The Hardest Episode I’ve Ever Had to Record

This isn’t a strategy breakdown.
 It’s not a lesson on macros or workouts.

It’s a raw, unfiltered confession from a coach who stepped on the scale, saw the number, and asked himself, What the F* happened?

In this episode, Spencer opens up about his year-long journey of gaining 30 pounds after investing $10,000 into a high-ticket coaching program while still coaching other men to life-changing results.

No hiding. No filters. No pretending.

This is the moment when he stops trying to fix it quietly and starts doing the real work publicly.

If you’ve ever felt like a fraud in your own body…
If you’ve ever questioned why it feels so hard to get back to the guy you used to be…
If you’ve been stuck in the sidelines waiting for the right moment to take control—

This episode is your wake-up call.

So follow @spencerhgallo on Instagram and come along for the journey. 

If this episode hit home, make sure you’re subscribed. This is Fitness by Design, the podcast for high-performing men ready to stop winging it and start leading with their body.

For more stories, strategies, and hard truths:

Follow me on Instagram – @spencerhgallo
Connect with me on LinkedIn – Spencer Gallo
Or shoot me a text, I read every single one.

Let’s keep building your edge, one episode at a time.

Transcript

0:37

There's a moment that most people won't admit to, especially not coaches, and especially not guys like me. But today, I'm not speaking to you as a coach. I'm not coming to you with strategies or plans or frameworks or any of that kind of stuff. Today I am speaking to you as the guy who stepped on the scale one day, looked at the number, and for the first time in a really long time, said out loud. What the fuck happened? So let's rewind. A year ago I was in Bali on my honeymoon, I weighed in at 179 pounds and 19% body fat. Before I left, I was not shredded, but I felt lean, confident, and I was very proud of the body that I had. And I started to feel like me again for the first time in years. And the thing is that wasn't by accident. I had been working my ass off with a coach. I'd been following the plan, executing like I always tell my clients to do. and I had started that year at 196 pounds in 22.4% body fat. In 10 weeks I dropped almost 20 pounds. I left for that trip looking in the mirror, thinking, hell yeah, man. Like we're back. And when I came back, I doubled down. I hired a new coach. It was with a program that promised it all. DNA testing lab work, a concierge team. Somebody that I could text if I needed meals or hotel gyms when I was on the fly. I. And I paid over$10,000 for that program over the course of a year because I believed in investing in myself because I believed that if this worked, it would be the game changer that I had been looking for for years inside of my own health and fitness. And at first it all made sense. I had just come off of a very deep calorie deficit to get Lean Ali, and so we started to reverse diet AKA, slowly raising my calories, building me back up in my metabolism, and making sure that I stayed healthy. It was supposed to be a pretty clean rebuild, but that's not what happened. Three months later, I was back up to 198 pounds, 22.9% body fat, and not because I was binging or slacking or ignoring the plan, I was following the protocols. I was taking all of the supplements, which. Stacked up to a few hundred dollars and I was doing everything they had asked me to do, and month after month, I just kept gaining weight. And then by February of this year, I was over 200 pounds. Again, 200, 4.2 to be exact, 23.4% body fat. I was heavier, softer, and honestly more frustrated than I had been in all of my years of yo-yo dieting. And the worst part, I started questioning everything. How could I be a coach? How could I get online and talk about health, about systems, about sustainable change? When I was walking around in a body that I didn't recognize or feel confident in, I felt like a meme that I saw the other day was Red Skull in the Infinity War That said, I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess. Damn it, man, that fucking hit like a damn brick in the head because it was so true. I had started hiding, not from my clients, because honestly, like I never have stopped showing up for them, but from social media, from my stories, from myself, from my family, every time I thought about posting, I would think to myself like, why would anybody even listen to me? You're a coach who can't even fix himself. You're just a fraud. And listen, I know the truth. I know I'm not a fraud. I know this is not about willpower or motivation or whether or not I am worthy of coaching, but damn it, if those voices did not start getting louder and louder and louder, and the worst part about it all was that it wasn't just about the weight. I started having an identity crisis. You know, the one that comes around and the guy you know yourself to be the guy who's always in control, always locked in, and always leading from the front starts to feel like he's just trying to keep up with the back. And that sucked because I've built this business on results of my clients, not hype, not hustle, not influencer bullshit, just straight up results. And here I was sitting on top of a system that had helped dozens of guys. Lose 20, 30, even 60 plus pounds, while I was just silently watching my own scale climb in the opposite direction. So that's what I decided I was done hiding. No more. I'll fix it behind the scenes and come back when I'm lean again. That's not who I am. That's not who we are. So I'm flipping the script and I'm starting to coach myself. I'm running the exact system I use inside of the Engineered Fitness Blueprint because I know the system works. I've seen it work, and I've helped it work, and I've built it to work. And I'm gonna prove it by walking it myself in real time with you, not because I need to prove anything to you. But because I need to remind myself that this thing actually works when it's done right. So this episode, this episode is your day one on this podcast. This isn't a challenge. This is not some 75 hard reboot crap. This is not a shred. This is none of that. This is just the version of me that doesn't hide behind quarter zips, doesn't sit in the back of conference rooms. Doesn't shy away from turning my camera on during meetings. I don't avoid the mirror. Who doesn't question if I've earned my own voice on the internet because that guy is still here. He is inside of me. And if you're listening to this right now going, shit, I feel that good.'cause I'm not doing this to be perfect. I'm doing this to be real with you. To show what happens when a high performing, highly structured guy stops looking for hacks and just starts to execute the system that he knows works within his life. Because if this works for me, somebody with a three hour commute to the office working a nine to five, growing my business and coaching all my clients and a life that's anything but predictable outside of that, then I'm gonna be damn sure this is gonna work for you. So I'm inviting you to come along for the ride. If you've been watching from the sidelines, if you've been waiting for the right moment to start following, if you've been telling yourself, I just need to get through this project, this quarter, this season of my life, I've got news for you. Those seasons don't slow down. They don't go away. But this, this might be your wake up call. So if you're ready, and I mean really ready to stop starting over and start building the body that matches the man you know you're supposed to be, Then shoot me a DM with the word design on Instagram, because I'm not just building this for myself, I'm building it for us because if I can't do it, there's absolutely no reason why you should do it either. So make sure you follow along. This is fitness by design and let's get to work.