch of words that sound like evidence.

But words aren’t evidence.

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You Can’t Close Your Eyes and Complain About Where the Dart Landed

Imagine standing at a dartboard.

You close your eyes.

You throw the dart.

You miss.

Then you start complaining about where it landed.

You blame the dart.

You blame the board.

You blame the room.

You blame the lighting.

You blame whatever you can think of.

But you don’t mention the fact that you closed your eyes before you threw it.

That’s what people do with their results.

They want C.

They haven’t honestly collected A and B.

And then they’re emotionally devastated when C isn’t what they wanted.

The Formula didn’t fail.

We didn’t even run the experiment properly.

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Define What You’re Actually Trying to Accomplish

There’s another problem that usually shows up before we even get to the Formula.

The goal itself is vague.

Someone tells me:

“I want to get in shape.”

Or:

“I want to lose some weight.”

Okay.

What does that actually mean?

How much weight?

What body composition?

What strength number?

What race?

What performance goal?

What physical ability?

Define it.

It’s like deciding you want to build a house and then walking into a hardware store without a blueprint.

You grab some tools.

You hammer some random nails.

You disappear for a week.

You come back and hammer some more nails.

Maybe you attach a board to something.

A few weeks later you look around and wonder:

“Why the hell don’t I have a house?”

Well…

You knew nails were important.

You knew hammering was involved.

You were technically doing something.

But what were you building?

What were the steps?

Did you follow them?

No.

So before you complain about the house, figure out what you’re building.

Pick the long-term goal.

Then create smaller goals you can actually track along the way.

Maybe it’s 50 pounds.

Maybe it’s 20.

Maybe it’s a body-fat percentage.

Maybe it’s a certain weight on an exercise.

Maybe it’s running a race.

I don’t really care what it is.

You just need to know what you’re trying to accomplish.

Small wins matter because they give you evidence that something is actually happening.

You’re moving one spoonful of dirt at a time.

It doesn’t look like much.

But eventually you turn around and realize:

Holy shit.

The pile moved.

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Accountability Is Evidence

This is where tracking becomes so important.

I’m not expecting you to be perfect the first time you try.

If you track one day when you previously tracked zero, that’s progress.

Then maybe you track two.

Then you get the weekdays.

Then you get the weekends.

Eventually you get the whole week.

But I need you to track.

Because tracking gives us evidence.

It shows the person holding you accountable that you kept your end of the bargain.

But more importantly:

It shows you.

You said you were going to do something.

Did you?

The answer isn’t supposed to become:

“I’m worthless.”

Or:

“Everyone hates me.”

Or:

“I can’t do anything right.”

No.

Look in the fucking mirror and say:

“I didn’t do what I said I was going to do.”

Then:

“What happened?”

Then:

“What am I going to do differently next week?”

That’s accountability.

Not beating yourself up.

Looking honestly at the evidence and doing something with it.

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Keep Your Word

And here’s where I think this goes deeper than fitness.

If you tell yourself you’re going to do something and then repeatedly don’t do it, you’re teaching yourself something.

You’re teaching yourself:

My word doesn’t mean much.

But every time you make a promise to yourself and keep it, you’re building evidence that you can trust yourself.

Keep your word to yourself.

That’s the person you want to be.

Because if you don’t keep your word to yourself, why would you expect other people to trust you?

This isn’t about being perfect.

You’re going to mess up.

You’re going to miss workouts.

You’re going to eat something you didn’t plan on eating.

You’re going to have a bad week.

You’re going to fall back into an old pattern.

Fine.

Look at it.

Own it.

Learn from it.

Get back to work.

The goal isn’t to never have an outlier.

The goal is to stop letting one outlier turn into an entire season of your life.

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You Don’t Have to Track Forever

This is where people usually start pushing back.

“But I don’t want to track my food forever.”

“I don’t want to weigh everything I eat.”

“I don’t want to have to think about calories for the rest of my life.”

“I just want to live a little.”

And then someone else comes along and tells them:

“You need balance. Life is about enjoying yourself.”

Fine.

I agree.

But here’s the part people get backwards:

You haven’t necessarily earned that level of freedom yet.

The better you get at tracking, the better you get at consistency.

The better you get at consistency, the better you get at understanding what actually affects your results.

And the better you understand your own Formula, the more intuitive you can eventually become.

That’s the part people miss.

They want the freedom and intuition before they’ve developed the skills that make that freedom possible.

They want to eat whatever they want without tracking.

They want to be loose with their training.

They want to go out on the weekends.

They want to have drinks.

They want the dessert.

They want to skip a workout occasionally.

And they want all of that to somehow coexist with getting exactly the result they want.

Sometimes it can.

But if you don’t yet understand how your own behavior affects your results, you’re not being intuitive.

You’re guessing.

There’s a difference.

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Earn Your Freedom

Think about learning to drive.

