How You Lead at Work Is Wrecking Your Health

You’ve built systems that hold up under pressure...
Forecasting. Budgeting. Team management. Cross-functional chaos. You lead it all without breaking stride.

But your health?
Still being held together with duct tape, caffeine, and “I’ll figure it out.”

This episode isn’t a gut check. It’s a systems check.

If your meals are random, your workouts inconsistent, your sleep nonexistent, and your confidence slowly fading, you’re not broken. You’re just operating in chaos without a framework.

Inside, I walk you through the 5 systems I install with every high-performing client that stop the guessing and finally engineer real results, without needing more time, motivation, or 75 Hard.

And if you’ve been winging this for way too long?

DM me “DESIGN” on Instagram.
We’ll walk through what your real system needs to look like, so you can stop surviving and start leading in your health the same way you do everywhere else.

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 have mastered the chaos, the deadlines, forecast, staffing issues, cross-functional meetings. That should have been fricking emails. You lead through all of it without even flinching, but there's one area where all of that chaos is still in control. I. That's in your own health and fitness because even though you dominate at work, your health is still just duct taped together with hope and hustle. You have no plan, no margins, no rhythm. Just I'll figure it out. This episode is not a gut check. This is a systems check because the body that's carrying your entire life right now literally is under-resourced undercovered. And if we're being honest, pretty undervalued. And you know it. This is Fitness by Design. I'm Coach Spencer, and today I'm gonna walk you through exactly what changes when you stop treating your health like an afterthought, and start treating it like the high performance system that it's supposed to be. So let's start here. You are not new to pressure. You've built the teams, you've led, the projects scaled, the systems. You don't crack when deadlines close in and you operate in complete complexity and deliver clarity. But when it comes to your body, you're winging it and you know it. Your meals are completely random, your workouts are inconsistent. Your sleep is an afterthought if you're lucky. And the only thing that you track reliably is your blood pressure During meetings, you've read Atomic Habits. You listened to Joe Rogan podcast. You bought the Alpha Lion. Dad bod Destroyer stack. You even did a Challeng or two last year. But still nothing stuck. And why is that? It's because you're trying to apply executive level thinking to your career, but then you put teenager logic to your health i'll start again on Monday. I just need to push a little harder bullshit. If your team came to you with a strategy that vague for a project, you would rip them to pieces on site, and yet that's exactly how you have been trying to run the most critical system in your life, which is your health. No roadmap. No accountability, no design, just hope, hustle, guilt, and gritting your teeth, and it's catching up to you. You're avoiding the shirts in the back of your closet that used to fit. You're sucking in your gut every time you have to turn your camera on. You're skipping those pool party invites with your kids. You're telling your wife, you're just too tired when the truth is you don't feel like yourself anymore. And that quiet shame is starting to eat away at you because deep down you know who you used to be and worse, you know who you can be if you just stopped pretending that this would fix itself. So let's pull the curtain all the way back. You are not broken. Your metabolism isn't shot and you're not too old to do it, but you are playing a very different game right now because when you were 25 you could out train inconsistency in a shitty diet, but now you nervous system is so freaking taxed from work. Your testosterone is lowering by the minute. Your margins are tighter. And the runway is a hell of a lot shorter to make changes because everything that you used to get away with is starting to show now that extra drink, you feel it the next morning and realistically the next day after that, that missed lift. You lose the momentum for the whole week and that skipped meal leaves you binging on fast food on the way home from work. And here's the part that no one wants to say out loud. Your body isn't The only thing that has changed your role has, because at work, you're the guy that everybody looks to for that structure. But in your health, you've become the guy who just does his best. Then that mismatch, it creates an identity friction in your head. You look in the mirror and you see somebody that you don't recognize, but you know how others see you dialed, decisive. Powerful, commanding, but you don't feel that way when you're half buttoning a dress shirt or hoping no one sees your side profile in your photos. And the longer that you tolerate the gap between those two situations, the heavier it starts to weigh on you. And this is exactly where that tide starts to turn because once you stop waiting for motivation and start installing a system to fix it, that's when everything starts to shift. This isn't 75 hard. This isn't another shred plan you found online. And this isn't another macro tracking spreadsheet that some 25-year-old influencer with no kids and no meetings sent you through fricking messenger. I'm talking about a structure that actually fits into your corporate life, and here's exactly what that looks like. The very first thing is setting anchor meals. This isn't a