Stop Winging the One System That Keeps You Alive

You’ve got systems for everything: team meetings, budgets, deliverables, quarterly forecasts. But when it comes to your body? You’re still crossing your fingers and calling it discipline.

This episode is a line in the sand.

If you’ve built the career, lead the projects, and carry the weight of a team… but still feel like a stranger in your own body, you’re not lazy. You’re operating without a system.

Today, we break down what it’s really costing you to keep winging your health when you’ve systemized everything else in your life. And more importantly? Why that stops today.

This isn’t about tips. This is about structure. Leadership. Legacy. And the system I built after living the same corporate chaos you’re in now.

And if you're tired of winging it? DM me “DESIGN” on Instagram.

We’ll map out exactly what that looks like for you. 

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

0:36

You've got systems for everything. Your project workflows, your budget approvals, your client reporting quarterly forecast. Hell, you even know how to organize your inbox with logic. So explain this to me. Why is your health field in the area that you are still winging things? Welcome back to Fitness by Design. I'm your host, coach Spencer, and this episode is for that guy who has built his career, earned the job title, built that team, but he still feels like a complete stranger in his own body. Let's talk about what it really costs you to continue winging your health when you're already leading everywhere else in your life. This is what I see every single day. Senior engineers, directors and sales, you name it. Those senior level professionals leading meetings, delegating tasks, delivering high quality results and deliverables. You have a team counting on you every single day, and you have a calendar that barely has room for you to breathe, but physically, you were always on your back foot trying to fight forward. Your shirts are getting tighter. You're dodging your reflection every time you have to turn on your camera. During meetings, you're skipping breakfast, you're slamming caffeine to make it through lunch, and then you go home and finish your day with a drink that you drink simply out of habit, not'cause you actually enjoyed anymore. The last time you remember quote, being in great shape, you were still in undergrad and your metabolism hadn't kicked yet. You're the guy that people go to for answers and solutions to the most complex problems at work, but yet, when it comes to your own health, you have zero structure. You're just living on willpower and wishes. And ultimately when that finally breaks down on you, you pretend that it is just a discipline problem. Hell, you've probably even seen somebody online telling you you're just not disciplined enough. Newsflash, it is not about your discipline. Now, let me explain. You have built every part of your corporate life with systems, right? The SOPs, the KPIs, the meeting minutes, agendas, deadlines, planners. All of it, but when you think about your health, this one area that touches your energy, confidence, presence, hormones, leadership, and honestly your entire life in general, you're still winging it. You're still hoping that this week will get lighter so that you can get a workout in, or you're crossing your fingers that suddenly you'll lock in. Like it's just some type of software platform that you just need to hit the right keystrokes and it'll all work itself out. I hate to break it to you, man, but you and I both know after over a decade in the corporate game, it's not just gonna work itself out because without a system and an actual game plan to execute on, absolutely nothing is gonna work for you. Now, let me help you walk through this. Would you tolerate a direct report who showed up late every single day? Never documented any meeting he ever attended. He missed deadlines and then he just told you, oh, sorry man, it was a busy week. I'll try harder next week. Fucking, of course you wouldn't, or at least I wouldn't. The reality is that you would sit down and you would work with them. You would coach them and help them figure out what was going on. You would fix the system and you would work to reduce, if not completely eliminate the inefficiencies in their systems. So then why is it that when it comes to your own health, you just keep giving it a pass and you say, I'll figure it out, or I'll dial in. After we finish this project, you tell yourself I should be able to do this alone. You've convinced yourself over years that asking for help is complete and utter weakness and breakdown of being a man. And frankly, you are too proud to do it. You feel like you've been able to build your career. So your health should be no different and just be able to figure itself out. But zoom out for a minute with me. Look back at your career. Did you truly build it by yourself or did you have a good boss, a good mentor, or guys and girls that were further along than you? And with more education, those subject matter experts that were helping you along the way, they were teaching you, taking you under their wing to guide you in the right path to follow. Did you really get to this senior level position purely on grit alone? Because while you're thinking, grinding your teeth and dialing in is the answer to your health, your stress is constantly rising. Your sleep schedule is practically non-existent. Your cortisol has completely flatlined. Your testosterone is dropping faster than your golf score, and your patience is a hell of a lot thinner than you remember it. You start snapping at your kids, snapping at your coworkers. You're completely zoned out during meetings. You're avoiding those intimate moments with your wife. Yeah, I said it, and you're avoiding the mirror when you hop in the shower. And all of that is because you keep trying to force your way to just doing it yourself. Following some random ass kid on Instagram telling you that he helps busy professionals when the closest thing that he has ever seen to a cubicle is playing Minecraft in his parents' fucking basement. I. And look, man, I get it. There is a moment that every single one of us reaches. Maybe it's that look in the mirror or that slight breath you have to take to button your pants. That extra tall stance you have to take to button that third button on your dress shirt. Or maybe it's just your innocent kid who doesn't understand their own emotions yet saying, daddy, your tummy feels like Play-Doh. Then bam, soul is crushed. Your pride and your confidence are fucking destroyed. You just wanna break down, call out sick, and Google how to lose weight fast. Ending up on the checkout page of some fucking Ozempic knockoff. But man, you can't keep winging this anymore. You need structure. You need a system, and you need the same clarity and execution that you demand at work, but applying it to your own body, you don't need fucking ozempic to do that. And that that's the shift that changes everything because it's not about a workout plan from bodybuilding.com. It's not another day of tweaking your MyFitnessPal stats to get more fucking calories. It's just a health and fitness system that's fully integrated into your life, built to last for those 12 to 15 hour workdays, those two hour commutes, the nights on the floor, playing with your kids or watching TV with your wife, being able to have your wife go, damn, when you step outta the shower again. That's exactly why I built the Engineered fitness Blueprint. So if you know that you've been winging it for far too long, let me just say this very clearly. Stop. Now DM me, design on Instagram and let's talk'cause I'm not gonna sell you any snake oil. I'm not gonna sell you fucking ozempic or any other bullshit. You've had enough of that in your search for a solution already. But we can absolutely talk about building you a plan to feel that confidence you did when you got that first promotion. Again, because this is the movement for high performing men who are done pretending. It's just about discipline. We build systems that actually hold up in corporate life, and we lead our health in the same way that we lead in those lives. So it's time to stop winging the one thing that matters the absolute most in our lives. And that is our health. This is fitness by design, and I'll catch you in the next episode.