When you’re sixteen, you don’t get handed the keys and told:

“Just be intuitive.”

You learn the rules.

You practice.

You pay attention.

You make mistakes.

You learn how the car responds.

Eventually you don’t consciously think about every little thing you’re doing.

You just drive.

That’s what I want for your relationship with fitness.

The goal isn’t to track everything forever.

The goal is to get so good at understanding the Formula that you eventually don’t need to consciously track everything all the time.

You learn what portions look like.

You learn how much food you actually need.

You learn how your body responds.

You learn how much training you can handle.

You learn what happens when you sleep poorly.

You learn what happens when you stop moving.

You learn what happens when you eat like an asshole for three days.

You learn what happens when you tighten things up.

You collect enough experience that you develop intuition based on evidence.

That’s very different from just winging it.

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The More Consistent You Are, the More Consistently Loose You Can Be

And this is where I think people really misunderstand the concept of balance.

Balance isn’t necessarily:

“Never be strict about anything.”

Sometimes balance means knowing when to lock in and when to loosen the reins.

Let’s say you have a wedding coming up and you want to look your absolute best.

Or summer is coming and you want to get beach ready.

Fine.

You can tighten the Formula for a short period.

Track your food closely.

Be more precise with your training.

Pay attention to your sleep.

Reduce the variables you don’t need.

Get serious about the goal.

Then you reach the goal.

Now you can loosen things up again.

That’s not hypocrisy.

That’s competence.

The more consistent and disciplined you become, the more consistently loose you can eventually be without losing control.

You can have the pizza.

You can go out with your friends.

You can take the vacation.

You can miss a workout.

You can eat dessert.

Because you’ve developed enough understanding of yourself to know that one outlier isn’t going to turn into three months of outliers.

And if it does?

Go back to the Formula.

Track your shit.

Look at the data.

Tighten things up.

Get yourself moving in the direction you want again.

Then loosen the reins when you’ve earned it.

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Freedom Is a Skill

I think that’s the part people miss.

Freedom isn’t the absence of discipline.

Sometimes freedom is what discipline eventually gives you.

You don’t become intuitive by refusing to learn the rules.

You become intuitive by learning them so well that you eventually don’t have to consciously think about every rule.

You don’t earn that by being told to “live a little.”

You earn it by doing the work.

And the funny thing is, the stricter and more consistent you can choose to be when the situation calls for it, the more freedom you can have the rest of the time.

Not because you’ve been given permission.

Because you’ve built the capability to handle it.

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What If You Actually Did Everything Right?

Here’s the part people sometimes don’t understand.

Let’s say you tracked everything.

You were honest.

You did the workouts.

You followed the plan.

You tracked the food.

And you still didn’t get the result.

Good.

Seriously.

That’s useful information.

Now we actually have data.

We don’t have to guess anymore.

We can change the variables and run the experiment again.

Maybe calories need to come down.

Maybe the macros need to change.

Maybe the training needs to change.

Maybe something else needs to be investigated.

But now we’re working with evidence.

That’s a completely different problem from:

“I don’t know what I did, but it isn’t working.”

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The Same Formula Applies to Your Mind

And this is where the Formula gets much bigger than fitness.

Your mind works the same way.

You’re trying to change a mental habit.

Maybe you’re trying to become less reactive.

Maybe you’re trying to notice negative thought patterns.

Maybe you’re trying to change the way you talk to yourself.

Maybe you’re trying to become more present.

You don’t just think about changing.

You practice.

Meditation.

Journaling.

Affirmations.

Whatever tools make sense for the problem you’re working on.

Then you pay attention.

You collect evidence.

You notice the small changes.

Maybe you catch yourself reacting differently.

Maybe you recognize the thought before it turns into the entire fucking story.

Maybe you recover faster.

Maybe you notice that something that used to trigger you doesn’t have quite the same grip.

Those are data points.

They’re evidence that the Formula is changing.

And just like your body, your mind doesn’t transform overnight.

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The Formula Doesn’t Lie

This is the part I want you to remember.

You cannot complain about the output of the Formula if you haven’t honestly tracked the variables that produced it.

If you don’t have the data, you don’t know.

If the data says you didn’t do what you said you were going to do, own it.

Don’t turn that into self-hatred.

Turn it into information.

If you did the work and the result still isn’t there, good.

Now we have something to work with.

Change the variables.

Run the experiment again.

Practice.

Collect more data.

Adjust.

Repeat.

Because extraordinary results usually aren’t built from extraordinary individual days.

They’re built from boringly repeated days that stay close to the mean.

Less chaos.

Fewer huge outliers.

Shorter periods of falling off.

More days where you simply do what you said you were going to do.

That’s how your body changes.

And I believe that’s how your mind changes too.

The data doesn’t lie.

So stop arguing with C.

Look at A and B.

Then figure out what you’re going to do next.

Just fucking do it.