diet. Most guys think they need a 37 item meal plan, some crazy calorie spreadsheet, and 5 million hours of. Fricking MyFitnessPal certifications to make this work. You don't. You just need consistency, and what works isn't the variety, it's the simplicity. You should have two to three high protein meals that you can literally make in your sleep that taste good. You enjoy eating, and you can eat them on repeat meals that don't require tons of measuring. Macro calculators or 90 minutes of prep to do them. Think about eggs, toast and fruit in the morning. Chicken, rice, greens, midday steak, potatoes, a side salad for dinner. These aren't boring foods. They're bulletproof foods, and when that day goes sideways, you won't be caught wondering what to eat. You can just execute, and that's the point. You eliminate the decision and you just lock in that consistent rhythm. The second thing is you need to lift at least two times a week. No more of this all or nothing thinking that you need six training sessions and a marathon's worth of cardio to change your body. You just need momentum. Two full body lifts, a week of 45 minutes each. Done with intention. That is gonna make a massive change in your strength, muscle tone, metabolism, and most importantly, your confidence. Now that said, if you have the ability to do three or four training sessions. Great do them. But minimally, if you can hit those two, you'll be in far better shape than skipping all of them like you have been for the last year. Now I'm talking about squats, rows, deadlifts, presses, movements that build a frame that can actually carry your life. This isn't about punishment, it's not about vanity arms and having the biggest biceps like fucking Hulk Hogan. It's just reinforcement. You don't train because you hate your body. You train because you respect the role that your body plays in every part of your performance and your appearance. Number three is start scheduling your week. Stop leaving your health to chance. If your workouts, meals, and walks aren't in your calendar, they don't exist in your life. You already run your work life 100% through meetings, project management tools, executive dashboards, and all of it. But why do you not do the same with your health? So Sunday night, just sit down and map out your week. What days are you gonna work out? What days are you gonna be able to get some extra walks in? What meals are you gonna prep or order for that matter? Are you traveling? How are you gonna navigate that? This isn't about obsession, it's just effective. And it's the reason why guys that I work with who never have time suddenly find it because they stop winging the situation and start treating their health like a line item inside of their spreadsheets. It's not an afterthought anymore, and it becomes a part of their daily calendar. Number four, building in recovery, but with purpose. I'm not talking about crazy wind down rituals or stupid fucking morning routines where you shove your face in a bowl of ice water. I just had a client tell me on their check-in last week that he isn't getting enough sleep because he gets stuck into Netflix. But then he tells me he has an evening routine. Well, newsflash, you can't have both an evening routine. And get sucked into three more episodes of Netflix. So starting now, you need seven hours of sleep minimum. Anything less than that is going to start to wreck your hormones if it hasn't already, especially your cortisol and your testosterone you know, that thing that your doctor says is quote unquote fine, but you still feel like shit every day. So you can start taking a magnesium glycinate or melatonin right before bed. Give yourself at least 30 minutes of quiet and screen free time before bed. No phones, no laptop, no TV on in the bedroom, just a room that tells your body it's time to finally start to shut down. And then number five, honestly, this is one of the hardest ones out there, is saying it out loud. This is the move that 98% of men avoid. You keep it to yourself because you think that keeps you safe. You are too proud to tell somebody that you are trying to lose weight and you can't do it alone. Because the reality is silence is the enemy of your standards. The minute that you say it out loud, whether it's to your wife, a friend, a colleague, a coach like myself, you raise the stakes for yourself and you give somebody the ability to call you out when you're not doing the work. You stop negotiating with just yourself, and guess what? You get that support. That accountability, the eyeballs on your effort, it stops being this quiet internal fantasy and struggle and become something you actually are on the hook for. And it's not about shaming yourself or forcing yourself to do it, it's just having somebody else in your corner to help keep you moving when things get tough, and that's when that change is gonna start to happen. So let me say this very plainly. You have built your life through systems. You've led teams, you've solved million dollar problems and projects. You've carried weight that would bury most people, but you are still winging the one and only thing that drives everything else, which is your energy, your discipline, your confidence, and your health. And that stops today because whether you choose to DM me design right now or you don't, you've already made a choice to keep guessing or to build the body that finally reflects the life that you've built. I know which one I would choose, and if you're still listening, so do you. This is fitness by design and this is the system for men who are done winging it. Let's build it together and I'll see you in the next episode.